»Reisen im neuen Styl«. Die Eisenbahn im Werk Friedrich Wilhelm Hackländers (1816–1877)

Abstract

Friedrich Wilhelm Hacklander, a succesful 19th century German writer — he published more than twenty thousand printed pages — was 19 years old when the Nuremberg-Furth railway was opened in the winter of 1835. His first report on the new means of transport dates back to the year 1842, he dealt with the theme for the last time in 1875. Twenty-six texts written by one single author thus give a literary insight into more than thirty years of railway history. Hacklander was an ardent traveller, and for this reason the railway first appears in travel reports wich are initially characterized by adventure and technology but then take on the form of poetic travel pictures. But the railway plays a role in his other prose works too. It surfaces as a peripheral, secondary or central theme in many of Hacklander’s novels, narratives, short stories, humourous sketches etc. The station and the railway compartment are favourite topoi, the figure of the railway engineer coins a new type of hero.