A German Account of Life in Wales in 1856

Abstract

OF the hundreds of travel books which appeared in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the public showed a seemingly insatiable appetite for accounts of foreign lands, very few are remembered to-day. Most of them have very little to offer to the serious student of history or of folklore, but occasionally one comes across a book of exceptional merit, and to my mind Julius Rodenberg's Bin Herbst in Wales deserves a·special place in the book list of every Welsh folklorist.1 It is now a rare book and practically forgotten by everyone except students of the history of journalism who are attracted to Rodenberg on account of the important part he played in German journalism during one of its most interesting periods. 2 Julius Rodenberg, who was born Julius Levy, took the name of Rodenberg from the small township in Hessen where he was born in 183 I. He studied at the Universities of Heidelberg, Gottingen and Berlin, and after travels in France in 1855, received his doctorate of law from Marburg University in 1856. He then left Germany for a series of prolonged journeys to several countries of Western Europe. In 1862 he was given his first editorial post, and after experience with several journalistic ventures he was appointed editor of the Deutsche Rttndschau in 1874. He remained its editor-in-chief until his death in 1914.3