{"id":47438,"date":"2016-06-08T21:47:13","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T21:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=47438"},"modified":"2017-05-15T00:12:46","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T00:12:46","slug":"the-mysteries-of-new-orleans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=47438","title":{"rendered":"The Mysteries of New Orleans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mysteries of New Orleans<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Johns Hopkins University Press<\/a>
\nJune 2002
\n600 pages
\n3 halftones
\nPaperback ISBN: 9780801868825<\/p>\n

Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein (1826-1885)<\/strong><\/p>\n

translated and edited by:<\/p>\n

Steven Rowan<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of History
\nUniversity of Missouri, St. Louis<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

“Reizenstein’s peculiar vision of New Orleans<\/a> is worth resurrecting precisely because it crossed the boundaries of acceptable taste in nineteenth-century German America and squatted firmly on the other side… This work makes us realize how limited our notions were of what could be conceived by a fertile American imagination in the middle of the nineteenth century.”\u2014from the Introduction by Steven Rowan<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A lost classic of America’s neglected German-language literary tradition, The Mysteries of New Orleans<\/em> by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein first appeared as a serial in the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung<\/em><\/a>, a New Orleans German-language newspaper, between 1854 and 1855. Inspired by the gothic “urban mysteries” serialized in France<\/a> and Germany<\/a> during this period, Reizenstein crafted a daring occult novel that stages a frontal assault on the ethos of the antebellum<\/a> South. His plot imagines the coming of a bloody, retributive justice at the hands of Hiram the Freemason\u2014a nightmarish, 200-year-old, proto-Nietzschean<\/a> superman\u2014for the sin of slavery. Heralded by the birth of a black messiah, the son of a mulatto<\/a> prostitute and a decadent German aristocrat, this coming revolution is depicted in frankly apocalyptic terms.<\/p>\n

Yet, Reizenstein was equally concerned with setting and characters, from the mundane to the fantastic. The book is saturated with the atmosphere of nineteenth-century New Orleans, the amorous exploits of its main characters uncannily resembling those of New Orleans’ leading citizens. Also of note is the author’s progressively matter-of-fact portrait of the lesbian romance between his novel’s only sympathetic characters, Claudine and Orleana. This edition marks the first time that The Mysteries of New Orleans<\/em> has been translated into English and proves that 150 years later, this vast, strange, and important novel remains as compelling as ever.<\/p>\n

Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein (1826-1885) was born in Bavaria<\/a> and emigrated to America in 1848. By 1851 he had established himself as a civil engineer, architect, journalist, amateur naturalist, and publisher in New Orleans, where he lived until his death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A lost classic of America’s neglected German-language literary tradition, “The Mysteries of New Orleans” by Baron Ludwig von Reizenstein first appeared as a serial in the Louisiana Staats-Zeitung, a New Orleans German-language newspaper, between 1854 and 1855.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,369,8,15,20],"tags":[24013,570,24022,1438,24014],"class_list":["post-47438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-louisiana","category-media-archive","category-novels","category-usa","tag-baron-ludwig-von-reizenstein","tag-johns-hopkins-university-press","tag-ludwig-von-reizenstein","tag-new-orleans","tag-steven-rowan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53926,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47438\/revisions\/53926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}