Intervention at Home: Representing Migrants in German Romanticism.

This article explores how German Romantic writing reflected on migration and thereby intervened in contemporary discourses about émigrés seeking refuge in German-speaking territories after the French Revolution in 1789. Discussing different representations of French exiles in both fiction and translation, I argue that some Romantics were participating in an "intervention at home:" staying put, observing both the unprecedented overthrow of the French monarchy and, later on, the aggression of French expansionism, Romantic writers contributed to contemporary debates about migration with stories and characters meant to reflect on, evoke empathy with, or create aversion to French migrants. German Romantic writing thus encouraged both emotional responses to and specific ideas about the intricate relationship between migration and nation-building in early nineteenth-century German-speaking countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]