Who Measures the World? Alexander von Humboldt's Chimborazo Climb in the Literary Imagination

Abstract

Looking at three imagined depictions of Humboldt's Chimborazo climb—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's drawing “Höhen der alten und neuen Welt bildlich verglichen” (1807), Rainer Simon's DEFA film Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (1989), and Daniel Kehlmann's bestseller Die Vermessung der Welt (2005)—my essay compares these fictional representations with Humboldt's own narratives to examine the imaginative and ideological bent of each interpretation. While Goethe depicts Humboldt reconnoitering a new world that is a mirror image of the old, Simon portrays him as a passionate educator and revolutionary. This image clashes with Kehlmann's representation of an emotionless Prussian who merely measures the world with tedious determination. Kehlmann's novel formulates, structures, and gives closure to an event that Humboldt intentionally left open to the imagination. While Humboldt gave only cryptic descriptions of the climb, it is Kehlmann who “measures the world” in the sense that his text provides an accessible narrative of the Chimborazo climb.