"Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning"
From Mark Twain in the German Language Press
“Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning” (1880) is the second of three McWilliams family stories which appeared between 1875 and 1882. It first appeared in the September 1880 issue of The Atlantic Monthly (46:275, 380-384) and was republished in the collections The Stolen White Elephant (1882) and The American Claimant and Other Stories (1898). The narratives depict events from Clemens’s personal life in Hartford. For this text, it is important to note that Olivia, Clemens’s wife, had a notable fear of lightning. For more information on the McWilliams family stories see Rasmussen et al. (1:333-336).
The first German translations of the story appeared shortly after the initial publication. Notably, Udo Brachvogel’s translation appeared in several daily newspapers in Germany, including in Dortmunder Zeitung (Sep 23, 1880, 2), in Lippische Landes-Zeitung (Sep 29, 1880, 2) and twice in the supplement to Halle’sches Tageblatt (October 12, 1800, 1 and October 13, 1800, 1). Several years later, excerpts from the story were published under the title “Das Gewitter” in Düsseldorfer Volksblatt (Oct 29, 1882, 6), and Wittener Volks-Zeitung (Nov 5, 1897, 2). In later years, some newspapers also announced readings of the story to be broadcast on German radio stations (for example Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Jan 29, 1926, 3).