A Goethe Note from the San Francisco Sonntagsgast: Implications and Deductions

Abstract

On August 7, 1870 there appeared in the San Francisco Sonntagsgast a short article with unusual implications for an understanding of the German-language press and of the German immigrant population in California. The Sonntagsgast, published from 1870 until 1873, was one of 109 German-language papers which have appeared in California since publication of the first one in 1851.' Almost without exception, these papers carried a lively feuilleton section in which appeared poetry, short stories, serialized novels and articles on current entertainment and on the arts. In general, authors whose creative works were published, though no better nor worse than their counterparts in English-language papers, were not those whose names have endured in German literature. One is led to ask whether the editors were isolated