Fünf Minuten Amerika
LC Class | E169 .S19 |
Fünf Minuten Amerika (German: “America in five minutes”) is a 1931
In order to promote international understanding, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace organized exchanges of visits of journalist groups between the United States and other countries. In 1930, a delegation of fourteen journalists from Central and Northern Europe were invited to the U.S., among them Felix Salten who represented the Austrian newspaper Neue Freie Presse. The guests visited different parts of the U.S., met with citizens and dignitaries, including the President of the U.S. and Henry Ford, and saw American nature.[2]
The journalists arrived at New York City on 18 May 1930, and travelled via several cities, usually by train, including Washington, Atlanta, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and Buffalo. From New York, they sailed back to Europe on 17 July 1930.[2]
Salten reported his tour in a series of feuilletons for Neue Freie Presse starting 8 June 1930. These feuilletons (nineteen of them) were then compiled into a book Fünf Minuten Amerika and published by Paul Zsolnay Verlag the next year, 1931.
In his book, Salten provides subjective observations of American society and nature, and the main emphasis is on his personal impressions and opinions.
Even earlier, Salten had been fascinated with technical innovations, like the radio, and the American efficiency.
When it comes to prohibition of alcohol, Salten is very critical, even horrified of the young boozer girls. He saw that prohibition laws merely encourage people to drink because they wish to maintain their self-respect by defying a law that restricts private life.[6] Similarly he criticizes the puritan laws against fornication which give rise to a double standard of morality.[7]
On several occasions, Salten also discusses the situation of the Black Americans. He deplores the racial segregation that he saw in Alexandria, Virginia and in Atlanta. Salten did have difficulties in identifying himself with the black race and he used old racial terminology of his era[3] but he struggles to maintain an open mind.[8] He called it America’s “original sin” that “Negroes” were deprived of equality despite their labour and cultural achievements.[9] Similarly, he laments the Native Americans who were reduced to tourist attractions.[10]
Currently, Fünf Minuten Amerika has only been translated into Romanian in 1941[11] and into Finnish in 2016, the latter with notes and photographs appendix.[12]
Salten was not the only journalist to write a book about the 1930 tour. The Finnish journalist and diplomat Urho Toivola (1890–1960) published his account in 1932: Aurinkoista Amerikkaa.[13] As Toivola testifies, Salten was greeted warmly wherever the delegation went because of the popularity of Bambi, published in the United States in 1928.[14]
References
- ^ Kunitz, Stanley; Haycraft, Howard, eds. (1942). Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company. p. 1224.
- ^ LCCN sf83002031.
- ^ ISBN 978-3-85493-128-7.
- ISBN 978-3-85493-128-7.
- ^ Fünf Minuten Amerika, pp. 156–163, 175–188.
- ^ Fünf Minuten Amerika, p. 216.
- ^ Fünf Minuten Amerika, pp. 226–237.
- ISBN 978-1-57241-169-2.
- ^ Fünf Minuten Amerika, p. 239.
- ^ Fünf Minuten Amerika, pp. 86–87.
- ^ Salten, Felix (1941). America in cinci minute (in Romanian). Bukarest: Editura Scrisul Românesc.
- LCCN 2016370060.
- LCCN unk81005545.
- ^ Toivola (1932), pp. 191–192.