Mark Twain in German-Language Newspapers and Periodicals

Heidelberg | 1878

Samuel Clemens arrived in Heidelberg on April 22, 1878. It was the first extended stay on his trip through Europe during the years 1878-1879. He was accompanied by his wife, Olivia, his two daughters Susie (6 years old) and Clara (3 years old), Olivia's friend Clara Spaulding, and the German nursemaid Rosina Hay (N&J2, 43).

There seems to be no record of why Heidelberg was chosen as a temporary place of residence. Since Clemens was looking for a location to withdraw from the hassle of life in Hartford, he might have found it appealing to hear about Heidelberg offering "a peaceful state of rest and content" – a phrase that Charles Dudley Warner, his next-door neighbor and a collaborator on The Gilded Age, had used in his travel book Saunterings (1872, 43). Similarly, the American poet Bayard Taylor had envisioned Heidelberg as "a place for rest and quiet study" (56) in his book Views A-Foot (1846, rev. ed. 1872). Clemens had been in touch with Taylor since 1877 (Kersten, 253). Now his trip to Europe aboard the steamship "Holsatia" afforded him the opportunity to spend the two-week voyage from New York to Hamburg in close proximity to Taylor, who was en route to begin his term as America's German envoy.

A letter written in February 1878 mentions Dresden as a possible place for a longer stay (MTHL I, 220), but the idea never materialized. In March Clemens wrote to Mary Fairbanks that he wanted to "find a German village where nobody knows my name or speaks any English" (UCCL 01542). Even shortly before the departure of the "Holsatia," he informed a New York Times reporter that he was "going to the most out-of-the-way place in Germany I can find [ . . . ] fifty miles away from any railroad" (Scharnhorst 2006, 15). Upon their arrival in Hamburg, however, the Clemens family contemplated Heidelberg as a potential destination for an extended stay. "We shall [ . . . ] go to Heidleberg [sic] where we shall probably stay nearly two months" Olivia wrote to her mother on April 26 ( Letter from OLC to Mrs. Jervis Langdon).

The Clemens family arrived in Heidelberg, a city of approximately 28,000 inhabitants (Luks, 86), on the afternoon of May 6th, initially staying at Hotel Schrieder (Scharnhorst 2019, 250), a place Olivia described as "a most miserable hotel" (Snedecor, 104). The next day, they moved to the much more elegant Schloss-Hotel, which offered them a pleasant and comfortable stay stay and a spectacular view of the city and the Neckar valley.

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