ABSTRACT
Charles Sealsfield's early realist novel Das Kajutenbuch is both a Zeitroman and an Erziehungsroman, which imparts a political message to the German public of the Vormarz period. Sealsfield's poetological method is informed by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's call for presentation of the 'entirety of an outlook on the world and life', Joan C. Scott's principles of the historical novel, as well as literature and personal experience of the American South. Sealsfield dedicates his novel to Joel Robert Poinsett as a witness of the times, with whom he is in agreement regarding the need to establish an aristocratic democracy in the mould of that promoted by Andrew Jackson. Sealsfield's text concerns itself with historical and social criticism, with setting out the contours of liberal political ambitions in a democratically organized republic, which is to say that it is concerned with a programme of politically educating the public. Sealsfield's approach is based on the idea of a morally and politically necessary regeneration.
