On October 2, 1878, 20-year-old Ernest Hüpeden left Hamburg aboard the steamship Herder, bound for New York. Sixteen days later, on October 18, 1878, he arrived in New York to begin his American life that would eventually bring him to us in Wisconsin to create the murals of the Ernest Hupeden’s Painted forest.

 

The Herder was a substantial transatlantic steamship of the Hamburg America Line. Built in Glasgow in 1873, she was about 375 feet long, measured 3,494 gross tons, and began sailing the Hamburg–New York route in 1874. Hamburg America acquired her the following year.

 

We have images of her. The beautiful period lithograph is identified by the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich as “The steam-ship Herder of the Hamb.-Amer. Packet Company,” dated 1873. This is the ship as she would have appeared to Ernest in 1878.

Ernest traveled second class, not steerage. A surviving 1876 illustration of the interiors of the Herder shows the Second Cabin Saloon, showing us the type of surroundings Ernest would have experienced during his 16 days at sea.

 

Fare schedules from 1878 tell us that 1878 second/intermediate-cabin fare was about $40 which in today’s purchasing power translates to about roughly $1,400.

 

The ship’s name carries a piece of German cultural history. The Herder was part of a group of Hamburg America steamships bearing the names of major German literary figures — Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and Wieland. Its namesake was Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), the influential German philosopher, theologian, poet and literary critic. Johann Herder studied at Königsberg under Immanuel Kant and later became an important influence on Goethe. His work on language, folklore, culture and history helped shape German intellectual life well into the 19th century.

 

When Ernest Hüpeden stepped aboard the SS Herder in Hamburg on October 2, 1878, he was leaving Germany aboard a vessel named for one of the Germany’s great thinkers. Sixteen days later, on October 18, he stepped off it to begin a VERY different life in America.

 

Ernest Hupeden Journey: Germany May 8, 1858-October 2, 1878, Sixteen Days at sea October 2 to October 18, 1878 and, eventually, twenty years later, Valton, Wisconsin.