Austerlitz assignment

PHI 200 W Syllabus

Austerlitz Reading Guide

David Pettigrew, PhD,
Philosophy Department,
Southern Connecticut State University

email: pettigrewd1@southernct.edu


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz: A Chronological map


Prepared by Professor Pettigrew

p. 7: The narrator meets Austerlitz in 1967. And on the same page indicates that when they again in 1996 Austerlitz entrusted some photos to him.

p. 27: “our paths kept crossing, in a way that I still find hard to understand, on all my Belgian excursions of that time.”

p. 28: …a meeting in the industrial quarter a few days later…

p. 28: … several months later on the old Gallows hill in Brussels… “on the steps of the Palace of Justice…”

p.31: “…one quite November afternoon in Terneuzen…”

p. 31: Not long before Christmas they are both book on a boat crossing the English channel. He learned Austerlitz was a lecturer at the London Institute of Art History.

p. 32: Narrator then visits Austerlitz over the years where he worked in Bloomsbury, not far from the British Museum.

p. 34: The narrator returns to Germany and does not meet him again until December 1996. They meet again on pages 39-41.

p. 41: They resume their conversation in the bar of the Great Eastern Hotel.

p. 44: Austerlitz begins to tell his story (it is 1996). “I have never known who I really was… “ His name was “kept from me until my fifteenth year.” (see p. 67.)

p. 59: Austerlitz sent away to private school at the age of 12.

pp. 69 – 74:  Austerlitz speaks of his teacher André Hilary

pp. 74 – 117: Austerlitz speaks of his friend Gerald Fitzpatrick.

p.117: Almost a quarter of a year had passed before I next went to London and visited Austerlitz in his house on Alderney Street. (late winter of 1997)

p. 119:  Alderney Street house: Discussion of photographs of “heavy doors and gateways”.

pp. 120-140: Austerlitz speaks of his retirement in 1991. Struggles to write, nocturnal wanderings and his fantasm/hallucination at Liverpool street station, and nervous breakdown in summer of 1992.

pp. 141: Following spring  1992 recovers, goes to Antiquarian bookstore and learns of the Kindertransport and goes to Prague.

p. 153: Austerlitz meets his Nanny and learns about his parents. (on page 164 the narrator returns to say that it is the late Winter of 1997)

p. 173: His Nanny tells of his departure on the train as part of the Kindertransport.

p. 185: Austerlitz goes to Terezin.

p. 197: Austerlitz arrives in the Ghetto museum.

p. 200: Austerlitz speaks of his mother at Terezin in December 1942.

p. 203: Austerlitz speaks of intention to retrace route of Kindertransport

p. 206- 216: Austerlitz remembers his trip to Marienbad in 1972.

p. 221: Austerlitz at Wilsonova station.

p. 231: Austerlitz  suffers mental breakdown and is only discharged a year after returning from Prague in the spring of 93?

p. 232: Austerlitz works in a garden and reads Adler.

p. 244: Austerlitz looks for propaganda film made at Terezin.

p. 251: Austerlitz sees what he hopes is his mother’s face in the film.

p. 251: Austerlitz returns to Prague

p. 253: Austerlitz indicates plan to go to Paris to look for his father.

p. 254: September of the same year 97? Narrator receives a postcard invitation to visit Austerlitz in Paris.