[In the following essay, Umbach discusses La Roche's Anglophilia as a driving force behind Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, which like Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, is focused on moral instruction.]

Over the course of the eighteenth century, Britain and Germany developed increasingly close links: dynastic connections, trade relations,¹ and a growing book and translation market furthered their contacts in cultural and literary milieux. Until late in the century, however, the two countries stood apart in terms of political progress as well as economic and cultural pre-eminence. Still recovering from the ravages of the Thirty Years' War, Germany lacked a political and cultural centre. The German admiration for Britain and imitation of British customs increasingly challenged the prevailing French cultural hegemony.² Two terms were used to describe this phenomenon: the French anglomanie,³ with its obvious pejorative connotations, and the more neutral term, Anglophilia, which denoted an enthusiasm for things British.⁴ Anglophilia affected such diverse pursuits as writing (non-fiction as well as fiction), foreign travel, politics, philosophy, philanthropy, education, architecture and fashion. Indeed, Anglophilia extended to the most minute aspects of the British character as perceived abroad.

As the century progressed, England's and Scotland's impact on German literature became paramount. However, the translation of English belles-lettres did not assume major significance until the latter half of the century.⁵ The novelty of the subject matter (which was perhaps felt to be ‘bourgeois’), the innovation and relative freedom of style and form, and the ‘original’, inspirational genius of contemporary British authors attracted the German reading public to these newly available works. The advent of the novel sparked particular enthusiasm. Perhaps this was due in part to a lack of entertaining literature in mid-eighteenth-century Germany.⁶ In addition to the influence mediated through literature, foreign travel and academic connections played an important role in the cultural exchange: a number of German literary men and women travelled to Britain and published accounts of their travels.⁷ The single most important academic centre of Anglophilia was the University of Göttingen, only recently founded, in 1734, by George II; here the dynastic links between Hanover and Great Britain increased the already prevalent English influence, which profoundly affected a number of prominent professors.⁸

Sophie von La Roche's Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771), the first German ‘Frauenroman’,⁹ draws on an English literary antecedent, Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1747-8), in form and content.¹⁰ The obvious relationship between Clarissa and Fräulein von Sternheim, two highly successful epistolary novels of the sentimental style, has at times been over-stated by critics, who have regarded Fräulein von Sternheim merely as a pale imitation of Clarissa.¹¹ La Roche adapted and developed themes in Clarissa; she refined Richardson's epistolary method and, as a woman writer of a different country and age, she diverged from her literary antecedent in important points, above all in her treatment of morality and the importance attached to education and didactic aims. Fräulein von Sternheim thematises Englishness and the imitation of everything English through a number of English and Scottish characters and the Anglo-Scottish setting in the novel's second part. La Roche's later works also display a perceptible English influence.¹² Her knowledge of Great Britain derives from an early eighteenth-century travel account:¹³ it was not until 1787, sixteen years after the publication of the novel, that the author travelled to England and Scotland herself.¹⁴

La Roche was well aware of Richardson's literary fame and influence in Europe. She started learning English in 1754¹⁵ and most probably read Richardson's novels in the original, as well as other popular works of English literature: from Shakespeare to contemporary English novelists, poets and essayists to ‘moralische Wochenschriften’. Moreover, La Roche's milieu reverberated with an admiration of Englishness. Her husband, Georg Michael Frank La Roche, was private secretary to Count Stadion, a staunch Anglophile, at the electoral court in Mainz; as such, Frank La Roche was in charge of English alliances. He spoke English, had been partly educated in England and possessed a library of English books. For Sophie, life in Mainz entailed considerable public exposure: she was expected to initiate and stimulate court conversation, in an instructive as well as entertaining way, on the basis of excerpts from books handed to her by her husband. Sophie was thus to ‘learn the role of mediator and propagator of French, British, and, to some extent, German culture’.¹⁶ At Count Stadion's retirement seat at Warthausen Anglophilia found even fuller expression. As Maurer points out,¹⁷ this was the time of Wieland's translation of Shakespeare. Sophie's descriptions may have been further inspired by the English-style gardens and parks at Warthausen.

La Roche's view of Britain was typical of the 1760s and 1770s, influenced by ‘traditional’ German literary perceptions of the British which focused especially on melancholy and virtue.¹⁸ Melancholy was commonly associated with the British on the Continent.¹⁹ For La Roche and many of her contemporaries, this state of mind implied a moral constitution and a disposition towards virtue. The question of morality and especially virtue forms a major concern in La Roche's novel, which further explains her explicit interest in Britain, British characters and mores. Germany's view of Britain, in turn, was profoundly influenced by French writers. Eighteenth-century France emphasised the correlation between the British character, morality and sensibility. Josephine Grieder speaks of the French public's

growing preoccupation with morality, a concern basically introduced into fiction by the translations early on of English novels. French authors in the sixties respond by creating the genre known as sentimental fiction. They emphasize sensibilité and benevolence as natural, individual—not socially determined—characteristics; and they hail the British as the chief examplars of these virtues. In spurious translations … and in imitations labeled anecdotes or nouvelles anglaises, as well as in ordinary works, the sentimental novelists familiarize their public with English customs, traits, and attitudes, while at the same time they appropriate the decent, serious tone that had given English fiction its reputation. By the eighties they are displaying the British as moral models on whom, they strongly imply, their countrymen would do well to pattern themselves.²⁰

How does La Roche employ the numerous characteristics associated with England and Scotland within the plot? I shall argue that the author consciously portrays Englishness to various specific ends. Her use of Anglophilia goes well beyond taking up the traditional and popular literary motifs of British melancholy and virtuous living for their own sake; rather, she has a specific didactic aim. In order to pursue this aim, that of moral instruction, La Roche uses psychological causality of character and authentic, entertaining plot detail. These lend her novel an entertaining quality and allow her to depict the direct usefulness of her moralistic code: for the plot to be morally useful, it, above all, had to be probable and lifelike. In applying this technique, it was in various ways advantageous to move within a British realm, as this paper seeks to show.

Fräulein von Sternheim was edited by Christoph Martin Wieland, La Roche's cousin, one-time fiancé and literary patron. In his preface to the novel, written in the form of a letter to the author, Wieland explicitly mentions Richardson and alludes to contemporary English literature as a model for German literature. He stresses the supremacy of morality and deplores what he regards as a lack of original moralising and entertaining works in German literature. Employing Horace's notion of ‘prodesse’ and ‘delectare’, he defines both morality and entertainment as the novel's prime objectives:

Ich habe nicht vonnöten, Ihnen von dem ausgebreiteten Nutzen zu sprechen, welchen Schriften von derjenigen Gattung, worunter Ihre Sternheim gehört, stiften können … Alle Vernünftigen sind über diesen Punkt einer Meinung, und es würde sehr überflüssig sein, nach allem, was Richardson, Fielding und so viele andre hierüber gesagt haben, nur ein Wort zur Bestätigung einer Wahrheit, an welcher niemand zweifelt, hinzuzusetzen. Ebenso gewiß ist es, daß unsre Nation noch weit entfernt ist, an Originalwerken dieser Art, welche zugleich unterhaltend und geschickt sind, die Liebe der Tugend zu befördern, Überfluß zu haben.²¹

Instruction and entertainment are thus two closely related objectives followed by La Roche in her novel, and Anglophilia plays a major role in pursuing this double aim. Indeed, the aesthetician J. G. Sulzer (1720-79) argued that the heroine's English descent provided the link between the two elements of moral instruction and psychologically entertaining detail of plot—as the very means of making the sometimes extravagant plot more credible. In fine, Englishness lent the novel psychological realism:

Um diese Originalität des Charakters [Sophie's peculiar sentiments] aber weniger auffallend zu machen, hat die V[erfasserin] die Sternheim aus brittischem Blute abstammen lassen. … Ganz deutsche Charaktere lassen sich nicht so hoch treiben, ohne ihre Würde zu verliehren oder unwahrscheinlich zu werden, das frappante, das zum moralischen Heroismus erfordert wird, scheint allerdings ein Vorrecht der Engländer zu seyn.²²

Employing a fictitious editor, La Roche relates the tripartite history of Sophie von Sternheim: her education and initiation into the world, her prolonged trials, and the final reward for her virtuous conduct. Whilst the author places considerable emphasis on a natural disposition to virtue, she continually stresses the important role to be played by education. As the daughter of the ennobled Oberst von Sternheim, a professor's son, and his half-English wife, Sophie inherits a passion for knowledge and self-improvement, coupled with a delicate constitution prone to melancholy. Her mother

schien zu aller sanften Liebenswürdigkeit einer Engländerin auch den melancholischen Charakter, der diese Nation bezeichnet … geerbt zu haben. Ein stiller Gram war auf ihrem Gesichte verbreitet. Sie liebte die Einsamkeit, verwendete sie aber allein auf fleißiges Lesen der besten Bücher; ohne gleichwohl die Gelegenheit zu versäumen, wo sie, ohne fremde Gesellschaft, mit den Personen ihrer Familie allein sein konnte.

(pp. 20-1)

Apart from being of part-English descent, Sophie is taught the language by her father: ‘und weil das Fräulein eine große Anlage von Verstand zeigte, beschäftigte er diesen mit der Philosophie, nach allen ihren Teilen, mit der Geschichte und den Sprachen, von denen sie die englische zur Vollkommenheit lernte’ (p. 51). The heroine's natural enthusiasm for anything English early on in the novel is explained by her English ancestry: ‘Übrigens war zu allem, was engländisch hieß, ein vorzüglicher Hang in ihrer Seele, und ihr einziger Wunsch war, daß ihr Herr Vater einmal eine Reise dahin machen, und sie den Verwandten ihrer Großmutter zeigen möchte’ (p. 52).

In addition to an education surpassing that of girls of her social standing, Sophie receives an ‘education of the heart’ from her parents who exhibit benevolence, gratitude to God and a reassuring belief in divine providence. They cultivate her natural disposition, inculcating in her a living faith in the value of virtue.²³ The concept and origin of ‘virtue’ and its relation to ‘human nature’ is central to La Roche's writings. The author explores the question whether virtue is an innate quality as opposed to an acquired or inculcated one. She perceives virtue in terms of a virtuous disposition which is innate but which above all has to be further enhanced by education and tried by experience. The novel's plot vividly illustrates this process: the guarded upbringing until her parents' death perpetuates Sophie's innocence and naïveté. These qualities lead her deeper and deeper into conflict once she is made to suffer a life of pretence, affectation and empty diversion at the court in D. In this atmosphere of seduction and self-love, her cold-hearted aunt and uncle intend to make her the prince's mistress. In addition to the prince's advances, the heroine's virtue is put to the test in very different ways by two Englishmen at court, the villain Derby and the virtuous Seymour. Despite the apparently simplistic nature of the dichotomy between good and evil in the characters of Derby and Seymour, it is by this very means that La Roche avoids an even more simplistic Anglophilia. Her portrayal of Englishness is qualified by personal character; moreover, throughout the novel, British and German national traits interact with and affect one another. The circular conclusion of Sophie's history, an Anglo-German alliance between her and Seymour mirroring that of her parents, represents the logical outcome of the novel's bi-national structure.

Sophie feels an intuitive affinity with the Englishmen Seymour, his uncle Lord G., and Derby. Uncharacteristically, she even wishes to please them by her outward appearance—an urge which is decidedly against her otherwise strictly virtuous principles: ‘Ich war nur deswegen über meinen wohlgeratnen Putz froh, weil ich von zween Engländern [Seymour and his uncle] gesehen wurde, deren Beifall ich mir in allem zu erlangen wünschte’ (p. 70). Ironically, it is precisely her love of Englishness which first leads Sophie astray. Lord Derby, a figure strongly recalling Lovelace in Richardson's Clarissa, is interested only in seducing Sophie under the guise of higher friendship. He affects noble, edifying conversation and benevolence of spirit whilst exploiting Sophie's love of Englishness and her intellectual curiosity: ‘das Mädchen ist außerordentlich. Aus ihren Fragen bemerkte ich eine vorzügliche Neigung für England, die mir ohne meine Bemühung von selbst Dienste tun wird’ (p. 120).

After telling her of England in general and of landscape gardening in particular, Derby triumphantly recounts to his friend:

Du weißt, daß meine Augen gute Beobachter sind, und daß ich manche halbe Stunde ganz artig schwatzen kann. Der Gegenstand war von Gebäuden und Gärten. Das Fräulein von Sternheim liebt Verstand und Kenntnisse. Ich machte mir ihre Aufmerksamkeit ganz vorteilhaft zunutze, und habe ihre Achtung für meinen Verstand so weit erhalten, daß sie eine Zeichnung zu sich nahm, die ich während der Erzählung von einem Garten in England machte.

(ibid.)

A positive characteristic, the love of English gardens, taken as evidence of natural ‘sensibility’, and Sophie's urge for self-improvement are thus exploited by the villain who turns them to his own advantage. Derby speaks English to Sophie as he pays her his increasingly direct compliments. Equally, when feigning genuine benevolence by giving money to a poor family, the use of his native tongue conveniently enables Derby to remain only half anonymous. Sophie misinterprets his ‘help’ as a genuine change of character in the form of a ‘freigebige, wahrhaftig engländische Hülfe’ (p. 161). Following Derby's feigned charity, Sophie feels drawn to this character solely on the grounds of his nationality. She naively assumes that his Englishness guarantees a natural disposition towards virtue in spite of outward signs to the contrary: ‘Ich bekenne, die Liebe eines Engländers ist mir vorzüglich angenehm, aber—Und doch; warum wählte ich einen und verwarf den andern, ehe ich sie kannte; ich war gewiß voreilig und unbillig’ (p. 178). The same attitude later contributes to her downfall in her sham marriage to Derby: ‘ohnvermählt werde ich nicht fortgehen, ob ich gleich die Verbindung mit einem Engländer allen andern vorziehe—’ (p. 210). Finally, as the climax of the novel's first part, Derby takes advantage of Sophie's naive belief in England as a utopian country when he plans his sham marriage:

so würde ich doch alles wagen, um sie aus den Händen ihrer unwürdigen Familie zu ziehen, und sie in England einer bessern vorzustellen. Ich mußte diese Saite anstimmen, weil sie mir selbst den Ton dazu angegeben, und weil ich ihren Ekel für D∗ und ihren Hang für England benutzen wollte …

(p. 192)

He later coldly states: ‘Ein wenig Achtung für meinen Witz und für meine Freigebigkeit, die Freude nach England zu kommen, und kalter Dank, daß ich sie von ihren Verwandten, und dem Fürsten befreit hatte: dies war alles, was sie für mich empfand …’ (p. 221). Sophie herself confirms this attitude to an extent (p. 212). Despite Derby's behaviour towards her, Sophie still clings to her idealised vision of the English character:

O wenn ich einst in England in meinem eigenen Hause bin, und Mylord in Geschäften sein wird, die dem Stolz seines Geistes angemessen sind: dann wird, hoffe ich, sein wallendes Blut im ruhigen Schoß seiner Familie sanfter fließen lernen, sein Stolz in edle Würde sich verwandeln, und seine Hastigkeit tugendhafter Eifer für rühmliche Taten werden. Diesen Mut werd ich unterhalten, und, da ich nicht so glücklich war, eine Griechin der alten Zeiten zu sein, mich bemühen, wenigstens eine der besten Engländerinnen zu werden.

(p. 218)

Beyond the general frame of the English character, Anglophilia in the novel extends to more specific realms. For example, the reader encounters a recurrent interest in English architecture and landscape gardening.²⁴ Significantly, Sophie's father designs a house and garden in the English style: ‘Er gab auch ein Festin für die kleine Nachbarschaft, fing gleich darauf an zu bauen, setzte noch zween schöne Flügel an beide Seiten des Hauses, pflanzte Alleen und einen artigen Lustwald, alles in englischem Geschmack’ (p. 23). La Roche weaves numerous English details, for example concerning linguistic traits and fashion, into the novel to characterise her figures further. Derby repeatedly calls Sophie ‘englisches Mädchen’ (p. 137, p. 219), which leaves it open whether ‘English’ or ‘angelic’ is meant. The fictitious editor later characterises Sophie's clothes in her state of suffering after the sham marriage: ‘Sie kleidete sich bloß in streifige Leinwand, zu Leibkleidern gemacht, mit großen weißen Schürzen, und Halstüchern, weil ihr noch immer etwas Engländisches im Sinne lag’ (p. 234). Even Sophie's dancing, gracious and angelic (‘Tanzt sie nicht wie ein Engel?’, p. 139), is associated with England, namely in the opposition of English and German dances. Derby arranges for English dances to be played during a festival at court, which predictably furthers his bonds with Sophie: ‘Da nun Lord G. versicherte, daß eine geborne Engländerin Schritt und Wendungen nicht besser machen könnte, so bekam der Fürst den Gedanken, das Fräulein sollte mit einem Engländer tanzen’ (p. 139). Sophie later falls for a trick brought about by dancing and heightened by her enthusiasm for England: her naive attitude towards a masquerade at court constitutes the final step in her downfall. This masquerade, as the protagonist stresses and welcomes, is consciously modelled on the English balls at Vauxhall (p. 181). Again, this fact blinds Sophie to the danger involved in the event. Such apparently minor details lend La Roche's account authenticity and cohesion which are crucial in conveying her moralistic stance in a probable, lifelike way: Englishness runs through the novel as a leitmotif, and individual figures are subtly characterised as possessing moral virtues and a refined character.

Seymour, unlike Derby, wants Sophie's virtue to triumph publicly, and silently suffers under the apparent signs of her moral compromise. The fact that Sophie speaks English becomes a significant factor in the plot. Seymour, who on one occasion entertains Sophie and Fräulein C∗ at a dinner party by writing English verses on cards, proves to be good-hearted. Typically, ‘zärtlich’²⁵ is the adjective used to describe his natural virtue. Sophie knows how such sentiments affect her friend, Fräulein C∗: the enthusiasm for English spreads, and the young lady starts to learn Seymour's native language: ‘Mein Fräulein C. hat Lektion im Englischen angenommen. … Sie weiß schon viele, lauter zärtliche Redensarten, an denen ich den Lehrmeister erkenne’ (p. 81). The description of this linguistic interchange is quite explicit in the novel. Like Sophie's mother whose ‘engländisches Herz’ (p. 29) is emphasised, the figure of Seymour signifies sensibility, benevolence and sound moral principles. Sophie takes Seymour's outward appearance to mirror perfectly his inner virtues:

Wenn ich den Auftrag bekäme den Edelmut und die Menschenliebe, mit einem aufgeklärten Geist vereinigt, in einem Bilde vorzustellen, so nähme ich ganz allein die Person und Züge des Lord Seymour; und alle, welche nur jemals eine Idee von diesen drei Eigenschaften hätten, würden jede ganz deutlich in seiner Bildung und in seinen Augen gezeichnet sehen. Ich übergehe den sanften männlichen Ton seiner Stimme, die gänzlich für den Ausdruck der Empfindungen seiner edlen Seele gemacht zu sein scheint; das durch etwas Melancholisches gedämpfte Feuer seiner schönen Augen, den unnachahmlich angenehmen und mit Größe vermengten Anstand aller seiner Bewegungen, und, was ihn von allen Männern … unterscheidet, ist (wenn ich mich schicklich ausdrücken kann) der tugendliche Blick seiner Augen, welche die einzigen sind, die mich nicht beleidigten, und keine widrige antipathetische Bewegung in meiner Seele verursachten.

(pp. 70-1)

To the modern reader, the eighteenth-century equation of virtuous Englishness with melancholy in Seymour seems at least naive. For example, Sophie writes to her friend Emilia about Seymour's emotional disposition:

Noch mehr, Emilia, rührte mich die tiefsinnige Traurigkeit, mit welcher er sich an den Pfeiler des Fensters setzte, wo wir beide auf der kleinen Bank waren, und unsere Unterhaltung fortführten. Ich deutete dem Fräulein C∗ auf ihren Freund und sagte leise ‘Geschieht dies oft?’

‘Ja, dies ist Spleen’.

(p. 72)

Seymour quickly senses Sophie's noble character behind her outward appearance. Significantly, he associates her sensibility with the English side of her ancestry. A secret bond of recognition is here established between the two virtuous characters, and the equation of melancholy and virtue in the novel is intended to lend both Sophie and Seymour inborn moral worth. Seymour enthusiastically characterises Sophie as combining her mother's English sensibility with her father's wealth of knowledge and integrity of character:

aber warum mache ich so viele Umschweife, um Ihnen am Ende meines Briefes etwas zu sagen, was ich gleich anfangs sagen wollte, daß ich in einer jungen Dame die schöne und glückliche Mischung beider Nationalcharaktere gesehen habe. … eine holde Ernsthaftigkeit in ihrem Gesicht, eine edle anständige Höflichkeit in ihrem Bezeugen, … und die feinste Empfindsamkeit der Seele; ist dies nicht die Stärke des englischen Erbes ihrer Großmutter? Einen mit Wissenschaft und richtigen Begriffen gezierten Geist …, viele Talente mit der liebenswürdigsten Sittsamkeit verbunden; dieses gab ihr der rechtschaffene Mann, der das Glück hatte ihr Vater zu sein.

(pp. 91-2)

Wieland, the editor, criticises Sternheim's exaggerated reverence for England in a footnote to this passage and remarks that women of Sophie's character are equally rare in both countries:

Ich habe der kleinen Parteilichkeit des Fräulein von Sternheim für die englische Nation bereits in der Vorrede als eines Fleckens erwähnt, den ich von diesem vortrefflichen Werke hätte wegwischen mögen, wenn es ohne zu große Veränderungen tunlich gewesen wäre.—Wenn wir den weisesten Engländern selbst glauben dürfen, so ist eine Dame von so schöner Sinnesart als Fräulein von St., in England nicht weniger selten als in Deutschland.

(ibid.)

Wieland thus exposes Sophie's and, we infer, La Roche's Anglophilia as a private preference rather than a common national phenomenon. At the same time, he is keen to show a familiarity with contemporary English thought through rather superior, dry comments. With such comments, Wieland sought to counter the Anglophilia which he may well have thought was becoming excessive in the Germany of the 1770s. La Roche, however, knew the limits of Anglophilia: an Anglophile herself, she nevertheless shows that excessive Anglophilia can be dangerous. Like any other ‘virtuous’ characteristic, it can be exploited by the wicked and cynical, who use it as a point of attack. Characteristically, Derby triumphs:

Ich habe ohnehin während meinem Aufenthalt in Deutschland gefunden, daß ein günstiges Vorurteil für uns darin herrschet, kraft dessen man von unsern verkehrtesten Handlungen auf das Gelindeste urteilt; ja, sie noch manchmal als Beweise unsrer großen und freien Seelen ansieht.

(pp. 170-1)

Rather than as a sarcastic comment, we are presumably meant to understand this as a realistic assessment of Anglophilia on La Roche's part. Quoting Wieland's unfavourable mention of the heroine's ‘Prädilektion für die Mylords und alles, was ihnen gleich sieht und aus ihrem Lande kommt’ (p. 15), Sulzer found Sophie's preference in keeping with her own ancestral predilection: ‘In dieser Rücksicht, daß die Sternheim ein exotischer Charakter ist, möchte also wohl ihre Prädilection für die Mylords leichtlich Entschuldigung finden, da ausserdem [sic] diese Partheylichkeit für die Engländer Ziererey seyn würde.’²⁶

Apart from Seymour, Lady Summers is another English character in the novel who illustrates the theme of refinement and melancholy. The lady represents the essence of virtuous Englishness: a refinement of manners and soul coupled with an inclination towards sensibility which are again seen as a mark of moral superiority: ‘Ihre Gestalt ist edel, obgleich sehr schwächlich; ihre Gesichtsbildung lauter Leutseligkeit; ihr schönes großes Auge voller Empfindung, und alle ihre Bewegungen Würde voller Anmut’ (p. 275). Lady Summers, who shares Sophie's almost obsessive urge for active benevolence, invites Sophie to accompany her to England, in Sophie's eyes the country of virtue and benevolence. It is hardly surprising to find yet another allusion to British melancholy in Sophie's letters:

Ich bin wohl, und genieße einer sanften Zufriedenheit, die aber eher einer Beruhigung als einem Vergnügen gleichet, indem ich die eifrige Geschäftigkeit nicht in mir fühle, welche sonst meine Empfindungen und Gedanken beherrschte. Vielleicht hat mich der Hauch der sanften Schwermut getroffen, welche die besten Seelen der britischen Welt beherrschet, und die lebhaften Farben des Charakters wie mit einem feinen Duft überzieht.

(pp. 277-8)

Sophie enthusiastically describes the country houses, parks, current British literature and the conversations her new English friends indulge in (concerning natural history, mathematics, travelling). She rejoices: ‘das Gefühl der Schönheiten Schakspears, Thomsons, Addisons und Popes haben meinem Geiste eine neue lebendige Nahrung in den Unterhaltungen unsers Pfarrers und eines sehr philosophisch denkenden Edelmanns in der Nachbarschaft erworben’ (pp. 280-1).

These, together with Richardson, Milton, who is mentioned twice in the novel (pp. 135, 222), and Bunyan (whom Wieland mentions, p. 130), are the very authors who had been translated and enthusiastically read in eighteenth-century Germany. Again, this specific reference makes La Roche's novel ‘realistic’ by setting it in a contemporary cultural context. Moreover, it further helps to illustrate the refinement of Sophie's character. Sophie's integrity of character and capacity for benevolence and perseverance are put to one last test through her abduction by Derby to the Scottish leadhills,²⁷ a particularly barren part of the country. In spite of her trials, Sophie does not lose faith in a providential design for her life and once again derives strength from her urge to do good in teaching, helping and instructing others. She later finds support in the friendship of a benevolent Scottish lady. Amidst all of this, Sophie briefly awakes from her over-idealisation of Britain and confesses to Emilia: ‘Mein Enthusiasmus für England ist erloschen; es ist nicht, wie ich geglaubt habe, das Vaterland meiner Seele.——Ich will auf meine Güter, einsam will ich da leben und Gutes tun’ (p. 334). However, the heroine's reward consists in her marriage to Seymour. Sophie, Seymour and his brother Rich soon embark on a symbolic journey to Germany (p. 346) to revisit the precincts of Sophie's youth. On their return to England, they settle on Seymour's estate and, together with the couple's newly-born children, form a harmonious family union. This union, in its ideals of friendship, benevolence and education, exactly mirrors the Anglo-German alliance of Sophie's parents at the beginning of the novel.

In fine, Anglophilia informs and directs the plot of Fräulein von Sternheim in two ways: the novel is modelled on Richardson's novels and incorporates numerous expressions of Anglophilia. More importantly, however, on the level of plot, British attributes enable La Roche to endow her protagonists with very specific and readily recognisable traits. By emphasising these inherent qualities, La Roche succeeds in vividly portraying her characters' sensibility, morality and benevolence and illustrating her didactic aims. This vividness and credibility is precisely what interested the young generation of ‘Sturm und Drang’ authors. La Roche's knowledge of Britain provides realism and authenticity of detail—notwithstanding the rather schematic assumptions regarding ‘national character’. She thus plays with and refines the idea of Anglophilia in the figures of Derby and Seymour, in Derby's conscious exploitation of Anglophilia and ultimately in the nations of Britain and Germany.

Notes

1. Historically, these existed particularly between London and Northern German Protestant cities.

2. Michael Maurer, Aufklärung und Anglophilie in Deutschland, Göttingen/Zurich 1987.

3. For a definition of the term and its origins see Josephine Grieder, Anglomania in France 1740-1789: Fact, Fiction, and Political Discourse, Geneva 1985, pp. ix-x.

4. See Maurer, op. cit., pp. 18-19.

5. This was for religious reasons. For a detailed account, see especially Bernhard Fabian, The English Book in Eighteenth-century Germany, London 1992; Bernhard Fabian, ‘English Books and Their Eighteenth-Century German Readers’ in The Widening Circle: Essays on the Circulation of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Paul J. Korshin, Philadelphia 1976, pp. 117-96. For more general reading see L. M. Price, English Literature in Germany, Berkeley/Los Angeles 1953 and Horst Oppel, Englischdeutsche Literaturbeziehungen, Berlin 1971, I, pp. 126-36.

6. For a detailed account of the most notable German writers influenced by specific English writers, see Fabian, The English Book, pp. 14-20.

7. See Maurer, Aufklärung und Anglophilie and Maurer, ‘O Britannien, von deiner Freiheit einen Hut voll’: Deutsche Reiseberichte des 18. Jahrhunderts, Munich/Leipzig/Weimar 1992, on writers such as J. W. von Archenholtz, G. F. A. Wendeborn, K. Ph. Moritz, Sophie von La Roche, Georg Forster and others.

8. They included Albrecht von Haller, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, and the orientalist and translator of Richardson's Clarissa, Johann David Michaelis.

9. I.e., according to contemporary usage, a novel written by a woman and for a predominantly female readership.

10. Apart from Rousseau's influence on Fräulein von Sternheim, Richardson's other two novels, Pamela (1740) and Sir Charles Grandison (1753), also shaped individual motifs in the novel. For Richardson's influence, see Ingrid Wiede-Behrendt, Lehrerin des Schönen, Wahren, Guten: Literatur und Frauenbildung im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert am Beispiel Sophie von La Roche, Frankfurt a. M./Bern/New York/Paris 1987, pp. 159-61.

11. For example, see J. H. Merck's summary of contemporary reviews of Fräulein von Sternheim in the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, Erste Hälfte, 14.1.1772, repr. Heilbronn 1882, 85-6; Erich Schmidt, Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe, Jena 1875; Kuno Ridderhoff, Sophie von La Roche, die Schülerin Richardsons und Rousseaus, Einbeck 1895.

12. On La Roche's lifelong preference for England see Maurer, Aufklärung und Anglophilie, pp. 142-81.

13. John Macky, Journey Through England and Through Scotland, London 1722-3.

14. Sophie von La Roche, Tagebuch einer Reise durch Holland und England, Offenbach 1788.

15. Sophie von La Roche, Melusinens Sommer-Abende, ed. C. M. Wieland, Halle 1806, pp. xviii-xix.

16. Bitter Healing: German Women Writers From 1700 To 1830: An Anthology, ed. Jeannine Blackwell and Susanne Zantop, Lincoln/London 1990, p. 150.

17. Maurer, Aufklärung und Anglophilie, pp. 146-9.

18. See Gonthier-Louis Fink, ‘Das Englandbild’ in Sophie von La Roches ‘Fräulein von Sternheim’ in Funktion und Funktionswandel der Literatur im Geistes- und Gesellschaftsleben, ed. Manfred Schmeling, Bern 1989, pp. 41-65.

19. Eighteenth-century explanations for the perceived innate British melancholy include the British weather, the diet, or the ‘naturally philosophic English mind’. Grieder, Anglomania, pp. 55-7, and Cecil A. Moore, Backgrounds of English Literature 1700-1760, Minneapolis 1953, pp. 179-235.

20. Grieder, Anglomania, p. x.

21. Sophie von La Roche, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim, ed. Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Stuttgart 1983, p. 10 (further references to this edition will be given in the text).

22. AdB, 16 (1772), 475.

23. Fink points to the importance of the landed gentry, as opposed to the court gentry, as the bearer of this kind of morality. Fink, ‘Das Englandbild’, p. 48.

24. On eighteenth-century landscape gardening in England and Germany see Siegmar Gerndt, Idealisierte Natur. Die literarische Kontroverse um den Landschaftsgarten des 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland, Stuttgart 1981; Adrian von Buttlar, Der Landschaftsgarten: Gartenkunst des Klassizismus und der Romantik, Cologne 1989, pp. 21-80; and Michael Symes, ‘The English Taste in Gardening’ in 18th Century Britain: The Cambridge Cultural History, ed. Boris Ford, Cambridge 1991, pp. 260-73.

25. The mentioning of ‘Zärtlichkeit’ and ‘fein’ is typical of the Pietistic language frequently used in the novel.

26. AdB, loc. cit.

27. La Roche was particularly fascinated with John Macky's account of the ‘Scottish leadhills’. Leadhills is a Scottish town with lead mines, south-west of Crawford.