Newell Sill Jenkins: An American Life in Dresden, 1866–1915

Before World War I, the German city of Dresden attracted 30,000 American visitors annually and, more importantly, was home to a large American community numbering about 1,000 permanent residents. In 1892, the city's American Consul General declared that Dresden had the largest American colony outside of Paris on the continent, and as late as February 1917, the New York Times stated that Dresden still harbored the largest American colony in Germany. Histories of Americans in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century do not ususally include Dresden, yet contemporaries regarded the city as one of the continental centers of American life.

The first part of my paper will provide an overview of Dresden's American community and examine the social, cultural, and environmental factors that drew Americans to the city - from Raphael's Sistine Madonna and Strauss opera premiers to the city's public parks and the environs of the Saxon Switzerland. Dresden's elites fashioned this particular image of the city as artistic and untouched by industrialization to precisely appeal to American visitors and residents; an image that the intended audience in turn expected of the city and perpetuated through their own writings.

The second part will examine the life of Maine dentist Newell Sill Jenkins, one of the oldest members of Dresden's American community. Jenkins resided in the city between 1866 and 1915, and his memoir chronicles all forty-nine years spent in Dresden. As much, it offers rich insight into American views of Saxon life, German politics, and the trouble that long-term residents experienced in reconciling their national affiliation with prolonged foreign residence. The memoir, published in 1924, also shows that the experience of World War I colored American memories of Dresden in a very specific way, namely as alost paradise, a cosmopolitan world sacrificed at the altar of nationalism.