W.G. Sebald

W. G. (Winfred Georg Maximilian) Sebald (May 18, 1944, Wertach im Allgäu–December 14, 2001, Norfolk, United Kingdom) was a German writer and academic. At the time of his early death at the age of 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors, and had been tipped as a possible future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He preferred to be called 'Max', from one of his middle names, by family and friends. W. G. Sebald. ... W. G. Sebald. ... is the 138th day of the year (139th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Wertach is a small town in the Oberallgäu district, southern Bavaria, Germany, in the German Alps. ... is the 348th day of the year (349th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Norfolk (IPA: //) is a low-lying county in East Anglia in the east of southern England. ... A writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... The Nobel Prizes (Swedish: ), as designated in Alfred Nobels will in 1895, are awarded for physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. ...

Life

Sebald grew up in Wertach Bavaria, one of four children of Rosa and Georg Sebald. From 1948 to 1963 he lived in Sonthofen[1]. His father joined the Reichswehr in 1929 and remained in the Wehrmacht under the Nazis. His father remained a detached figure, a prisoner of war until 1947; a grandfather was the most important male presence in his early years. He was shown images of the Holocaust whilst at school in Oberstdorf and recalled that no one knew how to explain what they had just seen. The Holocaust and post-war Germany loomed large in Sebald's work. Wertach is a small town in the Oberallgäu district, southern Bavaria, Germany, in the German Alps. ... For other uses, see Bavaria (disambiguation). ... Sonthofen Sonthofen is the most southerly town of Germany, located in the Oberallgäu region of the Bavarian Alps. ... Reichswehr flag (1921-1935). ... Year 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The straight-armed Balkenkreuz, a stylized version of the Iron Cross, the emblem of the Wehrmacht. ... Nazism in history Nazi ideology Nazism and race Outside Germany Related subjects Lists Politics Portal         Nazism or National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), refers primarily to the ideology and practices of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers Party, German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) under Adolf Hitler. ... Geneva Convention definition A prisoner of war (POW) is a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict. ... Year 1947 (MCMXLVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1947 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Holocaust (disambiguation) and Shoah (disambiguation). ... Oberstdorf villageview. ...

Sebald studied literature at the universities of Freiburg, Germany, Fribourg, Switzerland and Manchester. He became an assistant lecturer at the University of Manchester in 1966 and settled in England permanently in 1970, joining the University of East Anglia. In 1987, he was appointed to a chair of German literature at UEA and, in 1989, became the founding director of the British Centre for Literary Translation. He lived at Wymondham and Poringland whilst at the UEA. This article refers to the city in Baden-Württemberg. ... Fribourg (French), (German: or , often Fribourg) is the capital of the Swiss canton of Fribourg and the district of Sarine. ... This article is about the City of Manchester in England. ... Affiliations Russell Group, EUA, N8 Group, NWUA, Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) Website http://www. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ... Year 1970 ([[Rf 1970 == January 1 - The Unix epoch begins at 00:00:00 UTC January 2 - The last studio performance of The Beatles oman numerals|MCMLXX]]) was a common year starting on Thursday (link shows full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... UEA redirects here. ... Year 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link displays 1987 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar). ... , Wymondham Market Cross There is also a Wymondham, Leicestershire Wymondham (pronounced ) is an historic market town and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. ... Poringland All Saints Poringland is a village, found in the constituency of South Norfolk, England. ...

Sebald died in a car crash in 2001. He was driving together with his daughter, Anna, who survived the crash. He had married Ute in 1967. He is buried in St. Andrew's churchyard in Framingham Earl, close to where he lived. Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... Framingham Earl is a small village situated south of Norwich, Norfolk. ...

Work

Sebald's works are largely concerned with the theme of memory, both personal and collective. They were in particular attempts to reconcile himself with, and deal in literary terms with, the trauma of the Second World War and its effect on the German people. In On the Natural History of Destruction he wrote a major essay on the wartime bombing of German cities, and the absence in German writing of any real response. His concern with the Holocaust is expressed in several books delicately tracing his own biographical connections with Jews. Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ... For other uses, see Holocaust (disambiguation) and Shoah (disambiguation). ...

His distinctive and innovative novels were written in German, but are well-known in excellent English translations which he supervised closely. They include Austerlitz, The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants, and Vertigo. They are notable for their curious and wide-ranging mixture of fact (or apparent fact), recollection and fiction, often punctuated by indistinct black-and-white photographs, which are set in evocative counterpoint to the narrative rather than illustrating it directly. All of his novels are presented as observations and recollections made by Sebald while travelling around parts of Europe. Two literary projects, imagined though never written, by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges, are keys to the work. The first (described in the short story "The Garden of the Forking Paths") is a maze-like anti-plot embedded back and forth within a conventional novel, or series of novels. The second (from the preamble to the tale "Tlon, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius") is a "novel in the first person, whose narrator would omit or disfigure the facts and indulge in various contradictions which would permit a few readers - very few readers - to perceive an atrocious or banal reality ". The fact that Sebald, a professional literary academic, managed to construct all this in minute detail and with Bach-like grandeur, then foist it on his unsuspecting fellow de-constructionists, illustrates another key to understanding the oeuvre.... an inscrutably dry, mischievous sense of humour! Austerlitz is the final novel of W. G. Sebald, published in 2001. ... The Rings of Saturn (1999) is a novel W. G. Sebald and published in English by New Directions Publishers. ... Borges redirects here. ...

Sebald is also the author of three books of poetry: For Years Now (2001), After Nature (2002), and The Unrecounted (2004).

Influences

• Walter Benjamin
• Thomas Bernhard
• Peter Weiss
• Jean Améry
• Dan Jacobson Heshel's Kingdom
• Jorge Luis Borges
• Sir Thomas Browne
• Joseph Conrad
• Confessions of an English Opium Eater, by Thomas DeQuincey
• Alexander Von Humboldt
• Franz Kafka
• Gottfried Keller
• Georges Perec
• Reveries of the Solitary Walker, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Adalbert Stifter
• Robert Walser
• Contemporary scientific writing
• Rupert Sheldrake
• Vladimir Nabokov
• Roland Barthes
• Susan Sontag

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (July 15, 1892 – September 27, 1940) was a German Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. ... Thomas Bernhard (February 9, 1931, Heerlen - February 12, 1989, Ohlsdorf) was an Austrian playwright and novelist. ... Peter Weiss (November 8, 1916 - May 10, 1982) was a German writer, painter and artist. ... Jean Améry (October 31, 1912 - October 17, 1978) was an Austrian of Jewish descent, noted for having written At the Minds Limits, one of the central texts on the Nazi death camps. ... Dan Jacobson (born March 7, 1929 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is a South African novelist and essayist. ... Borges redirects here. ... Sir Thomas Browne (October 19, 1605 – October 19, 1682) was an English author of varied works that disclose his wide learning in diverse fields including medicine, religion, science and the esoteric. ... // Joseph Conrad (born Teodor Józef Konrad NaÅ‚Ä™cz-Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-born novelist who spent most of his adult life in Britain. ... Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822) is an autobiographical novel by Thomas De Quincey first published in 1821 in the London Magazine, as a novel in 1822 and revised in 1856, about his laudanum (opium and alcohol) addiction and how it affected his life. ... Thomas de Quincey (August 15, 1785 - December 8, 1859) was an English author and intellectual. ... An 1859 portrait of Alexander von Humboldt by the artist Julius Schrader, showing Mount Chimborazo in the background. ... Kafka redirects here. ... Gottfried Keller (July 19, 1819 – July 15, 1890) was a Swiss writer who is best known as the master of the Novelle. ... Image of artist Georges Perec (March 7, 1936 - March 3, 1982) was a 20th century French novelist, filmmaker and essayist, a member of the Oulipo group and considered by many to be one of the most important post-WWII authors. ... Reveries of a Solitary Walker (or Reveries of the Solitary Walker, French title: Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire) is an unfinished book by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written between 1776 and 1778. ... Rousseau redirects here. ... Adalbert Stifter (23 October 1805 – 28 January 1868) was an Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue. ... There are two noteworthy figures bearing the name Robert Walser: Robert Walser is a Swiss modernist writer (1878-1956). ... Rupert Sheldrake Rupert Sheldrake, Ph. ... Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced ) (April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1899, Saint Petersburg – July 2, 1977, Montreux) was a Russian-American, Academy Award nominated author. ... Roland Barthes Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) (pronounced ) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiotician. ... Image needed Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American essayist, novelist, filmmaker, and activist. ...

Bibliography

In both German and English, as compiled on this page and in Text+Kritik IV,158 (see below).

Sebald's Writings

Books

• Campo Santo. Herausgegeben von Sven Meyer. München, Wien: Hanser, 2003.

Published posthumously.

• Unerzählt. Zusammen mit Jan Peter Tripp. 33 Texte und 33 Radierungen. München, Wien: Hanser, 2003.
• Unrecounted. In collaboration with Jan Peter Tripp. Penguin Books Ltd 2005.
• Außer Land. Drei Romane und ein Elementargedicht: Die Ausgewanderten, Die Ringe des Saturn, Schwindel. Gefühle, Nach der Natur . Frankfurt am Main: Eicborn, 2001.
• On the Natural History of Destruction: With Essays on Alfred Andersch, Jean Améry, and Peter Weiss. Translated by Anthea Bell. New York: Random House, 2003.
• After nature. Translated by Michael Hamburger. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2001.
• For years now: poems. Images by Tess Jaray. London: Short Books, 2001.
• Austerlitz. Translated by Anthea Bell. New York : Random House, 2001.
• Austerlitz. München: C. Hanser, 2001.
• Vertigo. Translated by Michael Hulse. New York: New Directions, 1999.
• Vertigo. Translated by Michael Hulse. London: Harvill Press, 1999.
• The Rings of Saturn. Translated by Michael Hulse. New York: New Directions, 1999.
• Luftkrieg und Literatur: mit einem Essay zu Alfred Andersch. München: C. Hanser, 1999.
• Logis in einem Landhaus: über Gottfried Keller, Johann Peter Hebel, Robert Walser und andere. München: Hanser, 1998.
• The Emigrants. Translated by Michael Hulse. London : Harvill Press, 1996.
• The Emigrants. Translated by Michael Hulse. New York : New Directions, 1996.
• Die Ringe des Saturn: eine englische Wallfahrt. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1995. (=Die andere Bibliothek 130)
• Die Ausgewanderten: vier lange Erzählungen. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1992. (=Die andere Bibliothek 93)
• Unheimliche Heimat : Essays zur österreichischen Literatur. Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 1991.
• Schwindel, Gefühle. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1990. (=Die andere Bibliothek 63)
• Nach der Natur: ein Elementargedicht. Photographien von Thomas Becker. Nördlingen: Greno, 1988.
• A Radical stage: Theatre in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. Edited by W.G. Sebald. Oxford; New York: Berg; New York: St. Martin's, 1988.
• Die Beschreibung des Unglücks: zur österreichischen Literatur von Stifter bis Handke. Salzburg: Residenz Verlag, 1985.
• Der Mythus der Zerstörung im Werk Döblins. Stuttgart: Klett, 1980. (=Literaturwissenschaft - Gesellschaftswissenschaft 45).
• Carl Sternheim; Kritiker und Opfer der Wilhelminischen Ära. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer [1969].

Tess Jaray is the artist who designed Centenary Square, Birmingham, England and the forecourt for the New British Embassy, Moscow. ... Austerlitz is the final novel of W. G. Sebald, published in 2001. ... The Rings of Saturn (1999) is a novel W. G. Sebald and published in English by New Directions Publishers. ... The Emigrants is a novel by German writer W.G. Sebald. ...

About Sebald

• Reading W.G. Sebald: Adventure and Disobedience by Deane Blackler (Camden House 2007): an analysis of the reading practice Sebald's writing demands.
• Christopher Bigsby – Remembering and Imagining the Holocaust: The Chain of Memory. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• J.J. Long (ed.), Anne Whitehead (ed.) – W.G. Sebald: A Critical Companion, Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
• Scott Denham (ed.), Mark McCulloh (ed.) W.G. Sebald: History - Memory - Trauma, Walter de Gruyter, 2005.
• Mark McCulloh – Understanding W.G.Sebald, University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
• John Wylie - The spectral geographies of W.G. Sebald, Cultural Geographies, Vol. 14, No. 2, 171-188, 2007.

• Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.): W. G. Sebald. München, 2003. (=Text + Kritik. Zeitschrift für Literatur. IV, 158).

Includes bibliography.

Christopher Bigsby Christopher Bigsby is a British literary analyst and novelist, with more than forty books to his credit. ...

External links

• Davidson Symposium on W.G. Sebald
• The last word W.G. Sebald: The last interview at Guardian Unlimited
• Sebald author page at Guardian Unlimited
• Other Sebald resources at Guardian Unlimited
• Spike Magazine's analysis of the writing of W. G. Sebald (links to a pdf)
• Clive Scott remembers W.G. Sebald
• Audio Interview with Sebald on KCRW's Bookworm
• Sebald-Forum (German)
• About W. G. Sebald (French)
• Vertigo: Collecting W.G. Sebald a blog
• Stalking Sebald photo blog
• A Prospectus on W.G. Sebald

Sebald in News from the Republic of Letters: News from the Republic of Letters is the third magazine collaboration in the 50-year editing relationship (and friendship) between Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford, following Noble Savage and ANON. TRoL began publication in broadsheet format in 1997 and in bound edition in 2003. ...

• Excerpt from Austerlitz