Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/173

Pennsylvania German 585 The elegiac note also prevails in the poems Heemweh, Der alte Feierheerd, Die alt Miehl. We are reminded of the homely simplicity and tender pathos of the dialect poet of the Black Forest, J. P. Hebel {Alemannische Gedichte), as we listen to Harbaugh's Das Krischkindel (Santa Claus) , Busch und Schtedel (Town and Country), Der Kerchegang in alter Zeit (Going to church in the old time). Will widder Buwele sei (I want to be a boy again). Two collections of Pennsylvania German folk- songs were published by Henry L. Fisher, entitled: 's alt Marik-Haus mittes in d'r Schtadt, and Kurzweil und Zeitjertreib odder Pennsylfanisch-deutsche Folkslieder. This anthology and the more recent collection of prose and verse in two volumes by Daniel Miller furnish pleasing pictures of country life, joyful frolics, huskings, apple-butter and quilting parties; they playfully ridicule ministerial plights and difficulties, and the follies of superstition. Some of the prose tales are trace- able to sources many generations back in Swabia and the Rhineland, but in the new setting they receive a renewed charm. The Pennsylvania German dialect literature is un- doubtedly the most quaint and original contribution of the older German immigrations, and it is unfortunate that no com- prehensive anthology has as yet appeared. The stories in English by Elsie Singmaster Lewars are far more artistic and trustworthy depictions of the Pennsylvania Germans than the pseudo-realistic fictions of Helen Reimensnyder Martin. The most valuable writing done by Germans in the United States has been their scholarly work, historical, autobio- graphical, and scientific. Works of this class have generally been published in English and therefore do not properly belong to a sketch of the literature written in German. They are books of specialists: E. W. Hilgard on soils, A. A. Michelson (Nobel prize winner) in physics, Paul Haupt and F. Hirth on Oriental languages, Drs. Jacobi and Meyer in medical re- search, B. E. Fernow on scientific forestry, Paul Carus as editor of The Open Court and The Monist, Kuno Francke in German literature, and a group of other scholars born in Germany who held chairs in American universities and gained a wider hearing through the use of the English language in their books. Two of theablest Germans who came to this country before 1830, Karl FoUen and Francis Lieber, in their mature works used the