A Sea of Love presents 95 letters exchanged between Hamburg and Antebellum USA by the famous Berlin born scholar, encyclopedist, and knowledge broker Francis Lieber (1798-1872) and his wife, Hamburg born Mathilde in 1839-1845. Their letters offer rare insights in the privacy of marriage and family life, self perceptions, notions of surroundings, as well as mental settings of the spouses. Beyond genuine individual phenomena of their Atlantic emotions their epistles show ways and methods of international communication and networking. Their writings reflect general notions and ideas shared by well-educated citizens of an Atlantic Republic of Letters connected by culture, interests, and emotions.
Claudia Schnurmann, Ph.D. (1988), University Hamburg, Professor of Atlantic History, published widely on topics from late 15th to early 21st century, including Brücken aus Papier. Atlantischer Wissenstransfer in dem Briefnetzwerk des deutsch-amerikanischen Ehepaars Francis und Mathilde Lieber, 1827-1872 (LitVerlag, 2014) which deals with 19th century Atlantic knowledge.
Relevant to academia and laymen alike interested in 19th c. US-American, British, and German Studies, history of Columbia/SC, Hamburg, and Berlin/Prussia, genealogy, family and migration/migrantsâ history, cultural history, egodocuments, networks, and transfer of knowledge.