Mass der Dinge und Weltvermessung zwischen Forschungsreisen und literarischem Werk. W.G. Sebald, Konrad Bayer und Daniel Kehlmann

In 1992 German writer W.G. Sebald published a poem meant to be a lyrical triptych entitled Nach der Natur (engl. After Natur, 2002). This extremely fascinating oeuvre covers the span of time between XVth and XXth Century while dealing with the life of German painter Matthias Grünewald, crossing through Georg Wilhelm Steller’s biography the expeditions of Danish explorer Vitus Bering, and ending with a Sebald’s autobiographical fragment where the author leans his consciousness from the end of World War II to present time. Actually my attention will mainly concentrate on the figure and enterprise of Vitus Bering, around whom Austrian writer Konrad Bayer plotted in 1965 a prose entitled Der Kopf des Vitus Bering. Beyer’s experimental work mostly deals with the horror of extermination and devastation brought about by any act of conquest. Beyer’s insistence on Vitus Bering’s “head” is a homage to the concept of genius, but also to the place where Enlightenment and Obscurantism play their match. In my paper I will also refer to Daniel Kehlmann’s book Die Vermessung der Welt (2005) devoted to the figures of Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss. Therefore “measure of things” and “measuring of the world” are the main themes of my contribution.