Baron Munchausen returns with visions of mobile architecture and
journeys to sausage moons, in this previously untranslated novel from
Paul Scheerbart
It is 1905 and a raging stupidity is holding sway over Europe. As an
18-year-old Clarissa and her family take refuge on the icy shores of
Lake Wannsee, the legendary Baron Munchausen makes an unexpected
appearance at their door. Returning to German society after a century of
absence at the ripe age of 180, the Baron is cajoled into presenting his
impressions of the World Fair in Melbourne, Australia, to a select
gathering of Berlin celebrities. Over the course of a week, the
sprightly Baron arrives nightly by sleighmobile to combat the dreary
days with a series of fantastical visions and theories: he discusses
mobile architecture, the role of technology in the arts and the need for
art to ignore nature in its quest to discover new planetary organs and
senses; the new household miracles of vacuum tubes for cleaning and
potato-peeling machines; the repressive function of sexuality; and the
need for progressive taxation. His tales of Melbourne eventually take
his audience from a restaurant in the ocean depths to the dwellings of
mineral giants in mountain caverns, before culminating in a spiritual
voyage to outer space among sausage moons and sun-skins.
Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) was a novelist, playwright, poet,
critic, draftsman, visionary, proponent of glass architecture and
would-be inventor of perpetual motion. Dubbed the "wise clown" by his
contemporaries, he opposed the naturalism of his day with fantastical
fables and interplanetary satires that would influence Expressionist
authors and the German Dada movement, and which helped found German
science fiction.
