Heinrich Burkhart

This highly topical work is the most interesting of Bacheracht’s novels, since it was inspired by the problems causing social and political unrest in the 1840s. When banished from his domicile in Germany, Heinrich Burkhart choosesto go to Switzerland (the asylum of many German political refugees), and here he establishes a flourishing commune where workers and their families are cared for from cradle to maturity. This novel is one of the first to point tothe emergence of the technician toward the middle of the nineteenth century. The romance chronicled in the novel does not overshadow the political and social aspects of the work, but rather contributes to them by juxtaposing thesubmissive middle-class daughter and the cultured self-emancipated woman.