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Mark Twain in German-Language Newspapers and Periodicals

Mark Twain's Rückreise nach der Heimath | Research Process

Selection Process

The research process leading up to the chosen article started with looking at the available German-language newspapers on Chronicling America for my assigned time frame (1891-1900).

Using the advanced search function, the following parameters were applied:

select year(s): 1891-1900
language: German
… with the words: Mark Twain
within 5 words of each other

This search provided 241 results, the number of results for each year varying drastically with 1897 (42) and 1899 (47) as the most resourceful years and 1893 (3) as the least resourceful one. The next step was to sort through the results and disqualify those that were duplicates of other articles or those that provided not enough possibilities for annotations.

The article above was eventually chosen, because it provided an overview over a very special time period of Mark Twain’s life, his almost two-years-stay in Vienna (not including Mark Twain’s audience with emperor Francis Joseph, because that happened after this article was originally written). Even before starting the research for the annotations, it was clear that the amount of work needed to be done for this article would be a bit more than expected, simply because of the length of the article and the many different annotations. Nevertheless, this article gave me the opportunity to dive deep into many different topics connected to Mark Twain, making the amount of work worth it.

Reflections on the Topic

As already mentioned, this article provides an overview of one stage of life of Mark Twain. Doing so, it shows Mark Twain in ways many people might not know him, namely more than a writer. This article shows aspects of Mark Twain being a father, moving his whole family to another country for the musical career of his daughter Claire, while still trying to provide a healthy environment for his sick daughter Jean. It also depicts Mark Twain as a person being interested in politics and documenting political history (see Stirring Times in Austria). Mark Twain’s involvement in Austrian politics might surprised a few people as well as the reactions to his involvement by some anti-Semitic newspapers. Additionally, you can see in which ways his humor was received looking at the joke about the book supposedly written in Austria. Almost half of the article is devoted to inform about this portrait gallery, clearly showing that his statement had been taken seriously. To be honest, it even took me quite some time to find out that it was a joke. So overall, this article gives a starting point to look at Mark Twain in many different ways.

Mark Twain’s time in Vienna is, of course, documented in detail in various Austrian newspapers, as reporters were very interested in Vienna’s famous guest. That is why, it is quite interesting to see which information made it all the way to America and how they were received.

Another interesting aspect concerning this article is the relationship between American German-language newspapers and Austrian newspapers. As I found out during my research, this article was copied by Freie Presse für Texas from an article printed in Neues Wiener Tageblatt (May 19, 1899) a few days before that without giving credit to the original source.

General Observations About the Project

For this project, I came in contact with many new online resources I had not encountered before. DeepL, the tool used for the translation, turned out be to be a very efficient tool for translations, even with more abstract phrasings. I hardly had to correct the initial translation made by DeepL. I will definitely remember this tool for future translations.

The starting online resource for this project was Chronicling America. It was very surprising to me how many newspapers this online archive includes and how good the quality of the scans is. In this regard, Chronicling America is definitely a very resourceful website. Another online archive for newspapers that I used was ANNO of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (Austrian National Library). It provides quite a large number of Austrian newspapers. I used both archives for the research for my annotations, mostly to see how the information I gathered before were depicted in that time. What I think is very outstanding for both archives is that they are completely accessible, no subscription needed and no access provided by the university. These two online resources as well as the Internet Archive made it possible for me to work with a huge amount of primary texts. Of course, going through all these sources and picking out what to use was a bit overwhelming. But I believe after working with these websites a bit more, it will get easier to identify useful sources.

All of the three mentioned online sources provide to search for specific words or phrases in texts. This, of course, makes it easy to skim through a text and locate necessary passages in a short time. But this function also has some problems that I noticed mostly when looking at information about Theodor Leschetitzky in Dolmetsch’s Our famous Guest. First of, there are different ways of writing Leschetitzky’s name and Dolmetsch uses all of them. This leads to one problem with the in-text search function – you have to consider different spellings and maybe even misspellings, as well as the program not being able to identify the searched word in the text. Another problem is that this way passages are ripped out of their context. This can lead to misinformation.

Through this project I worked with many new online resources and tools. It was interesting to get a look at what is available online and what is really useful for university purposes. Even so, the amount of data was at times a bit overwhelming, I really enjoyed working my way through all if it. It was definitely a good opportunity to test out new things and learn more in regards to the digital humanities.

This page is referenced by:

Mark Twain's Rückreise nach der Heimath | Mark Twain's return journey home Freie Presse für Texas (San Antonio, Tex.), 12 Jun. 1899, p. 1, c. 3. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. Of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045227/1899-06-12/ed-1/seq-1/>

German Transcription	English Translation
Mark Twain's Rückreise nach der Heimath	Mark Twain's return journey home
Nach mehrjährigem Aufenthalt wird Mark Twain Wien verlassen und sich nach den Vereinigten Staaten zurück begeben. Man schreibt aus Wien: In den nächsten Tagen wird der bekannte amerikanische Humorist Mark Twain unsere Stadt in Begleitung seiner Gattin und seiner beiden Töchter verlassen.	After a stay of several years, Mark Twain will leave Vienna and return to the United States. This has been written from Vienna: In the next few days the well-known American humorist Mark Twain, accompanied by his wife and his two daughters, will leave our city.
Den Aufenthalt hier hatte Mark Twain, wie man weiß, mit Rücksicht auf die musikalische Ausbildung seiner begabten Tochter Miß Clara Clemens gewählt und die junge Dame oblag hier bei Leschetitzky und später bei der Sängerin Fräulein Marianne Brandt ihren Studien.	It is known that Mark Twain had chosen to stay here for the musical education of his talented daughter, Miss Clara Clemens, and the young lady studied here with Leschetitzky and later with the singer Fräulein Marianne Brandt.
Der Aufenthalt in Wien war von vornherein auf zwei Jahre präliminirt und sollte im Herbste dieses Jahres zu Ende gehen. Thatsächlich hatte die Familie Clemens bereits eine Sommerwohnung in der Nähe von Reichenau gewählt, wo der Frühling und Sommer verbracht werden sollten; allein diese Dispositionen wurden im letzten Momente geändert, da sich die Nothwendigkeit der Anwesenheit Mark Twain‘s in London herausstellte. So wird Mark Twain den Hochsommer in den schottischen Hochgebirgen verbringen und sich dann im Herbst nach seinem Heimathlande Florida, das er jahrelang nicht gesehen, zurückbegeben. Einem Besucher, der ihn in seinem provisorischen Heim im „Hotel Krantz‟ mit den Vorbereitungen zur Abreise beschäftigt fand, bestätigte Mark Twain, daß ihn nur geschäftliche Verbindungen gezwungen hätten, seine Abreise zu beschleunigen.	The stay in Vienna was preliminarily scheduled for two years and was to end in fall of this year. In fact, the Clemens family had already chosen a summer residence near Reichenau, where the spring and summer were to be spent; only these dispositions were changed at the last moment, since the necessity of Mark Twain's presence in London became apparent. Thus, Mark Twain will spend midsummer in the Scottish highlands and then in fall will return to his homeland Florida, which he has not seen for years. To a visitor who found him busy in his temporary home at the "Hotel Krantz" preparing for departure, Mark Twain confirmed that only business connections had forced him to hasten his departure.
„Ich werde auf meinen Wiener Aufenthalt immer nur mit wahrem Vergnügen zurückblicken,‟ äußerte Mark Twain, „es ist eine Stadt, in der es sich so gut arbeiten läßt. Was ich gearbeitet habe? An einer Porträtgallerie, an Berichten von interessanten Leuten, mit denen ich in meinem Leben zusammengekommen bin, von meiner Kindheit angefangen bis heute, da und dort, in der ganzen Welt . . . . Darunter sind Leute von allen Rangklassen und gesellschaftlichen Stellungen, wenn sie nur die eine Bedingung erfüllen, interessant zu sein. Es sind Monarchen und Fürsten darunter, aber auch Schneider und Schuhmacher, Kutscher — o, die können sehr interessant sein! dann Poeten, Advokaten, Novellisten und Humoristen — Diebe, Desperados, Fälscher, Buchdrucker und Pastoren, Piraten, Neger, Indianer, Köche und Kellner — Historiker und Pferdeschwindler — die feine Gesellschaft, die unfeine Gesellschaft, Chinesen, Engländer, Irländer, Wiener — kurz alle Nationalitäten. Ich habe hunderte von Namen auf meiner Liste. Während des letzten Jahres meines Wiener Aufenthaltes hab' ich einen Band fertig geschrieben. Wien war für mich eine Fundgrube. Es ist eine herrliche Stadt, ich wiederhole es noch einmal, und hat interessante Leute; man kann keinen Stein werfen, ohne einen interessanten Menschen zum Krüppel zu machen ... .	"I shall always look back on my stay in Vienna only with real pleasure," Mark Twain expressed, "it is a city where it is so good to work. What was I working on? On a portrait gallery, on accounts of interesting people who I have met in my life, from my childhood until today, from here and there, all over the world .... Among them are people of all ranks and social positions, if they only fulfil the one condition of being interesting. There are monarchs and princes among them, but also tailors and shoemakers, cabdrivers — o, they can be very interesting! then poets, lawyers, novelists and humorists — thieves, desperadoes, forgers, printers and pastors, pirates, Negroes, Indians, cooks and waiters — historians and horse thieves — fashionable society, unfashionable society, Chinamen, Englishmen, Irishmen, Viennese — in short, all the nationalities. I have hundreds of names on my list. During the last year of my stay in Vienna I have finished writing a book. Vienna was a treasure trove for me. It is a splendid city, I repeat again, and has interesting people; you can't throw a stone without crippling an interesting person ....
Und wenn ich noch einmal nach Wien komme — bei diesen Worten ergriff Mark Twain eine Tageszeitung und deutete auf einen Bericht über die letzte Sitzung des Landtages, in welchem über die Entscheidung des Verwaltungsgerichtshofes „debattirt‟ wurde — wenn ich noch einmal nach Wien komme, dann sind solche Dinge unmöglich. Ich habe Leute über politische Verrohung in Amerika sprechen hören. Aber es giebt keine Partei in Amerika und keinen Auswuchs einer Partei, die es wagen würde, an dem Heiligsten, was es in einem Rechtsstaate gibt, an der Achtung vor dem Richterstande, zu rütteln ....‟ —	And if I come to Vienna again — at these words Mark Twain grabbed a daily newspaper and pointed to a report on the last session of the parliament, in which the decision of the Administrative Court was "debated" — if I come to Vienna again, then such things are impossible. I have heard people talk about political brutalization in America. But there is no party in America and no outgrowth of a party that would dare to tamper with the most sacred thing in a constitutional state, respect for the judiciary ...."—
Mark Twain wird auf der Reise nach London an mehreren Punkten, wie Dresden und Berlin, einige Tage verweilen. In London werden zu seinem Empfang große Vorbereitungen getroffen, da man sich für die herzliche Aufnahme, die Rudyard Kipling in Amerika erfahren hat, zu revanchiren gedenkt.	Mark Twain will spend a few days at several points on his trip to London, such as Dresden and Berlin. In London, great preparations will be made for his reception, since one intends to return the warm exception that Rudyard Kipling experienced in America.

Read more about the research process (note)