[KERNER, Johann Georg.]
Reise über den Sund.
Tübingen, in der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1803.
Small 8vo, pp. [2], 334, with one folding table; a fine copy in contemporary Swedish half tree-sheep over marbled boards, spine ruled in gilt and with gilt-stamped lettering-piece; Kurt Winberg’s bookplate on front pastedown; Swedish bookdealer’s description tipped onto rear pastedown; contemporary MS initials and library accession number at head of title.
Rare first edition of this historical, political and economic analysis of Sweden, in epistolary form, complete with a folding table detailing land tax revenues by region.
The work of a prominent republican activist, Kerner’s account voices both his belief in the possibility of real freedom, and his damning view of Napoleon as the murderer of budding French liberty (see H. Vogt’s introduction in Georg Kerner: Jakobiner und Armenarzt, Berlin, 1978).
Johann Georg Kerner, the brother of the poet Justinus, had been a steadfast supporter of republican ideas throughout his life. As a Strasbourg student he went to Paris in 1791, where he moved in the republican circles of Georg Forster, Adam Lux, Oelsner, Reinhard, and Schlabrendorf. He became an envoy for the young Republic, and settled in Hamburg until his anti-Napoleon militancy forced him to flee to Denmark and Sweden.
Bruun II, 590; Fischer 410; Schröder 1911, 5. OCLC finds one copy in the US, at Yale, and one in the UK, at the British Library.
