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The reception history of Henriette Frölich's novel Virginia oder die Kolonie von Kentucky demonstrates that a literary text's afterlife can be as intriguing as its contemporary reception. Following its original publication under the pseudonym Jerta in Berlin in 1820, Virginia fell into obscurity and was only republished in 1963. This long period of neglect is not surprising in cases of German women authors of this period. What is more remarkable is that Frölich's novel was recovered not in the then nascent field of feminist literary studies but in the context of socialist literature. Gerhard Steiner, editor of the 1963 edition published by Aufbau-Verlag (Berlin) in the former German Democratic Republic, characterizes the North American colony described in the novel as a "utopiansocialist republic" ("utopisch-sozialistische Republik, 1963: 224) and argues that the author "stands on the side of the poor farmers and those who do not own land, who lived a miserable life in a fertile landscape" ("tritt . . . in ihrem Roman auf die Seite der armen Bauern und Landlosen, die in einer fruchtbaren Landschaftein klägliches Leben führten," 217).1 The ideology of the GDR resonates in Steiner's interpretation of Frölich's political program:
So setzte sie nicht auf das Bürgertum, sondern auf das Volk, das jedoch bei der erst beginnenden Entwicklung der proletarischen Bewegung gleichfalls noch zu schwach für radikale politische Aktionen schien. So entspricht der Schluß des Romans der Einsicht, daß die Verwirklichung ihrer Ideen nicht unmittelbar realisierbar, aber historisch notwendig ist. (231)
She did not take the side of the bourgeoisie but of the people, who appeared, however, too weak for radical political actions at the time of the emergence of the proletarian movement. The ending of the novel, therefore, reflects her awareness that the realization of her ideas is not immediately possible yet historically necessary.
Steiner reads Frölich's novel as a socialist utopia influenced by eighteenth-century French thinkers such as François Noël Babeuf, Gabriel Bonnot de Mably, and Étienne-Gabriel Morelly. He thereby establishes a direct line from the Revolution's call for liberty, equality, and fraternity to the political and social foundations of the early German Democratic Republic.2
There is no trace of any critical discussions of Virginia in the thirty years following Steiner's edition. Only in the early nineties was Frölich's novel...