Document Type
Book
Publication Date
1985
Abstract
The death of an aging, terminally ill American in the small city of Solothurn, Switzerland, on 26 May 1864, did not receive much public attention at first. Charles Sealsfield had lived on his small estate for some six years and was generally regarded as an eccentric, a writer who had known fame in his earlier days but who had long since resigned himself to a peaceful existence in Switzerland, one of the few non-autocratic countries in Europe at that time. To everyone’s surprise, however, the execution of his last will revealed that the old writer was not born in Pennsylvania, as his U.S. passport indicated, but in Poppitz, a small village in Southern Moravia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Czechoslovakia). It appeared that his true name was Karl Postl, that he was born in Poppitz in the year 1793, and that his father, Anton Postl, was a farmer in the same village, employed by a monastic order with headquarters in Prague.
Recommended Citation
Grünzweig, Walter. Charles Sealsfield. Boise, ID: Boise State University, 1985. Digital. Western Writers Series, 71.