JUNG-STILLING AND THE AMERICAN BACKWOODS
By KLAUS WUST
" You think it surprises me to receive letters from North America; no,
my dear, that does not surprise me at all for yours is not the first one from
that part of the world. Besides, I am used to receiving letters from Asia
and from most of the countries of Europe; my correspondence is unusually
large and I also consider it a very essential and useful part of my activi-
ties. . . ." wrote Dr. Jung-Stilling, Kurbadenscher Hofrath in reply to a
letter from an unnamed Lutheran clergyman in 1805. The pastor had
evidently informed him of the influence his writings had among the Ger-
mans in the United States. " I feel like throwing myself in the dust before
the Lord of Glory whenever I am given such testimony of blessings spread
by my writings," Jung-Stilling continued and then revealed his familiarity
with the religious scene in America.¹
The American pastor must have voiced concern about the followers
of Johann Georg Rapp who had arrived during the preceding year. The
first group of about three hundred Rappites reached Baltimore on July 4,
1804 aboard the Aurora. Two more shiploads of 540 persons altogether
landed in Philadelphia in September 1804.² Some of these " awakened "
Wurtembergers found the German communities in Maryland and Eastern
Pennsylvania congenial enough to stay instead of following Rapp to his
rigidly organized, utopian Harmony Society not far from Pittsburgh. " As
to the Wurtemberg Separatists and their migration to America I must
admit, helas!, that much chaff is mixed in with them. For several years
already I have earnestly warned in public against such aberrations in
Der graue Mann and especially in my correspondence. But it was to no
avail. No people in Germany have less cause to be Separatists than the
Wurtembergers because they still have a large number of awakened and
righteous preachers." ³
Another disquieting development for the Lutheran and Reformed
churches in the American backwoods at that time were the camp meetings
conducted by Methodists and their German-speaking counterparts, the
United Brethren. These emotion-loaded outdoor services were often marked
by corporal convulsions and delirious shouting. Stilling seemed to be well
aware of the American revival movement when he wrote: " The news of
revivals over there ... is heart-lifting. I had previously read extensive
news about the preachers under open skies in a German American news-
paper. I dare not pass judgment on people dropping down and fainting—
if it would only further the work of the Lord one might be tolerant in
such secondary matters."
4
Significantly, this passage of Stilling's letter was underlined in ink in
the copy of the Evangelisches Magazin owned by the Rev. Paul Henkel,
the foremost itinerant preacher of the Lutheran church. The same volume,
1
" Brief vom Stilling," Evangelisches Magazin 1 (Philadelphia, 1812), 132-134.
2
Christiana F. Knoedler, The Harmony Society (New York, 1854), 6-8.
3
" Brief . . . ," loc. cit., 134; Der graue Mann (1795-1816) was Stilling's own magazine. He
refers his correspondent to an attack on the sectarian enthusiasts in No. 16.
4
" Brief . . . ," lon. cit., 133-134.
[35 ]
curiously, contains an admonition to Paul Henkel by the 1811 Synod
meeting of the Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania:
"... that Mr. Paul Henkel be the itinerant preacher this year for
three months in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee.
For certain reasons Dr. Helmuth has been asked to inform him of
this synodical resolution and advise him to stay away from Camp
Meetings on his tours if he should encounter such deviations from
our evangelical ways."
5
Paul Henkel was known to have preached at backwoods revivals in order
to offset the appeal of the emotional barrages of Methodist exhorters.
Stilling's comment no doubt interested him and probably strengthened his
own conviction that the Lutherans should not remain passive lest they
lose their rural flocks to the new faith.
Henkel, like many of his contemporaries in the western parts of Mary-
land, Virginia and North Carolina, was well familiar with the books of
Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling. Numerous surveys of German books owned
by preachers, farmers and craftsmen in the American hinterland between
1780 and 1830 indicate that Stilling was the only contemporary author in
Germany who enjoyed widespread and unquestioned popularity. Most of
his writings were offered by booksellers and hawkers soon after their appear-
ance in Europe, indeed, new titles were eagerly awaited and when they
reached Philadelphia, Baltimore, Lancaster or Hagerstown, printers mused
over them to decide whether the sale of imported editions from Germany
or a local reprint would be more profitable.
Apart from a few sophisticated immigrants, mainly in the port cities,
the German population in the Middle Atlantic and Southern states had
simple tastes when it came to books. Religious themes predominated
everywhere from the often extensive libraries of clergymen to the limited
bookshelf of sectarian farmers. The Bible, T. J. van Braght's Märtyrer-
Spiegel, excerpts from Martin Luther's writings, Johannes Arndt's Wahres
Christenthum, the anonymous prayerbook Ernsthafte Christenpflicht, Ger-
hard Roosen's Christliches-Gemüthsgespräch and a few sweet-worded
pietistic titles covered the whole extent of literary interest west of the Blue
Ridge.
6
The then contemporary classical literature in Germany was totally
unknown to the immigrants of the 18th century and their descendants.
Much of it would not have appealed to the backwoods readers at any rate
whose "worldly" readings were limited to an occasional broadside de-
scribing a particularly gruesome murder or a public hanging. Booksellers
evidently did not burden their shelves with Goethe, Lessing or other non-
religious authors. Jacob D. Dietrick's Bücherstohr and circulating library
in Hagerstown offered the usual pious fare but also—and this was no doubt
exceptional so far from the coast—a couple of books by Wieland and
Kotzebue in 1801.
7
Solomon Henkel at New Market, Virginia, published
a list of his stock in 1809. From among the thirty-seven German titles
advertised (all devotional material or practical handbooks) Stilling with
Der Christliche Menschenfreund is the sole representative of contemporary
writers in Germany.
8
5
Evangelisches Magazin I (1812), 15. For Paul Henkel (1754-1825) see Klaus Wust, The Virginia
Germans (Charlottesville, Va., 1969), 132-134, 156, 270.
6
Wust, " The Books of the German Immigrants in the Shenandoah Valley," Mennonite Quarterly
Review XXXII (1958), 74-77.
7
Catalogue of Jacob D. Dietrick's Circulating Library (Hagerstown, Md., 1801), 90-98. Copy at
Maryland Historical Society.
8
Virginische Volksberichter, New Market, Va., April 19, 1809.
[36]
By that time Jung-Stilling's popularity was spreading throughout the
back settlements. Imported copies of Henrich Stillings Jugend and the
novels, Florentin van Fahlendorn and Heimweh made their way into
distant parsonages. Their golden words enlivened many a sermon by
country preachers whose language thirsted for new, pleasing expressions
in an environment of linguistic isolation. Pennsylvania printers soon found
it profitable to reprint Stilling's books rather than rely on costly and
uncertain shipments from overseas. Dieter Cunz located no less than 13
American reprints published between 1797 and 1821.
9
The earliest one was
Florentin von Fahlendorn (Reading, Pa., 1797). Heinrich B. Sage, pub-
lisher of the popular Weltbothe in Reading which also circulated south of
the Potomac, issued among others the first American editions of the com-
bined Lebensbeschreibung (1811), Siegesgeschichte with Nachtrag (1814)
and Theorie der Geister-Kunde (1816). Extant copies of the Reading
edition of Siegesgeschichte turned up in recent years at country sales in
remote sections of Virginia and West Virginia.
Pennsylvanian printers were not the only ones to cash in on Stilling's
popularity. The increasing demand in western Maryland and the adjacent
South prompted John Gruber of Hagerstown in 1807 to reprint in two
volumes the 1803-05 Nürnberg issues Der christliche Menschenfreund.
10
Numerous copies of these pious, moralizing tales have survived to this
day, some found in such unlikely places as Bergton, Forestville, Rural
Retreat and Toms Brook in Virginia and Green County, Tennessee. Ex-
cerpts were welcome copy for newspapers such as Gruber's own Westliche
Correspondenz and the New Market Virginische Volksberichter. In the
Menschenfreund Gruber offered advance subscriptions to Stilling's Theo-
bald oder die Schwärmer, a 420 page edition he produced the following
year according to Seidensticker.
11
Likewise he proposed to publish Stilling's
Siegesgeschichte der christlichen Religion for $1.25. But three years later
he admitted in his almanac that he had calculated the price too low.
" Nowadays food prices, materials and wages are much higher than before,"
was his still familiar lament and he now suggested $1.75 for it. Since the
only copies of this title located in Maryland and Virginia all bear Sage's
Reading imprint, Gruber might never have printed the Siegesgeschichte
although years ago Seidensticker found the Nachtrag published by Gruber
& May in Hagerstown in 1815.
12
The Henkel firm in New Market, Virginia with its network of agents
from Winchester south into Lincoln, Rowan, Stokes and Guilford counties,
North Carolina, and Granby County, South Carolina, did not only sell
Gruber's and Sage's reprints of Stilling but also issued a brief excerpt of
Heimweh from its own press in 1815. To this pioneer publisher in a western
Virginia hamlet of 300 souls belongs the credit of having printed in 1814-15
the first English translation of a work by Stilling in America:
Scenes in the World of Spirits.
13
The translation from the third original edition was the work of Gottlieb
Shober (1756-1838) of Salem, North Carolina. Shober, a member of the
9
Dieter Cunz, " Nachwort " in his edition of Henrich Stillings Jugend, Jünglingsjahre, Wanderschaft
und häusliches Leben (Stuttgart, 1968), 385. (Reclam Universal-Bibliothek Nr. 662-666)
10
Felix Reichmann, " German Printing in Maryland, A Check List, 1768-1950," The Report SHGM
XXVII (1950), 9-70. Item # 100 (pp. 12, 34). For John Gruber (1768-1857) see Dieter Cunz, " John
Gruber and His Almanac," Maryland Historical Magazine XLVII (1952), 89-102.
11
Oswald Seidensticker, The First Century of German Printing in America. 1728-1830 (Phila-
delphia, 1893), 172.
12
Reichmann, loc. cit., 12, 36; Seidensticker, op. cit., 194.
13
Lester J. Cappon and Ira V. Brown. New Market, Virginia, Imprints 1806-1876 (Charlottesville,
Va., 1942), 8.
[37]
Moravian Brotherhood and an ordained Lutheran minister, wielded much
influence among the North Carolina Germans and maintained close con-
tacts with English-speaking clergymen. It was not until 1831 that another
title, Heinrich Stillings Leben, appeared as Stilling's Life in an American
English translation in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Altogether, a count of
British and American translations based on B. Q. Morgan's bibliography
for the period 1810-1864 lists only 10 titles by Jung-Stilling.
14
While simple
German-speaking Americans received his works with unusual enthusiasm
considering the scant intellectual preoccupations of most of them (not
excluding here the rural clergy), to English-speaking Americans Stilling
remained virtually unknown outside some religious circles, notably the New
England Universalists.
Many reasons may be advanced for Stilling's popularity among the rural
clergy and many common people in the German back settlements. The
clearly religious tenor of his writings distributed in America exempted them
from the scorn and suspicion with which most other contemporary Euro-
pean authors were received. There was nothing in them of " the triumph
of reason " against which country pastors so vehemently preached. People
in a land that had only recently been tamed, that had still been the raw
frontier a generation earlier, were receptive to the strange blend of mystic,
spiritualistic and theosophic elements of Stilling's writings. Extant sermons
by roving Paul Henkel or by George Daniel Flohr of Wythe County in
the far southwest of Virginia betray the same child-like faith and senti-
mental pietism that pervades Stilling's autobiographic works.
15
The pietism
of Halle which had strongly influenced the early Lutheran ministers of
Pennsylvania, seemed sedate, dry and almost lifeless if compared to the
emotional approach to faith in the backwoods congregations. Moreover,
Stilling masterfully described the good, simple village life as no other writer
had, a life that many people on the erstwhile frontier were about to build
for themselves. Nor was his piety confined to narrow denominational lines.
In a region where Reformed pastor William Otterbein joined Mennonite
Martin Boehm to preach Methodist principles, where " Lutherans, Pres-
byterians, Mennonites, Baptists and Methodists all drew near the Lord's
table and many were not able to avoid shouting,"
16
Moravian Gottlieb
Shober offered communion in Lutheran churches, William Hauck, the
Reformed pastor, was licensed to preach by the Lutherans and the brother
of the most ardent Lutheran Paul Henkel was the Methodist pioneer
preacher Moses Henkel, in such a region Stilling's openmindedness toward
confessional differences was more than welcome. Even the seclusive Dunkers
could find pious passages to their liking as a result of Stilling's proximity
to the Täufer in Elberfeld.
Likewise Stilling's combination of interest in medicine and religion
was shared by numerous country preachers who doubled as medical prac-
titioners. At least in the area west of the Blue Ridge, no evidence of any
particular impact of Das Heimweh could be discerned. Dieter Cunz has
pointed out that this four volume novel with its masonic and apocalyptic
features was blamed for much of the Swabian emigration to Russia.
17
Generally, secret societies were frowned upon by the country clergy and,
save for a few sectarians, the faithful were not infected by the chiliastic
14
Cunz, "Nachwort," 385-386; Henry A. Pochmann, German Culture in America 1600-1900
(Madison, Wis., 1957), 346.
15
Paul Henkel (1754-1825). Manuscript sermons in Tusing Collection. New Market, Va.;
G. D. Flohr (1759-1826). A collection of his popular and evangelic sermons in J. T. Tabler (ed.)
Sermons and Essays (Baltimore, 1840), 1-265.
16
The Life and Journal of the Rev'd Christian Newcomer (Hagerstown, Md., 1884), 99.
17
Cunz, " Nachwort," 381-382.
[38]
fever which had seized so many Wurtembergers in the Old Country. The
generation of farmers and hunters grown up along the frontier was too
practical-minded to indulge in speculations about the millenium. Fear
and hardship of the pioneer days were yielding to an optimism without,
however, extinguishing all interest in the supernatural and occult. Super-
stition in connection with many features of daily life was rampant in all
early American settlements. Stilling's Szenen aus dem Geisterreich and
more yet his Theorie der Geisterkunde supplied fare similar to the grim,
locally produced broadsides which were found by posterity folded away in
Bibles and devotional tracts.
Jung-Stilling's letter cited at the beginning is evidence for the fact that
he was well aware of his North American audience and that he relished it.
In a way, his was the very last " foreign " German influence on the de-
scendants of the American German migration of the 18th century. With
the progressive language transition in the land between Potomac and
Saluda his work fell into complete oblivion. Time-worn volumes unearthed
in attics and barns, lingering on shelves of country junk stores—one copy
was even rescued from a county dump—and finding their way to Saturday
vendues among " sundry old Dutch books " bear testimony of Stilling's
bygone popularity. Just like this entry among the appraised estate of
George Daniel Flohr of Wythe County, Virginia (some 450 miles southwest
of Philadelphia), neatly written into the county Will Book by a bilingual
clerk:
" Heinerich Stillings samtliche Werke—Henry Stilling's worcks $10 . . ."
18
18
Wythe County Will Book III (1827-1831), 265-266.
[39]
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