Winfrid Georg Sebald è nato nel 1944, ha lasciato la Germania a venticinque anni non potendo più tollerare quel silenzio con il quale la generazione dei padri continuava a nascondere i crimini e le sofferenze provocate dal nazismo e da una guerra devastante, incapaci di confrontarsi con un passato. Emigra quindi in Inghilterra, dove insegna letteratura tedesca fino alla morte, avvenuta nel dicembre 2001. Aver lasciato, però, la sua terra natia non ha voluto per lui dire dimenticare, voltar pagina, ma al contrario ripercorrere vicende che hanno lasciato segni e ferite indelebile in chi le ha vissute.
Le tragedie del ‘900, soprattutto quelle tedesche, vengono riviste con gli occhi di chi le ha subite o di chi ne è scampato, come in alcuni racconti degli Emigrati oppure, come nel caso di Jacques Austerlitz, di chi cerca di ricomporre la propria identità ricostruendo la storia della propria origine, ma che continuamente si scontra con la difficoltà della memoria di mantenere in vita ciò che invece va dissolvendosi nella dimenticanza.
“ Persino adesso che sto cercando di ricordare – dice Austerlitz – (..) l ’oscurità non si dirada, anzi si fa più thick at the thought of how little we can hold, how many things fall into oblivion with every life constantly erased, how the world is empty, so to speak alone, since the stories related to countless places and objects in themselves unable to remember, are not heard, told or recorded by any other ... "
Sebald is not jew but also talks about the victims of Nazism describing is not telling all the atrocities they suffered in the camps, since the consequences, especially psychological that over time rather than relieve become more acute (and I'm thinking to our Primo Levi): Sebald's characters, in fact, subject to the power of a "Inexorable memory." Memory is, for this writer, a faculty always problematic, necessary and painful at the same time, because while it encourages the construction of his identity, but it can endanger his mental balance.
Ripped parents during the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia and sent to England along with other children, Austerlitz struggling to reconcile his story after years of total darkness. And the past comes together slowly harrowing and relentless. The individual course of Austerlitz Sebald becomes the occasion for a reflection on history, the nature of time, sull'evanescenza and permanence of the past, the incomplete knowledge.
In his monologues in the presence of the narrator, Austerlitz recounts his life, beginning with childhood spent in Wales in the house of the preacher Elias. In the college where he goes to 
study it is revealed his real name - until then had thought to call Dafydd Elias, but can not find any indication of his real family. Only forty years later, in 1998, manages to find his nurse in Prague, which tells the story of his family, before the arrival of German troops as he was loaded on a train to England, as the father was able to flee to Paris and his mother was instead deported to Theresienstadt, being Jewish.
study it is revealed his real name - until then had thought to call Dafydd Elias, but can not find any indication of his real family. Only forty years later, in 1998, manages to find his nurse in Prague, which tells the story of his family, before the arrival of German troops as he was loaded on a train to England, as the father was able to flee to Paris and his mother was instead deported to Theresienstadt, being Jewish. But the child will be forever marked. Will study or travel as he wishes, but will always shoulder the weight of an immense loneliness.
And when riaffiorerà the memory of when he was forced to abandon his family to escape from certain death, will be a very painful
"I just remember that, when they saw the child sitting on the bench I became aware of anxiety with deaf, deaf to the devastation, the devastation that had resulted in the abandonment of my long years, and a terrible weariness came over me at the thought of never having been really alive or just coming into the world, so to say, the day of death. "
The returns back to the past memories but at the same time does not heal that sense of disorientation that accompanied him all his life. One of the passages more intense, Austerlitz says: "For traced back as far as I thought, I have always felt like no place in reality, as if they existed at all" .
The research of the past will become obsessive, relentless. Visit museums, research libraries is to find all available documents on the war. Carefully study each photo, each card is available. Then he left for Paris and continues to investigate for news of his father fled there, and probably deported there.
This book as Sebald's other books is full of photographs, as if the images are essential to support the words. We know that eventually everything will be useless, nothing will remain of the past, the truth, as well as of human destiny, only a few fragments. So reminded of the mighty fortresses described in the first part of the novel, much like white elephants.
What Sebald is a novel, whose keynote is aching melancholy and pessimism. course should help us reflect on how historical events are in full symbiosis with the individual's life. The historical event passes, but the pain that caused it remains indelible in people's lives with which everyone will have to face forever.
Austerlitz's story made me think as individuals we have responsibilities as well as strong. If we can do little to divert the course of history, something we always do in our microcosm, even in times as devastating as the Nazis. I came to think that if Austerlitz had found another family to receive more emotionally valid even his life may have been different. Austerlitz is unable to understand what had led, in fact, the Elias family to take care of a four and a half years, what was he, but it's a supposition. " without children as they were, perhaps hoping to be able to counter the petrify their feelings." His life with them will be a hell lot worse and the separation that had been so traumatic and devastating.
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