Deutsche Kolonisten im Heiligen Land: Die Famile John Steinbeck in Briefen aus Palastina und USA (review)

To those readers who care more about the rich family history of John Steinbeck's German ancestors than did Steinbeck himself, I recommend this collection of sixty-nine letters, written between 1850 and 1878. In 1850, members of the Großsteinbeck family decided to leave a depressed German farming community north-east of Cologne and emigrate to Palestine, a predominantly Arab-populated area that since 1519 had been part of the Ottoman Empire. Embracing the goal of founding a Christian settlement, the three siblings, Friedrich Wilhelm, Johann Adolf (John's grandfather), and Johanna, along with her husband Gustav Thiel, embarked on their journey to the Holy Land. Their letters to their family and friends provide unique insight into their struggles as immigrants for whom permanent settlement proved, for the most part, elusive.

The story that emerges from the collection reads the plot of a novel. It is one of multiple migrations and eventual dispersal of the family across the globe. Shortly after their arrival in Jerusalem, Johann, Gustav, and Katharina steady employment at the German hospice, whereas Friedrich proceeds to invest in different schemes to make a living. He tries his hand at farming, raising bees, or producing silk in the Artas colony, and works for the English consul. When these attempts don't prove successful, he attempts to build a German colony in the Plains of Sarona, a few miles from coastal Jaffa. Here he first rents, then buys an orchard with fruit and mulberry trees and invites his brother and sister to join him. But the work proves too cumbersome and inefficient and, when the previous owner demands his land back, Gustav and Katharina return to Jerusalem. Both Friedrich (in 1854) and Johann (in 1856) marry the daughters of an American settler, Mary and Almira Dickson. After Friedrich is killed by Bedouin burglars in 1858, the sisters and their families leave for the U.S. Soon afterwards, Katharina dies and Gustav remarries but keeps in touch with his father-in-law, the primary audience and only constant throughout the letters. When he has to leave the hospice because of difficulties with the Prussian Consul, Gustav briefly manages a Christian hotel in Jerusalem but eventually returns to Germany, only to emigrate to South Africa in 1878.

In their correspondence with their friends and family, four distinct voices emerge. The dominant one, both in the frequency and length of his writings, is Friedrich's. It is through his narrative that we get a sense of the day-to-day life of the German colonists. While his primary audience is his family in Germany, he is very conscious of the wider dissemination of his letters and publication in the home town chronicles. Thus the detailed descriptions of his environment are geared toward informing potential new settlers of the conditions in the country. He is one of the boosters, not "sent to Germany to select appropriate Christian people" (26), as some are, but advertising the mission—"to make arable again this desolate land" (66)—and also the land itself in his writings. "Come and don't linger; there is room for many thousands," he beckons (83). He offers advice on starting a farm, staying safe, overcoming linguistic differences, and adjusting to the climate. In contemporary ethnographic fashion, he also relays some of the habits and customs of the Arab and Turkish populations, which he characterizes as generally hospitable but backwards: "the inhabitants of this country are a people from the beginnings of time" (48). "All oriental cities and towns," he explains, "look rather good from a distance, but once you enter them, they differ from European cities as does the hovel of a day laborer from the palace of a rich man" (43). Friedrich's confidence in success emanates from his letters, and he anticipates German skepticism of the settlers' success in Palestine as his countrymen hear of the destruction of the Christian colony in Smyrna...