DAS JAHRBUCH FÜR AMERIKASTUDIEN (Im Auftrag der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien) published its first volume (Heidelberg: Carl Winter's Universitätsverlag, pp. 212), edited by Dr. Walter Fischer, of Marburg University, in 1956, and it is a welcome addition to the small but growing numbers of specialist periodicals in this field published outside the United States.

Several of the papers printed in this first volume of the Jahrbuch were first presented at the foundation meeting of the German Association for American Studies, which took place in June 1953, making that society an elder brother – or sister – of the British Association for American Studies by some two years, but a number of others, including the two longest, are specially contributed. The Gorman Association started its activities strongly, thanks largely to the encouragement given to American studies in Germany by the Cultural Officers of the United States Military Government and High Commission there in the years following 1945. After twelve years of enforced ‘subjectivity’ in the study of the United States the return to objective scholarship was at times a difficult task, and it cannot be denied that interest in American studies, especially during the difficult years 1945–48, tended to follow the dollar rather than any more esoteric goal. All sorts of people in Germany discovered a hitherto unsuspected interest in the history and culture of the United States when their pursuit also meant heated rooms, good meals, P.X. privileges and, eventually, an Amerika-Institut financed from across the Atlantic – or even, possibly, a sponsored visit to the United States.