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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Niclas Müller, obscure printer, minor poet, and earnest patriot, belonged to the band of Forty-Eighters, whose love of liberty led them to transplant their ideal from the fallow soil of the old world to the fertile fields of the new, where, finding it flourish and flower, they were not content to enjoy its fruits by themselves but sought to share them with others who had as yet not tasted them. A typical member of this consecrated band, Müller, in the words of the Reverend Charles Timothy Brooks, had “always been at hand during the struggles for liberty on both sides of the water,” having been involved in both the German Revolution of 1848 and the American Civil War. As publicist and poet he supported the liberal movement in Germany and the abolition movement in America. “He wrote,” Brooks remarked, “several stirring songs during our war.” Foremost among them was a cycle of sonnets entitled Zehn gepanzerte Sonnete, Mit einer Widmung an Ferdinand Freiligrath, und einem Nachklang: “Die Union, wie sie sein soll,” Von Niclas Müller, Im November 1862 (New York, Gedruckt und zu haben bei Nic. Müller, 48 Beekman St.), which Brooks himself translated into English but never published.
Note 1 in page 611 The contribution made by the “German element” to the cause of freedom in the United States is referred to more fully in connection with comment upon this aspect of Müller's activities in a sketch of his career by P. A. Shelley in “Niclas Müller, German-American Poet and Patriot,” which appears in Studies in Honor of John Albrecht Walz (Lancaster, Penn., 1941), pp. 1-20. The present article enlarges upon certain matters there presented and reveals for the first time the relationship of Müller to Longfellow.
Note 2 in page 611 C. T. Brooks, prominent pastor at Newport and himself an outspoken partisan of freedom, contributed an account of Müller under the title of “A German Author” to the Boston Daily Evening Transcript of Wednesday, October 12, 1870, p. 1. Brooks' observations on Müller, submitted under the date of the day preceding that of their publication, were subsequently reprinted from the Transcript in an unidentified newspaper published in Rhode Island, probably at Newport. A clipping of the pertinent article from the latter source, preserved among some of the Müller material in Harvard College Library, was presented to the library by Brooks and recorded as having been received on November 8, 1870. Subsequent citations of remarks on Müller by Brooks derive without exception from this source.
Note 3 in page 612 Brooks' translation, entitled Ten Sonnets in Armor, with a Dedication to Ferdinand Freiligrath and an after-ring: “The Union as it shall be,” by Nicolas Miller, In November 1862 (New York, 48 Beekman St.), was first published by P. A. Shelley, op. cit., pp. 14–20.
Note 4 in page 612 This is “Das Thränenparadies,” which had been published in the author's first volume of verse, Lieder von Niclas Müller, Bruchdrucker in der Offizin der J. G. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung (Stuttgart und Tübingen, 1837), and which was printed in translation under the title of “The Paradise of Tears” in Graham's Magazine for November, 1844 (xxvi, v, 202), whence it was reprinted subsequently in collected editions of Bryant's poetry as well as elsewhere. An acknowledgment by Müller of Bryant's compliment appeared in the form of a poem “An Wm. Cullen Bryant, Beim Lesen seiner Uebersetzung meines, ‘Thränenparadies,‘” which was included in his second collection of poetry, Neuere Lieder und Gedichte von Niclas Müller (New York, 1867), and which was also printed independently together with a translation of “The West Wind” (“Der Westwind”) likewise by Bryant.
Note 5 in page 613 This date appears both in the pamphlets themselves and in the official Record of Books Received at Harvard College Library, in the year 1870, in which latter place it further appears that they were part of a gift by Longfellow of sixty-nine items (Books Received, No. 20, Jan. 3, 1870 to Dec. 30, 1871).
Note 6 in page 613 Permission to print this and the subsequent letter from Müller to Longfellow has been generously granted by Mr. H. W. L. Dana, who personally assisted in the search for relevant material among the treasures of Craigie House. Both letters are reproduced in diplomatic copies which present the final version without calling attention either to corrections made by the author in the text or to solecisms committed by him. The context into which these two letters and the intervening one from Longfellow are placed renders commentary unnecessary.
Note 7 in page 614 Longfellow's letter to Müller is here reprinted from “An Unpublished Letter by Longfellow to a German Correspondent,” by Walter Fischer in Studies for William A. Read (University, La., 1940), pp. 313–315. The occasion for reprinting this letter, as indeed for preparing the present article, was provided by Mr. Fischer's specious speculation concerning the identity of Longfellow's anonymous correspondent and also by his mistaken attribution of the Zehn Gepanzerte Sonnete to Moritz Graf Strachwitz, who, to be sure, was also author of twelve “Gepanzerte Sonette” (Moritz Graf Strachwitz Sämtliche Lieder und Balladen, ed. H. M. Elster, Berlin, 1912, pp. 231–236). Eleven of these were published posthumously in 1850 and all of them, beyond identity of title and number and also similarity of subject (i.e., freedom, to which must be added the fact that one by Strachwitz is inscribed to Anastasius Grün while the group by Müller is dedicated to Ferdinand Freiligrath), reveal no real relationship to Müller's cycle of sonnets, which, subsequently composed, likewise, number twelve, including a dedication and an “After-ring.” In thus depriving Müller of his property, Fischer has matched the error made by Charles W. Wendte in his Memoir of Brooks in W. P. Andrews' Poems, Original and Translated, By Charles T. Brooks (Boston, 1885) and repeated by Camillo von Klenze in his Charles Timothy Brooks, Translator from the German, and the Genteel Tradition (Boston and London, 1937), in both of which books the sonnets by Müller are attributed to Rückert, author of the celebrated cycle similarly entitled Geharnischte Sonette.