C00PP:R TX GKiniAXY 



69 



that of the pioiicci' and the Indian in the Far West, and lie used 

 his observations to good advanta.uc From the time of the 

 appearance of his first work "Tagebueh einiM- Reise voiii ^lissis- 

 sii)pi nach den Kiisten der Sudsee' (1858 ) to his death in 11)05 

 lie publislied more than 150 volnnies of fiction. neail\- all of w inch 

 deals witli America, and nuicli of ^vhich })ortrays life among the 

 Indians. 



Mollhausen was born a year after the first German trans- 

 lation of any novel of Cooper; his boyhood was passed during 

 the period of Cooper's greatest popularity in Germany; he had 

 himself been an eye-witness of border life, and had seen the 

 American frontier as it receded to the Pacific; he had lived to 

 see the popularity of Cooper wane after three (juarters of a cen- 

 tury ; and he himself was the last exponent of Cooperian fiction 

 in Germany. 



Mollhausen had had opportunities for seeing western Amer- 

 ica as possibly no other German writer, and but few American 

 writers had enjoyed in those early days. But Mollhausen. like 

 Cooper, saw the world with the eyes of a romanticist. This did 

 not prevent the author from giving adequate portrayals of the 

 rougher elements of Western life, though we can recognize an 

 endeavor to subordinate such matter. He folloAved no new paths 

 in fiction. (3f an artistic temperament, to which his many beauti- 

 ful water-colors and oils testify, he tried to bring his subject- 

 matter within, the confines of literary form. F^rom a purely liter- 

 ary standpoint, therefore, his noA^els surpass those of Sealsfield 

 and Strubberg, though cast in an established form. In the light- 

 ness and varietvcof his character-sketching and in his humor he 

 often suggests Dickens. Though ^vFollhausen was hy no means 

 lacking in oriizin<ility. there is nevertheless sufficient evidence in 

 his works to testify to the stimulating force of Coopei'*s novels. 

 Of these, 'The L&st of the ^lohicans" has probably left most abun- 

 dant traces in tlj^avoilvs-of his followers. In AVildes Blut' (1886) 

 are the following " Xachklange " ' : The medicine man says of 

 himself: "Towaka Koti lebt noch. Xie freite er um ein Kaskas- 

 kia-^Iadchen. Paart der Fuchs sicli mit dem Eichhorn Xein. 

 Towaka Koti ist der Letzte seiner Familie." Later the old In- 

 dian woman says: "Die Haniks sind versch^^mnden. Ich bin 

 die letzte Hanick AYisah ; denn mein Sohn AViskun wird vor mir 

 sterben. In ' Die Soldlinge" (1892) Mollhausen has employed the 

 intei'esting material of the city builders in X'ew Mexico, and the 

 relations of the Zunis with the Azteks and Tolteks. In this work 



4—870 



