In a letter written four hours before his death on 8 February 1882, Berthold Auerbach asked Friedrich Spielhagen to prepare an edition of his complete works. Among the five items he wished excluded from this edition was a “Bearbeitung einer Abhandlung von Channing über Selbstbildung.” Auerbach's reasons for omitting the essay Der gebildete Bürger (1843) were probably several. Not least was the doubt in his own mind as to any originality he might legitimately claim, which in fact is even less than his biographer Bettelheim implies in his one allusion to the inspiration of William Ellery Channing and the “partial” use of an address by this “greatest American preacher” (p. 143). Although virtually disowned by its author and ignored by critics, this essay of Auerbach's, intended for the improvement of popular education, marks an early instance of the reception of Channing in Germany and represents a brief chapter in the influence of American thought in Germany. It indicates one aspect of the meaning of America in the nineteenth-century European liberal movement with its social, economic, and theological upheavals reflected in many writers from 1830 on. The Channing episode in Auerbach's career reveals a great deal about the absorption of American ideas by a German liberal who elsewhere in his writings made allusions to the land of freedom and opportunity and sent fictional characters on trips to America.