by Daniel Kehlmann

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2,598	99	3,541	(3.79)	126

English (60)German (16) Dutch (5) Swedish (4) French (4) Spanish (3) Danish (3) Italian (2) Portuguese (Portugal) (1) Norwegian (1) All languages (99)

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overrated. ( )

zhoud2005 | Dec 14, 2018 |

I picked this up recently remembering vaguely that I had read something positiv about it.
Nun, fast verdiente der Roman das Lob, dass ihm zuteil wurde: einfallsreich und ironisch liest es sich leicht und fließend - (trägt die durchweg indirekte Rede dazu bei? Es scheint wie ein Widerspruch, könnte aber doch stimmen, denn fällt nicht dadurch der spöttelnde Schatten des Autors auf die Reden?) -, nur sollte man nie vergessen, dass es ein Roman ist und keine Biographie von Gauss und Humboldt! Kehlmann spottet über sich selbst und sein Buch (dies muß man ihm anrechnen!), wenn er Humboldt im Gespräch mit Gauss sagen läßt: „Künstler vergäßen zu leicht ihre Aufgabe: das Vorzeigen dessen, was sei. Künstler hielten Abweichungen für Stärke, aber Erfundenes verwirre die Menschen. … Romane, die sich in Lügenmärchen verlören, weil der Verfasser seine Flausen an die Namen geschichtlicher Personen binde. - Abscheulich, sagte Gauß.“ (S. 221)
Nun aber macht Kehlmann genau das! Und verlacht er damit nicht auch die arglosen Leser, die glauben, hier lebendig geschriebene Biografien zu lesen?!
Warum das? Nur des Spaßes wegen? F. Holl zitiert Kehlmann: „Die große Möglichkeit historischen Erzählens besteht eben darin, Geschichte, vorbei an den festgeschriebenen Versionen, auf solche Art neu zu fassen, dass dabei gemeinhin verschwiegene oder übersehene Wahrheiten sichtbar werden.“ und „Im Dienste der Wahrheit musste ich eben hie und da die Richtigkeit manipulieren.“ Holl folgert: ‚Der Autor Kehlmann beansprucht somit, neue Wahrheiten sichtbar zu machen. Er ist damit, nach seiner eigenen Logik, nicht nur Schöpfer seiner literarischen Figuren, sondern auch Enthüller einer bislang übersehenen historischen Wahrheit.‘ - Fragt sich nur welcher Wahrheit?! Und wir, Du und ich, was folgern wir? Ich wenigstens habe eine Antwort darauf.
Lies das Buch, wenn Du es nicht sein lassen kannst; lies aber dann auch die Kritiken von F. Holl: Daniel Kehlmanns neu erfundener Humboldt und Frans Oort über Kehlmanns Gauss Porträt - ein ziemlich schablonenhaftes Porträt eines ‚bad tempered‘ Gauss: „His personality obviously was complex, and definitely more interesting than what we see in the portrait of Gauss given by Kehlmann.“ (http://www.ams.org/notices/200806/tx080600681p.pdf)
Kehlmann makes mischief and is richly rewarded. And who pays for it?: two persons long in their graves! Wegen groben Unfugs gebe ich diesem Buch nur 1* (I-18) ( )

MeisterPfriem | Jan 10, 2018 |

Funny, moving portrait of Alexander Von Humboldt and Friedrich Gauss, the German naturalist and mathematician physicist of the early 19th century. The narrative moves at breakneck speed, approximating the breathless search for truth and knowledge that both men undertake. Loved it. ( )

jalbacutler | Jan 10, 2017 |

This charming little novel entices the reader into the lives of two contemporary geniuses, each an eccentric in his own way. First, Alexander von Humboldt, the celibate explorer, remembered in our time for his discovery of the Humboldt Current. Then there is Gauss, the mathematician with a mind and manners as sharp as a tack. The clunky translation from German to English with glaring grammatical errors and the odd bit of historical inaccuracy added for titillation in lieu of edification (Cook was killed in the Hawaiian Islands but not eaten by cannibals) do not detract from the overall enticement of the book. ( )

ShelleyAlberta | Jun 4, 2016 |

An enjoyable novel about Gauss and Humbolt ( )

M_Clark | Apr 24, 2016 |

While I was reading the excellent [The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World] by Andrea Wulf, I thought it would be a good idea to reread Daniel Kehlmann’s fictional take on Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss, [Measuring the World], which was one of my top books of 2009. So, as soon as I had finished Wulf’s book, I dove in.
This was a mistake.
[Measuring the World] took as its genesis a meeting between the great scientist and explorer Humboldt and the great mathematician Gauss at a convention in Berlin, and then looks back at their early years of genius and discovery and forward at their supposed interactions from that point. Humboldt travels the world to take its measure, while Gauss’s measurements are all done from the tight radius of his homeland. The first time I read it, I was completely taken with both the dreamlike style and the entertaining take on the work of these two geniuses.
This time, however, having just read about Humboldt, I could not recognize him or those near and dear to him in this book. Kehlmann’s Humboldt has terrible relationships that in real life were close and loving. His Humboldt encourages “the settlement of colonies,” “the conquest of nature,” and “an orderly exploitation of the earth’s deep treasures,” laments the “selfish interests of the workers,” insults natives by desecrating burial sites and stealing bodies, and mocks the idea of evolution. He is the anti-Humboldt, and I couldn’t get over my disappointment.
It’s likely that this was all deliberate. At one point, Kehlmann has Humboldt say, in a discussion of literature and theater:
Artists were too quick to forget their task, which was to depict reality. Artists held deviation to be a strength, but invention confused people, stylization falsified the world. Take stage sets, which didn’t even try to disguise the fact that they were made of cardboard, English paintings, with backgrounds swimming in an oily soup, novels that wandered off into lying fables because the author tied his fake inventions to the names of real historical personages.
However, since Humboldt is not well known today, at least outside of Germany (in large part because of anti-German sentiment after WWI), his character is sure to be taken at face value.
So, if you’re going to read this book, please look at the characters as fictional, and not as real historical personages.

1cabegley | Feb 4, 2016 |

4.5 stars, rounded down to 4.
Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, and Alexander von Humboldt, explorer and 'measurer' extraordinaire, meet near the beginning of this book which then looks back over their separate lives from boyhood to their geriatric years, following them in two separate close third person POVs. This is a work of fiction, yet delves into many facts of their lives as well.
The best part of this book for me was how Kehlmann captured the POV of someone like Gauss whose young mind moved so much faster than that of anyone else he met, even other brilliant minds of the age. The reason this book belongs on the 1001 Books list, IMO, is because it's about two men whose work made a significant impact (One of Humboldt's achievements was to take enough measurements in enough places to prove that the earth's core is hotter as you get closer to it).
I don't have a lot to say about this book, and am glad I didn't read anyone else's reviews too closely before reading it, because the journey of discovery as you read it is perhaps the best part about the book. I didn't like to the point where I was up all night reading it, so I didn't give it 5 stars (but then, rarely give those out). Plus, this translation has no quotation marks, one of my pet peeves, but I'm glad I kept reading. This is one time when I am glad I didn't read the ending first (after all, I can find out what happened to those men with just a quick google), so I highly recommend avoiding that if it's something you also have a habit of do

Daniel Kehlmann Measuring The World Pdf