From New York to San Francisco Travel Sketches from the Year 1869 by Ernst Mendelssohn-Bartholdy translated by Barbara H.Thiem Edited by Gertrud Graubart Champe

Fresh, wonderful, captivating. If you love epistolary genre and the USA and if you want to understand how Americans lived immediately after the Secession War, From New York to San Francisco Travel Sketches from the Year 1869 by Ernst Mendelssohn-Bartholdy translated by Barbara H.Thiem Edited by Gertrud Graubart Champe is the book you were waiting for.

Not just common letters of a Berliner's rich traveler in the USA written at his parents, but a stunning detailed portrait of the New World seen with the eyes of a traveler from the Old World.
Barbara Thiem a relative of mr. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy writes she would have wanted to re-print this epistolary book as it happened two centuries ago for all the clan, but then...Why not to think at a different project, involving many more readers? The intuition was more than right.

There is no limit at the beauty of these letters, in fact.

Ernst was a great observer and voracious letter writer so he loved to report in every letter written to his parents, every little detail his eyes and senses could capture about the life-style he met during this trip long three months from the east to the west coast followed by his cousin Ernst Westphal.

The life-story of the Mendelssohn family is wonderful: creative people but also bankers, I will keep this part suspended for you adding that this three month-trip wanted by Ernst's father Paul meant a precious occasion for trying to see if it would have been possible to invest some money in the New World.

Ernst will start to tell candidly to his mother the problems of seasickness experienced during the trip for reach New York, but also their interesting meetings.
The arrival at New York City was surprising and electrifying. New Yorkers considered important people with money. Money-making the most important activity of New Yorkers. Ernst tells that what it is important for New Yorkers is the possession of money.

He will also describe to her mother not just the hotel, what they ate, people met along their way, but also the vehicles for reaching other close localities, the omnibus, weird trains, discovering at the same time black people mainly as servants, girls absolutely too elegant if compared to the European ones, set free by the new world and candidly in grade to live their life with more freedom.

If New York City impressed Ernst for the immensity of the city, Boston touched his heart for its culture, university in Cambridge, and beautiful landscapes. Ernst will write that it was simple to find books everywhere adding: "They say that money reigns in New York, blood in Boston. That means that name and descent are important here while in New York one is "worth" so and so many thousand dollars....Its society is famous for appreciating knowledge, erudition, and the arts."

Ernst Mendelssohn-Bartholdy will also later meet in Washington President Grant seen before at another event. A man portrayed impressively well, Ernst will tell anecdotes, tics and fascinations not just of a man but also of a city, Washington still not that impressive.

The trip of these men then will also touch Niagara Falls with a breathless description of their adventure for discover this giant of nature but also the stunning Yosemite Park when in California or the incredible sunsets of the immense American prairies. Fascinating the description of San Francisco, meteorologically as well.

Another important voice and curiosity of this book will be for the reader the transportations. Detailed, you will discover the difficulties experienced by the protagonists for reach distant places, in particular the west part of the USA, because the various railroads were still in construction.

Ernst will meet people from Germany living in Pennsylvania with weird accent, a mixture of english and German that he hadn't never heard before.
He will send a letter to his parents telling them everything about the social conditions of black people, and what the Secession war meant to the North and the South.

He will tell that Americans don't love people in uniforms because it means authority (the story is about a train station...And you will also understand that train stations were sometimes houses...)
He will be pretty shocked by a man who asked him some money for accelerate the process of control of his luggage once arrived in the New World remarking also the melting pot existing in the USA, where in some cities people could speak different languages considering the diversified ethnic groups. He will travel in cities with high percentage of black people.

Salt Lake City inspired him because of the big community of Mormons and their fascinating story stimulated his fantasy.

You'll appreciate vivid descriptions of cities, people, landscapes thanks to the acute observation of this witness, a man who wanted to leave a trace of this unique experience at the posterity reaching a great success.

Highly recommended.

I thank Indiana University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori