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Legal Realisms: The American Novel

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Legal Realisms
Legal Realisms
The American Novel under Reconstruction

C H R I S T I N E HO L B O

1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press


198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in


a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form


and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

CIP data is on file at the Library of Congress


ISBN 978–​0–​19–​060454–​7

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Preliminary portions of Chapter 2 were previously published. “ ‘Industrial & Picturesque Narrative’:
Helen Hunt Jackson’s California Travel Writing for the Century,” appeared in American Literary Realism
© 2010, University of Illinois Press, and is reprinted with permission. “Moral Suspension and Aesthetic
Perspectivalism in ‘Venice in Venice’ ” was printed in The Howellsian, 2011, © Christine Holbo
This book is for Eric, in voller Freiheit.
Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Novel in the Era of Plessy 15
1. When Is a Novelist Not a Novelist? The Case
of Harriet Beecher Stowe 15
2. Realism and Realisms in Nineteenth-​Century
American Literature 24
3. The Sentimental Public, Social Despair, and the Problem
of “Concealment” 31
4. William James between the Rationality of Sentiment and
the Sentiment of Rationality: Knowing and Feeling in
a Residual Formation 41
5. What Henry James Knew: Concealment as the
Novel’s Knowledge 49
6. Plessy v. Ferguson and the Limits of the Law’s Knowledge 61
7. Albion Tourgée among the Sentimental Fools: The Cruel
Humor of de jure Equality 70
8. From Sympathy to Society: Realism in an Age
of Incomplete Emancipation 80
2. Perfect Knowledge: Sympathetic Realism between the Rational
and the Real 87
1. A Bleeding Heart Reads Ramona Straight 87
2. Helen Hunt Jackson’s Will to Believe 93
3. The Poncas, Public Sentiment, and the Right to Have Rights 100
4. The Legal Realism of A Century of Dishonor 107
5. The Hope for Scandal Proves a Stumbling Block 119
6. Traveling Saleswoman for Native Rights 124
7. Realism in the Venice of Prodigal Sons: Twain, James,
and Howells 129
8. Mugwump Aestheticism: The Relativism of Virtue 146
9. The Picturesque of Genocide in the Century 158
10. Ramona and the Fracturing of Sentimental Universalism 171
11. Failures 190
viii Contents

3. Imperfect Knowledge: William Dean Howells, Perspectival


Realism, and Social Politics 196
1. Howells, Sentimental and Modern 196
2. Howells’s West: Arcadia, Utopia, Exile 208
3. Sentimental Alienation and the Zeitschriftsteller 217
4. “Andenken”: Speaking in Code from Heinrich Heine
to John Brown 223
5. Venice: The Patriot in Exile, the Tourist in Everyday Life 227
6. From The Liberator to The Nation: Minor Topics and
Phosphorescent Heresies 237
7. The Politics of Representational Inclusion, 1872: De Forest’s
Alligatorville 247
8. The Politics of Representational Inclusion, 1874: Twain’s
Sentimental Revelations 254
9. Between the Polis and the Police: Man and Brother
in the Suburbs, 1871–​72 259
10. Studies in Incomplete Emancipation: “A Day’s Pleasure” 268
11. Mrs. Johnson and the Problem of Social Recognition, 1868 272
12. Realisms Legal and Literary, and the Black Maria 282
13. Romances and Divorces of the Republic: Hayes,
Mugwumpery, and the Novel 293
14. A Modern Instance: On the Corrupting Power of Sympathy 301
15. Juridical Representation and the Fragmentation of Social
Knowledge 306
16. Equal Protection and the Conflict between Community and
Society 315
4. A Double-​Barreled Novel: Huckleberry Finn and the Great
American Novel as Perspectival Realism 323
1. Howells, Twain, and Politics: “The Canvasser’s Tale” 327
2. The Perspectival Instability of Huckleberry Finn 331
3. Where Does Huckleberry Finn Go Wrong? Tragedy,
Comedy, and the Fine Art of “Cheating” 338
4. Reading for the Plot; or, The Phenomenology of the Canoe 344
5. The Law’s Perspectives: Child and Slave between
Community and Society 355
6. Equality Before (and After) the Law: Emancipatory
Storytelling 369
7. Immanence and Evasion, Literary Quality and
Literary Seriousness 378

Notes 387
Bibliography 423
Index 439
Acknowledgments

Writing is the most sociable of solitary activities. One of the pleasures of


bringing a big book to completion is the opportunity to step back and con-
sider how many people have contributed to its imagination, how intellec-
tual debts only compound with the passage of time. My doctoral advisors
at Stanford University, Albert Gelpi, Jay Fliegelman, and George Dekker,
each contributed in unique and transformative ways to the research out
of which this book eventually grew. Al set a model for intellectual breadth
and generosity, encouraged me to think big about American literature,
and never lost faith as the project grew and grew. Jay drew me deep into
the strangeness of the American sentimental tradition. Without George
I would not have become a scholar of the novel. His thoughtful readings
of every draft and patience with ever-​expanding exploration of interdisci-
plinary frameworks allowed me to return freely to the novel as a genre and
ask meaningful questions about the content of form. I am sorry that Jay and
George are no longer here to see where this led, but I would like to believe
that they would find this book appropriately uncompromising. Many other
friends, teachers, and colleagues from Stanford also inspired this project, in
ways more profound than they might know. A seminar with Priscilla Wald
diverted my interests toward the cultures of domesticity in the American
novel; a seminar with Felicity Nussbaum embarked me on years of reading
in eighteenth-​century emotions; Tim Lenoir mentored me through a first
publication exploring the relationship between rationality and domesticity;
Regenia Gagnier and Kurt Mueller-​Vollmer helped me deprovincialize my
thinking about American social thought. An Americanist reading group
with David Cantrell, John González, Eric Schocket, and Carrie Tirado
Bramen sponsored my first sparring with Helen Hunt Jackson and William
Dean Howells. A year at the Stanford Humanities Center brought invaluable
time for writing and conversation. Sepp Gumbrecht and Jennifer Summit
provided crucial support in the transition beyond dissertation writing;
Denise Gigante and Gavin Jones offered much-​needed advice on reframing
the project. Meanwhile, time spent in Frankfurt allowed me to see American
traditions with other eyes. I am grateful to Susanne Opfermann for allowing
x Acknowledgments

me to play the visiting American at the American Studies colloquium; to


Axel Honneth for letting me join in discussions of American Pragmatism at
the philosophical colloquium; and to Cornelia Dziedzioch, Pia Neumann,
and Babette Tischleder for adventurous conversations across the Atlantic.
Detlev Claussen’s generosity and dialectical imagination provided inspira-
tion for rethinking American Reconstruction from the standpoint of incom-
plete emancipation. Teaching at Arizona State University has offered me rich
opportunities for further thoughts on the American West. I am grateful for
the advice of my colleagues Deb Clarke, Elizabeth Horan, Neal Lester, Joe
Lockard, Keith Miller, and Eric Wertheimer as well as for a semester of junior
leave generously granted by the ASU Department of English. My thanks
go out to my University of Arizona compatriots in English and Gender
and Women’s Studies, especially Nathan Tenneyson and Judy Temple and
their students, for the opportunity to present material on Jackson. The
Lavy Colloquium and the programs in Africana and Jewish Studies at the
Krieger Graduate School, both at Johns Hopkins University, provided cru-
cial fora for developing work on citizenship and emancipation within and
beyond the nation. The readers and reviewers for the William Dean Howells
Society Essay Prize, the Research Society of American Periodicals Article
Prize, ALR, and Oxford University Press were more than generous with their
comments and support. Betsy Duquette, Brad Evans, and Melissa Ganz were
ideal interlocutors and collaborators in assembling panels for the Modern
Language Association; Simon Stern offered insightful feedback and terrific
suggestions for reading. Elizabeth Meloy’s careful reading improved the
text in countless ways. I am indebted to Bradin Cormack for so many indul-
gent and insightful conversations about law and poetry. After all these years,
Ken Moss and Anne Eakin Moss, true scholars and perfect hosts, continue
to teach me the meaning of friendship. And Eric, der Gedankenarchitekt,
continues to discover new moons. Finally, I would like to thank the editors
and the literature delegate at Oxford University Press: Sarah Humphreville
and Brendan O’Neill, Abigail Johnson and Steven Bradley, Richa Jobin and
Richard Isomaki supported, encouraged, and helped me navigate this book
to completion.
Introduction

The first self-​consciously modern sketch of the American literary land-


scape was executed in Boston in 1886. In the inaugural installment of his
“Editor’s Study” column, the series with which William Dean Howells estab-
lished the novel as a topic of household discussion and himself as the nation’s
most prominent literary critic, Howells began by describing the prospect
of American literature as it appeared from the editor’s chair at Harper’s
Monthly. Though Howells has largely been remembered for his earnestness,
for his advocacy of a realism of the ordinary and the natural, the image with
which this programmatic column opened hardly attested to either serious-
ness or simplicity. The editor looked out, Howells boasted, from a building
designed by Ariosto and adapted by an American architect—​“originally in
the Spanish taste,” with “touches of the new Renaissance . . . [and a] . . . co-
lonial flavor.” The study was a derivative jumble, an imitation of an imita-
tion. And the landscape the editor surveyed was a fantastic one, a scene in
which the Hudson flowed into the Charles, the Mississippi and the Golden
Gate occupied the middle distance, and the Seine and the Tiber appeared in
the background, while the “peaks of the Apennines, dreamily blending with
those of the Sierras, form the vanishing-​point of the delicious perspective.”1
As is the case with much of Howells’s theoretical writing, this commentary
upon the pleasures of mimesis requires decoding. At once a parody of the
grand vistas of the Romantic imagination and an appeal for an expansion of
the horizons of American representation, Howells’s jokey trompe-​l’oeil fu-
sion of continental landscapes implied three distinct claims about the past
and future of the American novel. The first claim was about representation,
the novel’s orientation toward the world. Howells suggested that realism, the
dominant mode of the mid-​nineteenth-​century novel, had failed to be true to
the plurality of experience: American literature needed to reject the idea of a
unitary national identity, a single origin or vanishing point, and to recognize
that literature must emerge from multiple imaginative as well as cartographic
horizons. The second claim was that the novel had overinvested in trans-
parency and forgotten that art was artifice. An imposed unity of perspective
2 Legal Realisms

brought art to life: but literature needed to break with the notion that unity
was natural, that beauty escorted truth into a world of harmony. The third
claim was political. Communicated in code—​to those capable of reading
American geographies in the light of global history—​was an argument for
why Americans must cultivate a more broadly cosmopolitan understanding
of power in order to understand America’s place among what Howells later
in the column called the “federal nationalities.”2 Invoking the old Sibyl of the
Apennines, meditating on a site whose Greek etymology and foundational
position in Roman history bore witness to the intertwinements of republic
and empire, virtue and violence, identity and hybridity, Howells’s imag-
inary landscape hinted at something delusional in the dream of American
exceptionalism. However much it might wish to evade this fact, literary re-
alism must start from the recognition that America, which imagines itself
so far from Europe, is not immune to the problems of domination rooted in
Aeneas’s soil.
Howells’s “delicious perspective” presented the novel as a form of art, as
a mirror of national self-​representation, and as a bearer and decipherer of
the logic of domination. In articulating the connection among these three
moments of the novel’s representation, he spoke to the aspirations of his gen-
eration, a collective conviction that the historical moment of the late nine-
teenth century required a new openness to the world and a departure from
rigid theories of unified knowledge and self-​knowledge. Legal Realisms
examines the writers of this generation in terms of the three concerns
exposed by Howells’s refractive image. It asserts, broadly, that the idea of a
literary “realism” was transformed in the years after the American Civil War,
and that this transformation was rooted in the ways in which Reconstruction
and its failures reshaped possibilities of knowing and imagining commu-
nity and society, citizenship and alterity. This reorientation at once expanded
the novel’s subjects and redefined its claim to provide knowledge about the
world. In the decades between the Civil War and the First World War, the
increasing social prestige of the novel—​its claim to be autonomous art—​was
bound up with its forms of knowing, with the problem of what it meant to
write realistically about a divided nation.
The late nineteenth century marked the first moment in which the
ambitions of an American literature were explicitly defined in terms of
the ideal of inclusive diversity. In the years after the Civil War, a cohort of
American writers went out to explore a nation which, newly reunited, was
also newly expansive in scope, extending for the first time across an entire
Introduction 3

continent. They defined the novel’s work to be that of addressing the whole of
modern life by bringing this new wealth of “material” into the novel’s repre-
sentation. They went looking for diversity, and they found it: the literature of
the era is characterized by the exuberant representation of regional, cultural,
social, gendered, and ethnic and racial difference. They did not, however,
produce unified vistas commensurate with a celebratory sense of restored
national Union. Rather, their work is distinguished by what Nancy Bentley
has called “frantic panoramas”: fractured literary landscapes which, like
Howells’s, attested at once to the memory of violence and to the necessities
of art.3
The idea that the essential work of the novel was to expand represen-
tation to new social groups was not a new one in the late nineteenth cen-
tury. It did, however, crystallize an older set of expectations, and in this
sense it constituted a distinctive interpretation of the rise of the novel. Mid-​
nineteenth-​century readers and writers assumed that the expansion of rep-
resentation in the mimetic sense accompanied expanding representation in
a political sense. That the novel had grown from a popular mode of enter-
tainment, a purveyor of “novelty,” into the most prestigious literary genre of
the later nineteenth century, had everything to do with its increasing associ-
ation with bourgeois seriousness and Enlightenment knowledge during an
age of democratic revolution. Realist truth claims were linked, in nineteenth-​
century novels, with the impulse to believe that the empirical world is, or
should be, knowable, and with a sense of the agency, on the part of the reader,
corresponding to a world that is potentially masterable. Accordingly, the
novel’s epistemological claim was inextricable from a political vision, the
nineteenth century’s faith in universality and in a history moving toward
the telos of human freedom and equality. Presenting readers with a world
that they could know and in which they could act meaningfully, the realist
novel thought of itself as contributing to the progress of emancipation by
extending sympathy to the socially marginal and the oppressed. It claimed to
extend recognition by bringing the dominated into representation: to make
the abject subjects, in the strong sense of the word.4
To begin writing in the postbellum moment was to feel oneself an inheritor
of a triumphal moment in this literary-​political history. The Reconstruction
Amendments had inaugurated a new era of formal liberty. Citizenship was
now universal: this fact appeared to sponsor the possibility of a panoramic
representation whose unity of perspective would be grounded in the equality
of all subjects before the law. Yet American writers’ assumptions concerning
4 Legal Realisms

the emancipatory nature of novelistic representation ran into difficulty at


the very moment at which writers set out to bring all of America’s subjects
into representation. The first source of these difficulties lay in the unresolved
legacies of slavery and its defeat. The postwar Amendments had ended slavery
de jure, but they left the fact of domination largely unchanged. The problems
of equality and recognition that had seemed simple to the antislavery imag-
ination of the antebellum moment now appeared fraught with implications
extending out into all areas of life. But the challenge also grew out of the
changes in the material that American writers had set out to depict. The end
of the Civil War ushered in a period of western expansion. Wartime meas-
ures intended to strengthen the Union in the West, including the Homestead
Act, the Morrill Act, and the Pacific Railway Act, contributed to rapid con-
tinental consolidation after the war—​with effects rather different than the
Republican authors of these measures had contemplated. Differences of
civilization—​or, as Americans were learning to say, “culture”—​persisted be-
tween North and South, and appeared in the West; social conflicts in the East
were increasingly expressed in the languages of ethnicity and class. As the
axes of American difference shifted from the binary oppositions of the an-
tebellum imagination to more heterogeneous populations and more com-
plex geographies of domination and oppression, writers encountered an
increasing number of situations that did not conform to their expectations
of how a knowledge that could produce identity across difference would nat-
urally lead to justice. America was no longer divided into two worlds of slave
and free, but riven by the uneven logics of race and ethnicity, gender and
class, by partial and overlapping modes of legal and cultural citizenship, by
the distorting optics of continental distance and local particularity.
In encountering the world of incomplete emancipation, American writers
found themselves in a situation that was the inverse of the one they his-
torically expected. The rise of the novel, as they understood it, had allied
the novel’s knowledge to a conception of Higher Law: the novel made vis-
ible, through sympathetic representation, the universal humanity that the
law should acknowledge but did not. In the wake of Reconstruction and
its failures, equality was formally affirmed by positive law but nowhere to
be seen in reality. This fact—​of real difference within an empty equality—​
complicated the idea of inclusion, and confronted American writers with a
puzzle. Many agreed with Howells’s hopeful observation that “equality is such
a beautiful thing that I wonder how people can ever have any other ideal. It
is the only social joy, the only comfort.”5 But if equality was so powerful as
Introduction 5

an ideal, why was it so weak in practice? The postwar generation responded


to this admission of weakness with a strategy they themselves recognized
as highly risky: that of orienting the novel’s realism toward difference in the
hopes of discovering real equality within it.
This book will present this transformation of the realist novel, and the
debates it engendered, as literary history in intellectual-​historical context.
The following chapters explore a number of writers who represent a spectrum
of different stances vis-​à-​vis the reorientation of realism toward difference,
ranging from enthusiastic embrace to outright rejection. These chapters will
approach these writers’ shifting conception of the novel biographically, in
terms of the lived process by which epistemological particularism became an
option that American writers could not ignore. The literary debates in which
they engaged were shaped by cultural and political forces; the categories of
reasoning writers asserted, the ways they thought about justice and knowl­
edge, were cognate with that of the philosophy and legal thought of their day.
But these literary debates were not reducible to transcriptions of the history
of ideas. This book will approach the epistemological shift in the novel, thus,
neither in the pure realm of the novel’s theory, nor in the pure realm of dis-
course, but in terms of the density of experience, the shifting decisions and
revisions that characterize the intersections of concept, history, and genre.
The fraught nature of the novelists’ project may be briefly comprehended
through an extraliterary comparison to the transformation of legal thought
that occurred during the same years. The title of this book invokes an impor-
tant tradition in the jurisprudence of the United States. “Legal realism” was
initiated with the doctrine, articulated on the first page of Oliver Wendell
Holmes Jr.’s 1881 The Common Law, that “the life of the law has not been
logic: it has been experience.” Holmes’s appeal to “realism” had a great deal in
common with that of the novelists of his generation: both rejected philosoph-
ical idealism; both asserted that values emerged from historical societies;
both recognized, as Holmes put it, that “the substance of the law at any given
time pretty nearly corresponds, so far as it goes, with what is then considered
to be convenient”;6 and both acknowledged that this meant that justice was
necessarily articulated not as the absence of domination, but in terms of
domination. Yet literary and legal realists did not draw identical conclusions
from these common perceptions. While early legal realism turned away from
claims about rights or about justice, condoning the postwar decades’ in-
creasingly circumscribed readings of the Reconstruction Amendments, lit-
erary realists repeatedly sought to work through epistemological and moral
6 Legal Realisms

relativism to imagine broader forms of emancipation and to affirm the rights


of the socially dominated.
That American literary realism could share philosophical assumptions
with legal realism points to some of the strange alliances characteristic of the
postwar world; that the literary realists nonetheless oriented themselves to-
ward quite different ends reminds us that political and literary history do not
move in lockstep, and that the logic of literary representation, while it may
reproduce and sometimes reinforce the logics of social domination, also, by
the nature of mimesis, stands opposed to it. If, indeed, the possibilities of the
late nineteenth-​century novel were framed by the increasing circumscrip-
tion of the emancipatory imagination, this very fact played into one of the
most important literary developments of the late century, the assertion of the
novel’s autonomy as literature. As the novel became the preeminent form of
literature and the categories of fiction organized around it supplanted older
conceptions of literature as “letters,” literary realists increasingly believed
in the freedom of the novel from direct political responsibilities, increas-
ingly argued that the novel was the bearer of its own kinds of knowledge.
They hoped, at the same time, that the novel’s unique capacity to mobilize
perspectives, to address the relativity of truth and value, could itself be a
source of political emancipation. A new sense of the novel’s status as auton-
omous literature emerged simultaneously with its orientation toward new
ways of thinking about politics, law, and social power.
This book tells the story of how concepts of knowledge and of literariness
associated with the novel were transformed as American writers began to
write in the light of incomplete emancipation. Accordingly, it tells a story
of collective bafflement and individual failures, of the extended self-​doubt
of a generation. The more the novel’s literary prestige came to rest on its
claim to produce knowledge out of alterity, the more writers came to ques-
tion what this knowledge meant. They asked what the ethical implications
were of trying to understand others’ experience, and whether—​as they had
once assumed—​this knowledge could not only register but also bridge differ-
ence, creating the kinds of social solidarity that readers in an age of emanci-
patory idealism could recognize as progress. They asked, in other words, how
the true and the good were supposed to be united in a literature defined by
nonidentity.
Legal Realisms is not a comprehensive history of multicultural literature
in late nineteenth-​century America, nor is it a history of socioliterary “diver-
sity” more broadly conceived. This book is instead interested in how diversity
Introduction 7

came to be understood as important: as a definiens of the literary. A history


of transformations in conceptions of the novel’s knowledge, it seeks to tell
a series of interconnected stories: first, how the representation of diverse
perspectives moved to the center of the literary enterprise; second, how this
defined the moment in which literary “realism” came to occupy the most
prestigious position in American letters; third, how the realist project became
occupied with questions of the connection between the novel’s epistemology
and its ethics; fourth, how the realist response to these questions changed the
way that realists, and later generations, would imagine the novel’s ethics and
its engagement in “politics.”
At the heart of this study is a transition between two paradigms of literary
knowledge that part company across the problem of universality and differ-
ence. I will argue that the transition that has traditionally been understood
in terms of the passage from the sentimental novel to literary realism can be
better explained in terms of the crisis of one form of realism and the artic-
ulation of another: the failure of a sympathetic realism oriented toward an
ideal equality, and the emergence of a realism grounded in a pluralist episte-
mology and concerned with the exploration of real inequality. As sympathy,
which was conceived in the eighteenth century as an epistemological cate-
gory, was demoted in the late nineteenth century to being a mere affect, a
matter of individual psychology, so the novel of sympathy, which equated the
work of literary realism with its capacity to communicate human universals,
was replaced by a new kind of realism that insisted upon the perspectival
quality of all knowledge. Promoting the idea of limited or partial knowledge
to a virtue, the writers who embraced realism in the years after the Civil War
asserted that not presuming to know the feelings and experience of another
was a form of recognition. Even as they struggled to uphold the ethics and
politics of the sympathetic paradigm’s notion of universalism, these newly
self-​defined “realists” ceased to associate the novel’s highest values with the
ideal of transparency, and they began to explore the idea that the novel’s
distinctive contribution—​in terms of both the novel’s epistemology and its
ethics—​involved the possibilities of concealment. This dynamic tension be-
tween transparency and concealment, perspective as recognized difference
and perspective as a limit on knowledge, bore implications for how the novel’s
realism might relate to the political tradition of emancipatory struggle. Late
nineteenth-​century novelists explored the possibility that the novel’s knowl­
edge might be qualitatively different than the law’s knowledge: that the novel
could recognize forms of particularity and cultivate modes of blindness
8 Legal Realisms

that the law could not. Revising the emancipatory history of the novel, they
came to argue that political representation and literary representation were
connected but different in nature, that they stood in different relations to the
ideal of universal human liberation. In this sense, late nineteenth-​century
American writers at once acknowledged limits to the novel’s agency and
staked out a claim for its autonomy.

* * *
Central to the transformation of realism surveyed in this book stands
Howells’s work as a novelist, editor, and cultural commentator. The foremost
man of letters of his generation, Howells shaped the field of literature from
the 1860s onward by bringing his interlocutors into an extended conversa-
tion about the status of the novel as art and about its capacity to produce
social knowledge. While Howells has long been considered the leading (and
in some accounts, the only) proponent of realism in the late nineteenth cen-
tury, the way he thought about the novel’s art as a mode of “social” politics
has been largely misunderstood. The third chapter of this study addresses
the first half of Howells’s long and eventful career, up through the moment
in the early 1880s when he fully embraced the form of the novel, and when
his model of perspectival realism became a recognized standard for lit-
erary prestige. Howells, I will argue, remained committed throughout his
life to conceptions of emancipation as human equality that were rooted in
the antislavery struggles of the antebellum period. This continuity of polit-
ical and ethical commitment led Howells, however, to articulate a strikingly
new conception of the novel’s knowledge and of the novel’s role as a form
of political discourse. Howells challenged his contemporaries to expand the
field of literary “politics” to imagine society as a space suffused with polit-
ical power, and by doing so to confront the barriers to equal social recog-
nition that remained in an era of de jure universal citizenship. Calling into
question the idea that writers could simply assume the universal position as
either a moral given or as an ideal, he insisted that the novel’s essential con-
tribution rested in a perspectivalist epistemology, its capacity to confront
readers with the irreducible particularities of a world shaped by incomplete
emancipation. The novel’s “delicious perspective”—​its aesthetic freedom
to explore the nonidentity of the true and the good—​became a model for a
more expansive conception of the enjoyment of human freedom. Building
on this understanding of the novel’s epistemology, Howells advanced a pro-
gram for his generation that paired a mandate of completeness with a new
Introduction 9

ethics of nescience centering on the limits of expression and the incom-


mensurability of moral experience. Under Howells’s inspiration, writers of
the postwar period confronted alterity in a double sense. They sought to in-
clude all American “subjects” in the novel’s field of representation, but they
also asked, with increasing urgency, what it meant to try to represent others’
experiences, and what Americans could not understand about each other.
Arrayed around this book’s central reconsideration of Howells are
explorations of a range of figures whose differing views on the novel and
its politics map out a geography of the postwar novel. Albion Tourgée and
Helen Hunt Jackson have largely been remembered in the canon as “minor
writers.” Their political and legal commitments to the rights of African
Americans and Native Americans have at once justified their ongoing inclu-
sion in the canon and warranted the lack of scholarly attention directed to
their aesthetic concerns, their self-​understanding as novelists. This study, by
contrast, attends to the connections between their conceptions of jurispru-
dence and their conceptions of the novel, arguing that neither was the naive
or merely instrumental practitioner of the novel they have been remembered
as. They cultivated, rather, a different conception of the novel, imagining the
configuration of the novel’s aesthetics, its epistemology, and its commitment
to the socially marginalized in different ways than did Howells. The world of
incomplete emancipation made for strange alliances; it also produced what
appear, retrospectively, to be inexplicable antipathies. Recovering Tourgée as
a stalwart defender of sympathetic, universalistic realism against Howells’s
perspectival realism, and Jackson as a reluctant recruit into perspectivalism,
these chapters explore at once what Howells’s conception of the novel defined
itself against and why novelists who shared many of his political values might
oppose his project for the novel. If we can understand the philosophical
grounds for Tourgée’s rejection of a perspectivalist realism, we gain insight
into the literary and intellectual aspirations of two generations of writers.
Politically and morally, Howells and Tourgée had a great deal in common.
A jurist, novelist, and civil rights campaigner, Tourgée shared Howells’s be-
lief in social equality as the highest human good. Both, moreover, began
their careers as writers with similar conceptions of the way the creative artist
contributed to the sphere of republican letters. But where Howells saw the
end of universalist, sympathetic realism in the antebellum mode as po-
tentially emancipatory for individuals and for the form of the novel itself,
Tourgée believed that relativism undercut the very ability of Americans to
speak, think, or write about freedom. For Tourgée, the great achievement
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Title: Meine Erinnerungen aus Ostafrika

Author: Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck

Release date: October 14, 2023 [eBook #71877]

Language: German

Original publication: Leipzig: Verlag von K. F. Koehler, 1920

Credits: Peter Becker, Reiner Ruf, and the Online Distributed


Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEINE


ERINNERUNGEN AUS OSTAFRIKA ***
Anmerkungen zur Transkription
Der vorliegende Text wurde anhand der Buchausgabe von 1920 so weit wie möglich
originalgetreu wiedergegeben. Typographische Fehler wurden stillschweigend korrigiert.
Ungewöhnliche und heute nicht mehr verwendete Schreibweisen bleiben gegenüber dem
Original unverändert; fremdsprachliche Ausdrücke wurden nicht korrigiert. Wortvarianten,
insbesondere bei Ortsnamen, wurden nicht vereinheitlicht.
Die Fußnoten wurden an das Ende des jeweiligen Abschnitts versetzt. Der
Übersichtlichkeit halber erscheinen die Buchanzeigen am Ende dieses Buches.
Das Original wurde in Frakturschrift gesetzt. Passagen in Antiquaschrift werden hier
kursiv wiedergegeben. Abhängig von der im jeweiligen Lesegerät installierten Schriftart
können die im Original g e s p e r r t gedruckten Passagen gesperrt, in serifenloser Schrift,
oder aber sowohl serifenlos als auch gesperrt erscheinen.
Deutsche Denkwürdigkeiten
K. F. Koehler, Verlag, Leipzig. Druck Meissner &
Buch, Leipzig
Meine Erinnerungen
aus Ostafrika
von

General von Lettow-Vorbeck

Leipzig
Verlag von K. F. Koehler
1920
Copyright by K. F. Koehler, Verlag. 1920

Spamersche Buchdruckerei in Leipzig


Vorwort

Ü berall regte sich in den erst wenige Jahrzehnte alten deutschen


Kolonien verheißungsvolles Leben. Wir fingen an, den Wert
unseres kolonialen Besitzes für unser Volk zu begreifen; Ansiedler
und Kapital wagten sich herbei, Eisenbahnen entwickelten die
weiten Gebiete, Industrien und Fabriken blühten empor. Im Vergleich
zu anderen Völkern hat sich die deutsche Kolonisation friedlich und
stetig vollzogen, und die Eingeborenen hatten Vertrauen zu der
Gerechtigkeit der deutschen Verwaltung. Kaum begonnen ist diese
Entwicklung durch den Weltkrieg vernichtet worden. Trotz aller
handgreiflichen Gegenbeweise will ein unberechtigter Lügenfeldzug
der Welt vorspiegeln, daß die Deutschen ohne koloniale Begabung
und grausam gegen die Eingeborenen gewesen wären.
Eine kleine, wesentlich aus diesen Eingeborenen gebildete
Truppe hat sich dem Verlust entgegengestemmt. Fast ohne äußere
Zwangsmittel, sogar ohne sofortige Bezahlung hielt sie mit ihrem
zahlreichen Eingeborenentroß treu zu ihren deutschen Führern
während des ganzen langen Krieges gegen mehr als hundertfache
Übermacht. Als der Waffenstillstand kam, stand sie schlagfertig da,
von bestem soldatischem Geiste beseelt. Das ist eine Tatsache, an
der sich nicht rütteln läßt und die allein schon die Unhaltbarkeit der
feindlichen Entstellungen beweist.
Den Kampf der Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika erschöpfend
zu schildern, war mir nicht möglich. Das vorhandene Material läßt es
nicht zu, vieles ist verloren gegangen, und noch jetzt fehlt mir die
Kenntnis mancher Ereignisse, deren Träger noch nicht in die Heimat
zurückgekehrt sind. Meine eigenen Aufzeichnungen sind zum
großen Teil verloren, und es fehlte mir die Muße, neben meiner
sonstigen Tätigkeit den Feldzug in Ostafrika eingehend zu
bearbeiten. So kann ich nur Unvollkommenes liefern. Im
wesentlichen bin ich auf mein Gedächtnis angewiesen und auf das,
was ich selbst erlebt habe. Irrtümer im einzelnen sind unvermeidlich.
Aber trotzdem dürften die folgenden Schilderungen nicht wertlos
sein, und vielleicht auch nicht ohne Interesse. Zeigen sie doch, wie
sich unser bisher größtes koloniales Ereignis im Kopfe dessen
abgespielt hat, der zu der militärischen Führung berufen war. Ich
habe mich bemüht, meine Erinnerungen aus Ostafrika so
wiederzugeben, wie sie wirklich sind, und so wenigstens subjektiv
Richtiges zu bieten.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Erstes Buch
Die Ereignisse bis zum Eintreffen der Südwest-
Afrikaner
Erster Abschnitt: Vo r K r i e g s b e g i n n 3
Gedanken über Aufgaben und Zweck der Schutztruppe. Die
Verteidigungsmöglichkeiten der Kolonie in ihren Einzelheiten.
Verteilung, Bewaffnung und Ausbildung der Truppe. Militärische
Verwendung und Gesinnung der Eingeborenen. Wirtschaftlicher Wert
des Landes und Wirtschaftspflege der Eingeborenen. Pferdezucht
und Jagd. Mehrere Besichtigungsreisen. Nationale Propaganda der
späteren feindlichen Missionen in den angrenzenden Gebieten.
Zweiter Abschnitt: D e r Beginn des Krieges 16
Eintreffen der Nachricht der Mobilmachung. Teilnahme am Kriege
oder Neutralität? Die Stärke der Schutztruppe und die englischen
Kriegsverluste. Der englische Konsul und seine Tätigkeit. Der
Gouverneur der Kolonie, die oberste militärische Gewalt und die
Verteidigung der Küstenplätze. Vorbereitungen der Mobilisation.
Etappenwesen, Nachschub und Verpflegung. Sanitätswesen und
Malaria.
Dritter Abschnitt: D i e ersten Kämpfe 24
Beschießung des Funkenturmes in Daressalam.
Übergabeverhandlungen von seiten der Zivilbehörden. „Königsberg“
und „Möve“. Einnahme von Taveta. Die Verschiebung der
Hauptmacht nach der Nordbahn. Neue Telegraphenverbindungen.
Beschießung von Bagamojo. Gegen die britische Ugandabahn.
Angriffe auf Britisch-Karunga am Nyassasee. Kleinkrieg im Norden.
Vierter Abschnitt: D i e Novemberkämpfe bei 31
Ta n g a
Erkundungen bei Tanga. Ein englisches Landungskorps erscheint.
Konzentration aller verfügbaren Truppen. Erste Gefechte bei Ras
Kasone. Aufklärung im verlassenen Tanga. Die Umgebung des
voraussichtlichen Gefechtsfeldes. Die Aufstellung der Kompagnien.
Die feindliche Landung. Der Angriff. Die ungünstige Lage der
Verteidiger. Der Gegenstoß der Verstärkungstruppe. Kopflose Flucht
des Feindes. Mißglücken der Verfolgung. Störung des Feindes am
Landungsplatz. Die ungeheueren englischen Verluste. „Die
dressierten Bienen.“ Verhandlung über Auslieferung der
Verwundeten. Die große Beute. Die eigenen Verluste. In den
Lazaretten. Die gleichzeitigen Ereignisse am Longidoberge.
Fünfter Abschnitt: I n der Erwartung weiterer
Ereignisse 43
Rückverlegung der Truppen nach Neu-Moschi. Der Dienstbetrieb
beim Kommando. Auto und Träger im Wettbewerb.
Erkundungsfahrten im Auto. Die Verpflegung und der Nachschub.
Die Etappenstraßen. Arbeitslast und Arbeitsfreudigkeit. Die reichliche
Verpflegung. Der ausgehungerte Oberleutnant.
Sonntagsjägervergnügen. Die Fleischversorgung der Truppe.
Sechster Abschnitt: W e i t e r e schwere Kämpfe
im Nordosten 50
Vorrücken feindlicher Kräfte bei Jassini. Erkundung des Geländes für
einen möglichen Kampf. Vormarsch deutscher Kompagnien gegen
die englischen Stellungen. Überraschung und Umzinglung des
verschanzten Feindes. Das schlechtkämpfende Araberkorps. Tapfere
Verteidigung des Feindes. Schwierige Lage der Angreifer. Der Feind
zeigt die weiße Fahne. Abmarsch zur Nordbahn.
Siebenter Abschnitt: K l e i n k r i e g und neue
Zurüstungen 56
Notwendigkeit der Schonung von Menschen und Material. Die
Fürsorge für die Verwundeten. Ein Funkspruch aus der Heimat.
Streifen in der Longidogegend. „A damned good piece of work.“
Bahnzerstörungspatrouillen. Leiden und Tod in der Steppe. Ankunft
eines Hilfsschiffes. Fieberhafte Herstellung von Munition. Ein Vorstoß
am Oldoroboberge. Rohstoffüberfluß und Mangel an Fertigfabrikaten.
Neue Industrien zum Ersatz des Fehlenden. Wegebau. Ausbau der
Truppe an Größe und Gefechtswert.
Achter Abschnitt: I n Erwartung der großen
Offensive; energische Ausnutzung der noch
z u r Ve r f ü g u n g s t e h e n d e n Z e i t 65
Feindliche Massai greifen am Viktoriasee an. Die „Königsberg“ im
Rufiji. Ihr rühmliches Ende. Ein neuer Erfolg am Kilimandjaro.
Hartnäckige Angriffe gegen die englische Bahn. Vorstoß gegen das
englische Lager am Kasigao und seine Besetzung. Schutzmaßregeln
des Feindes gegen unsere Bahnzerstörungen. Gefechte im Busch.
Gedanken über die Möglichkeit des Widerstandes bei Angriff großer
feindlicher Truppenmassen. Vorbereitungen für einen Rückzug nach
Süden. Abtransport von Material. Zähes Halten der Stellung am
Oldorobo. Der neue „Mungu“.
Neunter Abschnitt: K l e i n k r i e g z u Wa s s e r u n d
zu Lande bis zur Jahreswende 1915–16 74
Die eigenen und die feindlichen Streitkräfte an den Grenzen der
Kolonie. Schwierigkeit der Truppenbewegungen innerhalb des
Schutzgebietes. Die Ereignisse an der Küste. Kleine Gefechte im
Ssonjogebiet. Dauernde Kämpfe östlich und westlich des
Viktoriasees. Die Ereignisse in Ruanda, am Kiwusee. An der
Russissigrenze. Land- und Wassergefechte im Gebiet des
Tanganjikasees. Das Gebiet um Bismarckburg. Am Nyassasee.

Zweites Buch
Der konzentrische Angriff der Übermacht
(Vom Eintreffen der südafrikanischen Truppen bis zum Übertritt
über die Grenzen)
Erster Abschnitt: F e i n d l i c h e r Vo r s t o ß a m
Oldoroboberge 89
Mehrfaches Vordrücken des Feindes. Die phantastischen
Panzerautomobile. Der Artilleriekampf. Die südafrikanischen
Truppen. Angebliche feindliche Grausamkeitsbefehle. Verstärkung
des Feindes am Longido. Im Kampf gegen eine Inderpatrouille. Die
vornehme Gesinnung der weißen Offiziere. Unsere braven Askari
und die Irreführung der Engländer.
Zweiter Abschnitt: Vo r r ü c k e n des Feindes und
Kampf bei Reata 92
Spione an der Arbeit. Die Wege des feindlichen Vormarsches.
Abwehrmöglichkeiten. Der Feind greift am Kitovo an. Die feste
Stellung in der Linie Reata–Kitovo. Das „Königsberggeschütz“.
Erkundung feindlicher Kavallerie. Feindlicher Angriff und
Umzinglungsversuch. Einnahme neuer Verteidigungsstellungen.
Rückzug des Feindes nach Taveta. Nach dem Kampf. Neues
Vorfühlen des Feindes. Beim Kommando in Neu-Steglitz. Ein zweites
Hilfsschiff.
Dritter Abschnitt: Z u r ü c k w e i c h e n vor
übermächtiger feindlicher Bedrängung 102
Pläne und Erwägungen. Eifrige feindliche Erkundungsversuche.
Vorbereitungen zum Kampf. Vorstoß auf den feindlichen
Patrouillenschleier. Schwere Verluste. Neue starke Angriffe des
Feindes (am 21. März). Mißlingen des Gegenangriffes. Eine
Alarmmeldung: der Feind im Rücken. Rückzug nach Kissangire. Die
Alarmmeldung erweist sich als falsch. Die gute Stimmung der
Truppe. Die Lage der Zivilbevölkerung. Kampf und Kapitulation der
28. Kompagnie bei Lokisale (5. April). Heranschaffen von
Hilfstruppen. Konzentration der Truppen zur Zentralbahn.
Vierter Abschnitt: D a s Vo r g e h e n d e s F e i n d e s
im Gebiete der Nordbahn 111
Abfahrt nach Korogwe. In Handeni. Nachrichten aus Deutschland.
Die Hindernisse des Weitermarsches. Der angeschwollene Fluß. Zu
Pferde und mit der Feldbahn nach Kimamba. Erkundung südlich von
Kondoa. Etappenwesen und Intendantur. Fühlung mit dem Feinde. In
Stellung. Der Feind scheint seine Stellungen zu räumen. Ein
unerwartetes Nachtgefecht. Schwere eigene Verluste. Günstige
Patrouillenunternehmungen. Artillerieduelle. Die Beschaffung von
Verpflegung aus dem Lande. Ein mißlungener feindlicher Vorstoß.
Fünfter Abschnitt: Z w i s c h e n Nordbahn und
Zentralbahn 121
Vordringen des Feindes an der gesamten Nordfront. Gleichzeitige
Angriffe von Südwesten her. Ausweichen und Umklammern. Auf der
Suche nach der schwächsten Stelle des Gegners. Der schneidige
englische Patrouillenführer. Erhöhte Fliegertätigkeit beim Feinde.
Weiteres Vorrücken des Generals van Deventer nach Süden.
Widerstand schwacher deutscher Kräfte auf langer Linie. Kämpfe in
der Nähe der Zentralbahn. Erkundungen. Heftige Gefechte mit dem
vordringenden Gegner. Am Wamifluß.
Sechster Abschnitt: D a u e r n d e Kämpfe in der
Nähe des Rufiji 129
Feindliche Angriffe aus dem Südwesten. Was wird der Feind tun? Ein
feindlicher Umzinglungsversuch. Das Gefecht bei Mlali. Rückzug
nach Kissaki. Die moralischen Wirkungen unseres Rückzuges. Die
„Boma“ von Kissaki. Sicherung unserer Rindviehbestände.
Feindliche Niederlage am 7. September. Vernichtung einer zweiten
feindlichen Abteilung. Deutsche Menschlichkeit — englischer Dank.
Ein überraschender Vorstoß bei Dutumi (9. September). Dutumi muß
aufgegeben werden.
Siebenter Abschnitt: F e i n d l i c h e Angriffe im
Südosten der Kolonie 138
Unsere ungünstige Lage bei Kilwa. Vergebliche feindliche Angriffe
bei Kissangire. Flußpferde und Elefanten als Fettlieferanten. In
Mpaganja. Der heimgeleuchtete Miesmacher. Vormarsch auf
Kissangire. Die verirrte Patrouille. Erfolge bei Kissangire. Die
Portugiesen bei Newala geschlagen. Im Lager von Utete. In fester
Stellung bei Kibata. Artilleristische Vorbereitungen. Die Wirkung der
schweren Granaten. Ein mißlungener Infanterieangriff. Die
militärische Lage Ende 1916. Starke feindliche Angriffe bei Dutumi
und Kissaki. Ein mißlungener feindlicher Umgehungsversuch.
Achter Abschnitt: S o r g e n und Bedrängnisse
während des Aufenthaltes im Rufijigebiet 151
Der Marsch durch die Kissiberge. Lager bei Ungwara. Die Truppen
auf Irrwegen. Unnütze Esser. Maßnahmen gegen den drohenden
Verpflegungsmangel. Die Verringerung des Trägerpersonals.
Herabsetzung der Rationen. Widerstände. Die Askarifrauen. Der
Mais als Retter in der Not. Eine Intendanturabteilung für Verpflegung.
Kleine Gefechte im Busch bei Ungwara. Das Einsetzen der
Regenzeit. Maßnahmen zum Schutz der Frauen und Kinder.
Weiterzug der Truppe nach Süden.
160
Neunter Abschnitt: D a s Ende der
Grenzenverteidigung auf den
Nebenschauplätzen
Am Ruhudje- und Ruahafluß. Ein feindlicher Angriff und plötzliches
Abbrechen desselben. Der Irrtum des Feindes. Kapitulation des
Majors v. Grawert. Teilung der Truppen des Generals Wahle. Der
Marsch auf Tabora. Zurück zum Kilimandjaro. Der Marsch des Majors
Kraut zum Rowuma. Verpflegungsschwierigkeiten und
Zukunftspläne. Auf reichem portugiesischem Gebiet. Patrouillen
gegen Kilwa. Eine schwere Niederlage des Feindes. Versuche mit
Brotersatz. Primitive Stiefelherstellung. Die krähenden Hähne. Salz,
Fett und Zucker. Das Sanitätswesen. „Lettowschnaps.“ Verbandzeug.
Operationen mit primitiven Mitteln.
Zehnter Abschnitt: U m Lindi und Kilwa 167
Umschau nach einer neuen Verpflegungsbasis. Erkundungen im
portugiesischen Gebiet über den Rowuma. Gefechte bei Kilwa. Die
Lage des Sanitätswesens. Um das deutsche Lager bei Lutende.
Eiliger Weitermarsch in die Berge von Ruawa. Die Erlebnisse der
Abteilung Lieberman in der Landschaft von Ndessa. Ein kaiserlicher
Gruß aus der Heimat. Feindliche Parlamentärspione. Ein feindlicher
Angriff bei Narunju. Die Fliegerbombe im Dynamitlager. Sammlung
der Nichtkombattanten in der Mission Ndanda.
Elfter Abschnitt: I n der Südostecke der
Kolonie 185
Konzentrischer Vormarsch des Feindes. Bei Ruponda und Likangara.
Unsicherheit beim Gegner. Gerüchte. Das Gefecht bei Mahiwa. Ein
glänzender Sieg. Änderung des Angriffsplanes. Die Taktik des
feindlichen Führers. Das Ende des Kampfes. Die Verluste und die
Beute. Ein neues Gefecht bei Lukuledi. Kleinkrieg.
Zwölfter Abschnitt: D i e letzten Wochen auf
deutschem Boden 193
Rücksprache mit dem Gouverneur. Erwägungen. Abmarsch von
Lukuledi. Kleinere Gefechte im Busch. Der Munitionsmangel und
seine Folgen. Dauerndes Vorrücken des Feindes bis Chiwata. Unser
Ausweichen auf Nambindinga. Pläne zur freiwilligen Beschränkung
der Truppenstärke. Auf dem Makondehochland. Wasser- und
Verpflegungsmangel. Wohin? Neuordnung der Truppe in Newala. Die
feindliche Patrouille und ihr Brief. Außer Sicht des Feindes.

Drittes Buch
Kämpfe auf fremder Erde
(Vom Übertritt nach Portugiesisch-Ostafrika bis zum
Waffenstillstand)
Erster Abschnitt: Ü b e r den Rowuma 207
Flußübergang. Das feindliche Lager bei Ngomano. Sturm auf die
portugiesische Befestigung. Der „Tag der alten Gewehre“. Reiche
Beute. Weitermarsch den Ludjenda aufwärts. Auf der Suche nach
Verpflegung. Ein durchsichtiges feindliches Angebot. Nachricht von
der Kapitulation des Hauptmanns Tafel. Teilung der Truppe.
Reibungen und Unannehmlichkeiten. Einnahme mehrerer
portugiesischer Lager. Heldentat des Leutnants Kempner. Bei
Nangware. Büffelfett und Waldesfrüchte. Reiche Verpflegung bei
Chirumba. Patrouillen. Anmarsch des Feindes. Plänkeleien.
Feindliche Einflüsterungen. Neuer Mut und neues Vertrauen.
Zweiter Abschnitt: Ö s t l i c h des
Ludjendaflusses 223
Verpflegungsfragen. Im Regen. Tabakversorgung. Bei Nanungu. Der
Bau von Pontonbooten. Patrouillen über den Msalufluß. Nachrichten
von den Ereignissen in Europa. Kampfpause. Patrouillen bis zur
Küste. Das kostbare Porischwein. Neuer feindlicher Aufmarsch.
Dauernde Plänkeleien. Gegen den Feind am Kirekaberge. Ein
Buschgefecht. Eine irrtümliche Meldung und ihre Folgen. Die
beiderseitigen Verluste in den letzten Gefechten. Erfolge des
Hauptmanns Koehl. Weitermarsch zum Koromaberge. Ein Überfall.
Der Gouverneur in Gefahr. Unangenehme Verluste.
Dritter Abschnitt: I m Gebiet des Lurio- und
Likungoflusses 237
Auf dem Wege nach Koriwa. Die Kranken und Verwundeten. Lager
am Lurio. Abteilung Müller nimmt die Boma Malema. Anmarsch
feindlicher Truppen von mehreren Seiten. In einem reichen Lande.
Die Vorsichtsmaßregeln des Generals Edwards. Kampf im Busch.
Weitermarsch auf Alto-Moloque. Die Apfelsinenboma. Dauernde
Patrouillengefechte. Die Station Nampepo und andere
Niederlassungen. Am Likungofluß. Reiche Beute. Das
Schätzungsvermögen der Eingeborenen.
Vierter Abschnitt: W e i t e r m a r s c h in südlicher
Richtung 247
Wo ist die feindliche Munition gestapelt? Auf der Suche. Das
Hindernis der langen Marschkolonnen. Kokosani-Namakurra. Über
den Likungo. Ein Erfolg bei Namakurra. Der verschanzte Bahnhof.
Artillerievorbereitung und Sturm. Flucht des Feindes über den
Namakurrafluß. Die Verluste hüben und drüben. Willkommene Beute
an Verpflegung und Munition.
Fünfter Abschnitt: W i e d e r nach Norden zum
Namirruefluß 254
Hindernisse für den Weitermarsch nach Süden. Die feindlichen
Operationen und die eigenen Pläne. Zurück über den Likungo.
Marsch in mehreren Parallelkolonnen. Eine merkwürdige Kriegslage.
Auf der Suche nach Beute. Bei Ociva. Die englischen und die
portugiesischen Gefangenen. Einnahme der Boma Tipa. Marsch
nach Namirrue. Erkundung der feindlichen Felsenbergstellung. Ein
neuer Feind taucht auf. Ein siegreiches Nachtgefecht gegen ihn. Das
Wirrwarr der feindlichen Kolonnen. Vergebliche Verfolgung des
fliehenden Feindes. Der Minenwerfer und seine Wirkung. Sturm auf
den Felsenberg. Abmarsch nach Pekera. Ruhepause im Lager von
Chalau.
Sechster Abschnitt: Z u r ü c k zum Luriofluß 264
Bei Chalau. Ein englischer Parlamentär. Der Anmarsch des Feindes.
Abmarsch über den Ligonja. In Ili. Marsch nach Numarroe.
Brotbereitung für die Gefangenen. Ein Frühstück im Busch. Die
Boma Numarroe. Ein Erfolg der Abteilung Goering. Die Einnahme
der Boma. Die beiderseitigen Verluste. Weiter über die Berge nach
Regone. Plänkeleien. Was wird weiter? Heftige Kämpfe bei Lioma.
Schwere Verluste. Keine Aussicht auf einen größeren Erfolg. Weiter
nach Norden. Durcheinander der Abteilungen. Ein schwieriger
Marsch durch die Berge. Am Lurio. Schlechter Gesundheitszustand
der Truppe. Beiderseitige schwere Verluste. Die Influenzaepidemie.
Siebenter Abschnitt: N o c h einmal auf
deutschem Boden 278
Schneller Abmarsch nach Norden. Über den Ludjenda. Ein Ruhetag
bei Mwembe. Feindliche Kundschaftung. Aufklärung durch
Fernpatrouillen. Nach Ssongea. Das Heimweh des Samarunga. Die
Mission Pangire. Wechsel der Marschrichtung. Ernste Nachrichten
aus Europa. In der Mission Mbozi. Patrouillenmeldungen.
Achter Abschnitt: E i n m a r s c h in Britisch-
Rhodesien 283
Auf dem Marsche nach Fife. Der Feind in seiner verschanzten
Stellung. Erfolglose Beschießung und Weitermarsch.
Patrouillengefechte. Reiche Chininbeute. Kartenstudium. In
Eilmärschen nach Rhodesien hinein. Missionsstation Kajambi und
ihre ängstlichen Bewohner. Einnahme von Kasama. Eingeborene
plündern auf englische Anordnung. Weiter auf den Zambesi zu.
Neunter Abschnitt: W a f f e n s t i l l s t a n d und
Heimkehr 289
Der verirrte englische Motorfahrer. Waffenstillstand. Mit dem Fahrrad
zur Zambesifähre. Die Bedingungen des Waffenstillstandes.
Besprechung mit dem britischen Kommissionar. Die Lage in
Deutschland. Der Waffenstillstand und die Lage unserer Truppe.
Entlassung der Gefangenen. Schwierigkeiten bei der Entlöhnung der
Askari. Marsch nach Abercorn. „Übergabe“ und „Räumung“. Bei
General Edwards. Waffenabgabe. Nutzloser Widerstand gegen die
englische Auslegung der Abmachungen. Zu Schiff nach Kigoma.
Belgische Gastfreundschaft. Mit der Bahn nach Daressalam.
Internierung. Die Grippe und ihre Opfer. Die treuen Askari.
Bemühungen zum Schutz des Privateigentums. Einschiffung zur
Heimat. Auf dem „Feldmarschall“. In Rotterdam und auf heimatlichem
Boden. Rückblick und Ausblick.

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