Nostalgia for Novelty

This chapter is about travels. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had become an established goal for German intellectuals to travel—and particularly to Italy. Yet, to accomplish that, one had to cross the Alps. At that time, travels by horse carriages rather than mega-horse-powered rapid trains of today were a formidable physical undertaking. The travel across the Alps was not just for changing places. The whole advancement of the German intellectual projects in the eighteenth century and beyond have been fertilized by the experiences—short or long—of crossing the Alps and experiencing the sublime power of the majestic mountains followed by the aesthetic frivolity of Italy. A similar experiencing target is often an ocean—for land-dwellers its power of huge masses of water can feel awesome. In Chap. 4 , these feelings of Carus in his work are discussed, based on his travels to Italy (1828 and 1841), Rügen (1819), and Britain (1844).