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(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 <> and for a brief time as <> 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.