The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVIII. Later National Literature, Part III.
§ 9. German Travellers in the United States
German travellers in the United States became more frequent in the second decade of the nineteenth century, and their books and stories were instrumental in accelerating and directing the tide of German immigration. Thus Duden’s Berichte über eine Reise nach den westlichen Staaten Nordamerikas und einen mehrjährigen Aufenthalt am Missouri, 1824–27, started the great mass of German settlements on both banks of the Missouri River. Subsequently pamphlets and books on Texas and Wisconsin directed immigration to those states. To the travel literature of the earlier periods belong the books of Fürstenwärther (1818), Gall (1822), Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar (1828), Duden (1829, etc.), Von Raumer (1845), Büttner (1845), Löher (1847), Fröbel (1853–58), and Busch (1854). Since then a host of others have appeared, ranging from the scientific and critical works of Ratzel (Kultur-geographie der Vereinigten Staaten), Polenz (Das Land der Zukunft), Goldberger (Das Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten), von Skal (Das amerikanische Volk), to the popular pictorial books of Karl Knortz and Rudolf Cronau.