The book in which the world disappeared
The book in which the world disappeared is a novel by the German writer Wolfram Fleischhauer . The historical crime thriller , published in 2003 , tells of the changes in the Age of Enlightenment against the background of mysterious deaths .
action
In the prologue, Nicolai Röschlaub and his granddaughter take a trip on the new, first German railway between Nuremberg and Fürth . Then he wants to visit a former friend and remembers events that took place over 50 years earlier.
The young Röschlaub, licentiate (young doctor) in Nuremberg , is called to the castle of Count von Alldorf, but he can only determine the death of the old man - he notices a vomika, an adhesion under the lungs. After another death, a murder under mysterious circumstances, a young woman is found with whom Röschlaub falls in love. Before the count, his wife and son had died. The judicial councilor Di Tassi from the Reich Chamber of Commerce in Wetzlar is investigating the incidents, suspecting a connection to attacks on carriages on the postal routes and tracking down a large-scale financial fraud in favor of a secret organization. The intelligent but naive Röschlaub gets lost in the multitude of attempts to explain: Do southern German booksellers want to defend themselves against their northern German competition? Do the Protestant princes intrigue against the Catholic emperor? What role do the secret societies play ? Together with the woman he first travels to Leipzig and then finally to Königsberg , where he finds some answers.
background
In the novel, the old times with their pre-scientific ideas (especially in medicine), with their encrusted social structures (the division into nobility, bourgeoisie and lower people), with the multitude of states (empire and the smallest princely states) meet the new ideas of the Enlightenment , the reformist approaches in Prussia and the new scientific knowledge.
Further topics are woven in:
- The first theories about bacteria, here called miasma animals.
- The ideas of Freemasons , Rosicrucians and Illuminati .
- Scientific innovations like the macroscope .
- The medical examination method of percussion developed by Leopold von Auenbrugger .
- Immanuel Kant's work Critique of Pure Reason .
Entire sections of the book Der Salon by Heinrich Heine are quoted in the epilogue.
Reviews
According to Thomas Harbach on sf-radio.net, the novel combines a very authentic image of the eighteenth century with a completely abstract solution. “In order to be really entertained, the reader has to accept this apparent break ... With this very intellectual ending (Fleischhauer) breaks ... with the conventions of classic crime novels. There is no perpetrator, there are only victims, there is no motive, there is only an idea. "
First edition
- Wolfram Fleischhauer: The book in which the world disappeared , novel with 492 pages, Droemer, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-426-19672-7