We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2023
FRANZ STERNBALD, THE FICTIONAL HERO of Ludwig Tieck's eponymous novel, leaves Nuremberg and sets off on his journey to Holland and Italy only in order to come back to Nuremberg. Franz's journey away from the city is in reality a journey toward the city. Godfather Drosselmeier's namesake in Hoffmann's story-within-the-story in “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” also leaves Nuremberg only in order to come back to that wonderful city whose houses have windows. My trajectory in this book has been a different one. I have traveled from a foreign land to diverse “Nurembergs” at divergent times only in order, now, to leave them behind. Franz Sternbald journeyed abroad in order to arrive in, and discover, Nuremberg. I have traveled to Nuremberg in order to discover the land around it. My path is more like that of Per Daniel Atterbom or Claude Ollier than that of Sternbald or Drosselmeier. Franz Sternbald's journey was to end at Nuremberg's major cemetery. My journey ends, in a sense, with the discovery of Nuremberg as a cemetery — Feliks Topolski, writing in the ruined city of 1946, called it “the graveyard of Nuremberg” — a monument to itself and to the dreams of its inventors.
Like Franz Sternbald, who interrupts his journey to look back at the city from a distance and admire its outline before he continues on to other places, I too will pause and reflect on the city and its contours before I say farewell. Unlike Franz, who left the city on foot, I am leaving Nuremberg on a high-speed Inter-City Express train whose expert crew have a schedule to keep and will not stop the train's forward progress for me to get out and look back at the city I am leaving. Therefore my survey will have to be imaginary, not real. But since the city I have been visiting, Nuremberg2, was also imaginary, that is not a problem.
Franz Sternbald can only appreciate Nuremberg from a distance. It is from there, and not inside the city's narrow streets, that its many towers can be grasped as a whole. From this perspective various drawings of the city were made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The same perspectival limitation applies to other cities, even the city of New York, where I was born. Only from New Jersey or Brooklyn can I see Manhattan.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
