Jerry Schuchalter – författare

«Schuchalter’s comprehensive study of the enigmatic author Charles Sealsfield is a welcome contribution to German-American studies. He convincingly explains the development of Sealsfield’s political philosophy: After having fled Europe, the former Catholic priest discovered liberalism and saw its promises fulfilled in the New World before getting disgruntled with actual developments in the USA since the late 1830s.»(Wynfrid Kriegleder, Professor of Modern German Literature, University of Vienna)This work explores the literary phenomenon of Charles Sealsfield, known throughout much of his career as «the Great Unknown» and for a brief time as «Seatsfield, the Greatest American Author.» Sealsfield, a runaway Moravian monk, living in permanent disguise, reinvented himself as an American author and the self-proclaimed founder of a new novel form. Despite publishing works both in English and in German, he has been relegated to a marginalized, if not forgotten, place in the American canon and a constricted place in the German canon. This study examines his fiction and travel books, as well as his correspondence, and strives for a reassessment of his achievement in both canons.

The 1990s saw the appearance of many new works that have redefined and embellished the canon of Holocaust literature. While many of these works have quickly become classics, some have raised new questions about the processes of canonicity. This study concentrates particularly on works in German by Jewish Holocaust survivors written and published approximately fifty years after the fateful cataclysm, focusing on such crucial issues as genre and testimony. Despite the long shadow cast by the Holocaust on subsequent generations, the author shows that narratives on the Holocaust have continued to thrive, offering inventive interpretations of questions that have been thought to defy explanation.