"Lesbian Love" from The Mysteries of New Orleans

Abstract

IBron Ludwig von Reizenstein (1826-1885), the elder son of an administrator of the Bavarian state customs service and scion of an ancient Franconian noble house, was shipped overseas in 1849 by his fatherfor personal instability and possible sexual deviance. Reizenstein family had been dysfunctionalfor years, and Ludwig's mother had been institutionalized for unspecified sexual irregularities. After a period of wandering in America, Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein settled in New Orleans in 1851, earning his living as a property-surveyor and painter of real estate sales posters. After two efforts to launch a satirical journal, he published a novel entitled Die Geheimnisse von New-Orleans (The Mysteries of New Orleans), which applied the techniques of a German gothic horror story to the racial and social tensions of the American South. Although the novel, completed at the end of 1853, was completely published as a serial novel in the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung in 1854 and 1855, it was withdrawn as a book due to protests over its political and sexual content, and because it portrayed living persons in an unflattering light. central story of the novel concerns the birth of a black messiah who is destined to punish the whitesfor their crimes, but it also includes something to offend just about anyone in a southern community-if onlyfor its cruel comedy and its celebration of sexual irregularity. Although Reizenstein would go on to publish a series of columns of social satire in 1860 and 1861 on The Devil