![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
Recent German fiction has given an imaginative nuance to the general postmodern critique of the Enlightenment by parodying some of its leading adherents. This essay analyzes two of these works: Daniel Kehlmann's Die Vermessung der Welt, a fictional biography of the intertwined lives of the explorer Alexander von Humboldt and the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß, and Klaas Huizing's novel Das Ding an sich, a fantastic tale which takes a real-life episode from the life of the philosopher Johann Georg Hamann and gives it a grotesque twist in order to parody the man who first defined the Enlightenment in Germany, Immanuel Kant. For purposes of contrast, the author examines another work of Humboldt fiction that tends to valorize the Enlightenment and Humboldt's place in this movement: Christoph Hein's short story “Die russischen Briefe des Jägers Johann Seifert.” The author stresses both Kant's influence on Humboldt and the antithetical trajectory of their lives at the conclusion.
Notes
1. CitationStahl, “Amazon-de. – Rezension.”
2. CitationPreußer, “Zur Typologie der Zivilisationskritik,” 73.
3. See CitationBlumenberg, Der Prozeß.
4. See CitationBlumenberg, Der Prozeß., 252.
5. See CitationBlumenberg, Der Prozeß., 256–7.
6. Hein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 82–103.
7. Hein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 5–27.
8. Hein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 104–83.
9. See CitationKellner, Alexander von Humboldt, 112, 225–7.
10. A recent detailed summary of Humboldt's Russian expedition is provided by Ette, Alexander von Humboldt, 319–64.
11. See CitationDrommer, “Typische Bemerkungen,” 187.
12. CitationHein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 122.
13. CitationHein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 139–40.
14. CitationHein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 110–1.
15. See CitationHein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 137, 145–6.
16. Blumenberg, Der Prozeß., 256–7.
17. See Krumrey, “Gegenwart,” 144.
18. Hein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 180–1.
19. Such allusions to Hein's contemporary GDR in the tale have been noted by Fischer, who accurately claims that Hein's Humboldt “is faced with problems which simultaneously concretize the historical situation and make allusion to the present” – a GDR present marked by spying, all-encompassing state propaganda, and a repression of sexual behavior not in line with state mores. See CitationFischer, “Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois,” 130.
20. Hein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 136.
21. Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 285–6.
22. Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 212–3.
23. See Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 104–5.
24. See, for example, Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 135–6.
25. See, for example, Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 268.
26. Anderson, “Der vermessende Erzähler,” 64.
27. Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 220.
28. Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 196.
29. See Preußer, “Zur Typologie der Zivilisationskritik,” 76–7.
30. Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 70–1.
31. CitationTang Chenxi, Geographic Imagination of Modernity, 83–4, 197–8.
32. Goethe's poem, titled “Ein Gleiches” [Sameness] (1780), a pendant to “Wanderers Nachtlied” [Wanderer's Song at Night] (1776) and sometimes referred to as “Wanderers Nachtlied II,” is one of the most famous poems in the German language. It reads as follows: “Über allen Gipfeln / Ist Ruh, / In allen Wipfeln / Spürest du / Kaum einen Hauch; / Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde. / Warte nur, balde / Ruhest du auch” (CitationGoethe, Gedenkausgabe, 69). A possible translation would be: “Over all the hilltops / Is rest, / In all the treetops / You feel / Hardly a breath; / The little birds are silent in the forest. / Only wait / Soon you too will rest.” In Die Vermessung der Welt, Humboldt's literalizing Spanish version is “translated” by the narrator into an equivalent German, provoking astonishment among Humboldt's auditors: “Oberhalb aller Bergspitzen sei es still, in den Bäumen kein Wind zu fühlen, auch die Vögel seien ruhig, und bald werde man tot sein” [Above all the mountain peaks it is still, in the trees there is no wind to be felt, also the birds are quiet, and soon one will be dead] (CitationKehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 128).
33. See CitationEtte, Alexander von Humboldt, 302–18.
34. See CitationRupke, Alexander von Humboldt, esp. 88–91, 116, 123, 138.
35. Hein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 163.
36. Hein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 170.
37. Hein, Einladung zum Lever Bourgeois, 150.
38. CitationDettelbach, “Alexander von Humboldt,” 9.
39. CitationKehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 48.
40. CitationKehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 95–7.
41. CitationHuizing, Das Ding an sich, 52–3.
42. CitationHuizing, Das Ding an sich, 55.
43. See Kehlmann, Die Vermessung der Welt, 264.
44. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 14–5.
45. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 48.
46. See CitationO'Flaherty, Johann Georg Hamann, 21–5; CitationBetz, After Enlightenment, 29–32.
47. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 237.
48. The passage in Hamann's collected letters reads as follows: “Sie beten um Muth, nicht unter der Last der Geschäfte zu sinken – und mir vergeht aller Muth, unter der Last langer Weile” [You pray for courage not to sink under the burden of tasks – and I am losing all courage under the burden of idleness] (Hamann, Briefwechsel, 3). Huizing modifies this line only slightly in Das Ding an sich: “Sie beten in Ihrem letzten Brief um Mut, nicht unter der Last der Geschäfte zu versinken – und mir vergeht aller Mut unter der Last langer Weile” [You pray in your last letter for courage not to sink to the bottom under the burden of tasks – and I am losing all courage under the burden of idleness] (119).
49. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 121–2.
50. CitationMetzke, “Kant und Hamann”; O'Flaherty, Johann Georg Hamann, 82–6.
51. CitationHamann, “Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten.”
52. Betz, After Enlightenment, 37.
53. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 55.
54. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 114–6.
55. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 214–6.
56. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 209–11, 219.
57. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 229.
58. Huizing, Das Ding an sich, 234.
59. Tang Chenxi, Geographic Imagination of Modernity, 100.
60. Beck, Alexander von Humboldt, 60–1. Citing Beck, among others, Tang Chenxi notes that Kant's ideas concerning geography influenced Humboldt (Geographic Imagination of Modernity, 276n2).