Mein Leben

The early years of "The Walker to Syracuse" - published unabridged for the first time on the occasion of its 255th birthday on January 29, 2018. In his autobiography "My Life," the famous travel writer Johann Gottfried Seume recounts his adventurous youth at the end of the 18th century: Growing up as a farmer's son, he initially studied theology in Leipzig until he secretly set off for France in 1781. Along the way, he was recruited by Hessian recruiters and sold to the English as cannon fodder for the war in North America. As a non-commissioned officer, the injured Seume returned from Canada in 1783 and deserted. Out of fear of contemporary censorship, the publisher Georg Joachim Göschen edited and smoothed Seume's candidly told autobiography before publishing it a few years after his death. The manuscript then passed into the hands of collectors, including Stefan Zweig, who sold it to Martin Bodmer. Dirk Sangmeister now presents the complete text, developed from the original manuscript from the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, for the first time. Carefully annotated, "My Life" offers immediate insights into a tumultuous era and remains an exciting read to this day.