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Immigrant Epistolary and Epistemology: On the Motivators and Mentality of Nineteenth-Century German Immigrants
WALTER D. KAMPHOEFNER
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THE QUESTION OF WHAT nineteenth-century immigrants knew of their destination before immigrating, and how they knew it, lies at the heart of the issue of immigrant mentality and motivation. This, in turn, is inextricably entwined with the question of what historians know and can know about immigration, and how they know it. In both enterprises, immigrant letters have played an important, perhaps crucial, role. One reflection of this importance is the publication of scholarly editions of immigrant letters from varying nationalities. Indeed, except for soldiers, immigrants probably represent the nonelite group whose writings have been most frequently edited and published.1 |
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But perhaps all for naught. David Gerber's recent work on immigrant letters stresses the "tentativeness of evidence derived from such illusive texts" and argues that "immigrant letters are not principally about documenting the world, but instead about reconfiguring a personal relationship rendered vulnerable by long-distance, long-term separation."2 His thesis is laid out in greater detail in a book titled Authors of Their Lives (2006), especially in a core chapter titled "Forming Selves in Letters." Gerber focuses above all on "the quest for continuity in the service of personal identity, the immigrant's second project," in contrast to the "largely material goals [that] typically are the immigrant's first project."3 In an oddly passive construction that obscures the voluntary nature of most nineteenth-century migration, Gerber argues that "emigration puts a singular strain on personal identity, because it is a radical challenge to continuity. It may set individuals adrift by sundering their relationships to places, things, and people."4 For all the postmodern baggage of Gerber's portrayal, his immigrants from a European perspective strongly resemble Mack Walker's "people who had something to lose, and were losing it," while on the American side they are characterized by a deep psychological crisis reminiscent of Oscar Handlin's Uprooted (1951).5 |
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Gerber offers a solid contribution through his emphasis on and more explicit formulation of the psychological aspects of immigrant correspondence. Still, it is not as if the existing scholarship has simply neglected this aspect where it was of relevance in understanding a particular letter writer.6 Moreover, this "second project" was not as independent of the first as Gerber imagines; as will be seen below, they were often in fact inextricable. |
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The rest of this essay explores the parallel case of German immigrants and their correspondence, above all as it relates to the migration decision and the rationality or irrationality of the enterprise. It compares the influence of top-down sources of information and motivation, especially guidebooks, emigration societies, and agents, as they were reflected in the letters and migration behavior of actual immigrants. It then examines the kind of nuanced advice such immigrants offered to potential followers among their relatives, friends, and acquaintances and provides evidence of the impact their advice had. The picture that emerges is of autonomous immigrants quite skeptical of any higher authority, but still not exactly the rugged individualists celebrated by American entrepreneurs. Except for the great leap of faith in crossing the ocean, German immigrants tried to minimize risk by drawing upon personal ties and community resources to cushion their entry into a new society and economy. |
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