This volume focuses on how travel writing contributed to cultural and intellectual exchange in and between the Dutch- and German-speaking regions from the 1790s to the twentieth-century interwar period. Drawing on a hitherto largely overlooked body of travelers whose work ranges across what is now Germany and Austria, the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium, the Dutch East Indies and Suriname, the contributors highlight the interrelations between the regional and the global and the role alterity plays in both spheres. They therefore offer a transnational and transcultural perspective on the ways in which the foreign was mediated to audiences back home. By combining a narrative perspective on travel writing with a socio-historically contextualized approach, essays emphasize the importance of textuality in travel literature as well as the self-positioning of such accounts in their individual historical and political environments. The first sustained analysis to focus specifically on these neighboring cultural and linguistic areas, this collection demonstrates how topographies of knowledge were forged across these regions by an astonishingly diverse range of travelling individuals from professional scholars and writers to art dealers, soldiers, (female) explorers, and scientific collectors. The contributors address cultural, aesthetic, political, and gendered aspects of travel writing, drawing productively on other disciplines and areas of scholarly research that encompass German Studies, Low Countries Studies, comparative literature, aesthetics, the history of science, literary geography, and the history of publishing.

Introduction Alison E. Martin, Lut Missinne, and Beatrix van Dam Part I. Foreign Neighbors 1. German Travelers in Belgium 1830-1870: Hetero-Image(s), Intellectual Mission, and Nation-Building Hubert Roland 2. Phlegmatic Aquatic Philistines: The Netherlands Described in Nineteenth-century French and German Travelogues Kim Andringa 3. Mocking the Mob of Middle-class Tourists: The Concept of 'traveller' and 'tourist' in Dutch Novels and Travel Guides Rob van de Schoor and Fieke de Hartog 4. Wandervogel in Wartime Flanders: Encountering Foreign Heritage and Imagining a German Future during the First World War Robbert-Jan Adriaansen Part II. Travel and New Ways of Circulating Knowledge 5. 'Fresh Fields of Exploration': Cultures of Scientific Knowledge and Ida Pfeiffer's Second Voyage round the World (1856) Alison E. Martin 6. Hunting for Sources: Dreams and Realities of Nineteenth-Century Archival Travel Herman Paul 7. 'Neues aus Suriname': Representations of a Dutch Colony in German Travel Literature (1800-1900) Carl Haarnack 8. Louis Couperus in Africa: Travel and the Negotiation of Cultural Difference in the Contact Zone Carl Niekerk Part III. Mediating Knowledge 9. Ego-documents by Dutch Travelers to Germany in the Nineteenth Century Arianne Baggerman and Rudolf Dekker 10. Travelling through the Revolutionary Era: Perceptions of the Low Countries and Germany in the Diaries of Ferdinand Beneke (1774-1848) Frank Hatje 11. The Making of a Founding Father: Willem Jonckbloet (1817-1885) in Search of Manuscripts and Reputation Johan Oosterman 12. Mobility and the Museum: Aesthetic and Commercial Influences on Travel Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany Renata Schellenberg 13. We Have Never Been Anonymous: The Lasting Importance of Personal Contact for Nineteenth-Century Dutch Travelers Anna Geurts