Contextualizing The Mysteries of New Orleans

Scholars have explored the serial novel Die Geheimnisse von New Orleans and its role in Germanophone literature in the antebellum United States from several viewpoints. As some point out, however, studies of the novel would still benefit from discussion of the very specific circumstances of its creation.1 Here I will discuss unique aspects of life in antebellum New Orleans and the German immigrants’ point of view in that society. The Mysteries addressed a very specific audience: the German-speaking population of New Orleans during the period shortly before the Civil War. Social circumstances of this group are both reflected and addressed in the novel. In tying various aspects together, I can clarify both the social context of the novel, which is the only German mystery novel set in the antebellum South, and how the novel itself addressed the hopes and fears of its readers. Slave trading was a part of an active public market; according to the 1853 New Orleans Daily Picayune, the New Orleans slave trading industry was worth more than eight million dollars of annual commerce.2 The Mysteries of New Orleans reveals a pervasive preoccupation with race and enslavement, concepts that German immigrants had not encountered before emigrating. What I hope to show here are the many layers of this preoccupation that The Mysteries represented and addressed for its readers.