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Book Review: Between Worlds Never to Return
For as long as Texas was an independent republic or part of the United States those within it have been citizens, not subjects. That was true in the 19th-century Germanies. “Between Worlds Never to Return,” a novel about German immigration to Texas, by Barbara Ortwein illustrates the difference.
Set in the 1840s, the novel follows Karl Engelbach and his son Johann as they abandon their farm in Hesse to come to Texas. The senior Engelbach is a revolutionary. He wants inappropriate things: the freedom to say what you want and to travel without permits. When soldiers raid the political meeting Karl is attending and kill Karl’s brother, Karl must flee. A childhood friend (also present at the meeting, but not caught) is part of an effort to establish a German colony in the Republic of Texas. He sends Karl that way.
The book traces the Engelbachs’ travels through Germany, across the Atlantic by sailing ship to Charleston, SC, from steamship to Texas, and overland to what becomes New Braunfels and Fredericksburg. On each leg of the voyage the pair faces different challenges.
The tale draws heavily from historical events, both in the German states (a united Germany does not yet exist) and in the Americas. Ortwein also accurately shows what life was like in that era, both in Central Europe and in the New World. She is especially good at showing the culture shock felt by the German immigrants. Father and son are shocked (often pleasantly) at the new freedoms they find in both the United States and Texas.
The author, a schoolteacher from Germany, wrote the book after participating in an educational exchange program that brought her and her students to Texas. The German culture she discovered in Texas inspired her to tell how it was transplanted to the Hill Country during the nineteenth century.
Originally written in German, the novel was translated to English by colleagues of Ortwein who teach in Texas.
“Between Worlds Never to Return” tells a story of multiple cultures — German, Mexican, Indian, and Anglo — in the early years of the Texas Republic.
“Between Worlds Never to Return,” by Barbara Ortwein, University of North Texas Press, 2017, 320 pages, $25
I write a weekly book review for the Daily News of Galveston County. (It is not the biggest daily newspaper in Texas, but it is the oldest.) My review normally appears Wednesdays. When it appears, I post the review here on the following Sunday.
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@seawriter this is a real treat: I’m getting 3 copies. 1 for me, one for my sister living outside San Antonio and one for her daughter living in Pearland. It’s a great story and the Germans really added to life in Texas in the 19th century. Thanks!
Yeehaa! I’ve read a bit about it, although it’s a bit beyond the historical period I am writing about. It probably was quite some culture shock.
When I was a baby in the 1960s, my father was stationed in Texas. He enjoyed his time there very much, and one of the more interesting things he always talked about was how many people he knew there had German ancestry. I think that in the U.S. we tend to focus on the great waves of immigration that affected the East Coast, and sometimes forget that immigrants also went elsewhere. Thanks for the post.
The senior Engelbach wasn’t the only revolutionary. Many German immigrants to Texas in the mid-nineteenth century came specifically to start or join utopian socialist communities.
The failed social revolutions of 1848 in Europe sent many Germans across the Atlantic. Texas was one of the destinations. The new communities were Fourierist, Saint-Simonian and Owenite, but eventually they were absorbed into the conflicts of their new home – fighting the Comanches and the dispute over slavery and secession.