Dissens in der Emigration: Der deutsch-amerikanische Abolitionist Karl Follen

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of Karl Follen in the New England abolitionist movement. Despite his efforts to overcome his reputation as a German radical political activist in exile, his protest against slavery has been continually linked to the assassination of August von Kotzebue by Karl Sand, one of Follen’s student followers. While biographers have focused on the continuity in Follen’s transatlantic search for freedom, this paper emphasizes the differences between the cultural environment in Germany and the United States, which ultimately determined the nature of Follen’s dissent. Working as a professor at Harvard University, Follen became an American citizen and adapted his ideas of destiny, promise and rhetorical prophecy to his new socio-political surroundings. Although he promoted revolution and even assassination during the German wars of liberation (1813-15), Follen turned into an Emersonian reformer advocating self-reliance, the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women after his escape to America. In order to understand the dynamics of Follen’s dissent and non-violent approach regarding social reforms, the rhetoric of William Lloyd Garrison serves as a foil. While Follen desperately tried to become a representative American, his uncompromising advocacy for human rights based on the Declaration of Independence ultimately estranged him from many nativists who denounced him as a dangerous “foreign meddler.” It appeared as if German notions of freedom were incompatible with the American concept of democracy. This is why Follen’s controversial activities, his cultural contributions and their far-reaching repercussions need to be evaluated in the broader context of democratic vistas in German-American discourses