| FT-55804-08 | Research Programs: Summer Stipends | Thomas Adam | Selected and Annotated Edition of the German Diaries of George and Anna Ticknor | 6/1/2008 - 8/31/2008 | $6,000.00 | Thomas | | Adam | | | | University of Texas, Arlington | Arlington | TX | 76019-9800 | USA | 2008 | History, General | Summer Stipends | Research Programs | 6000 | 0 | 6000 | 0 |
Since the early 1960s, historians of German-American relations have repeatedly suggested that an edition of George Ticknor's German travel diaries would contribute significantly to a better understanding of both German and American history in the first half of the nineteenth century. Ticknor's descriptions of German society and culture and of Saxony's royal court in Dresden in particular are unique in their density and quality. The publication of selected parts of Ticknor's diaries provides a rare perspective of an informed outsider on German history. For German historians, such a text (which is virtually unknown to German historians of that time period because of the inacessibility of these diaries) has the potential to destroy long held convictions about early-nineteenth-century life in Germany. At the same time, this text also gives us some astonishing insights into the self-definition of Americans such as Ticknor during the 1820s and 1830s and the creation of an American identity. |