The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVIII. Later National Literature, Part III.
§ 13. Friedrich Strubberg
Friedrich Strubberg, who wrote under the pen-name Armand, was a voluminous writer whose best works are those descriptive of the German frontier settlements in Texas, e. g. Friedrichsburg, die Kolonie des deutschen Fürstenvereins in Texas (1867), for he had lived there for many years, on the vanguard of civilization. His Carl Scharnhorst, Abenteuer eines deutschen Knaben in Amerika (1863) remains one of the most popular German stories for boys, while many of his other works stray widely in the realm of fiction without Baron Münchhausen’s saving grace of humour. Balduin Möllhausen, the last of the popular writers of exotic romances, was employed on several United States Government exploring expeditions in the Far West as artist and topographer, and during this time he learned to know the Western Indians well and became an authority on the physiography of sparsely settled areas. His first account of his travels in 1858 was introduced by Alexander von Humboldt, his second, three years later, was also of scientific merit, Reisen in die Felsengebirge Nord Amerikas bis zum Hoch-Plateau von Neu-Mexiko. Then he turned to fiction, fully able to give his countless stories a setting in Western American life but handicapped by a fatal facility both in sketching characters and weaving entertaining plots. The Halbindianer, his first novel, compares favourably with his later work. Die Familie Neville is a three-volume novel with the background of the Civil War. Das Mormonenmädchen (1864) was a timely warning for European girls against the practices of Mormon missionaries in Germany and Switzerland before governments intervened.