Movie Night
Measuring the World (Die Vermessung der Welt)

Fri, 03/31/2017
6:30 PM Goethe-Institut Washington

Germany, 2011/12, color, 119 min., German with English subtitles, Director: Detlev Buck

At the start of the 19th Century: two men set out to explore the world. One focuses on the visible and the other on the imaginable. Alexander von Humboldt, an offspring of a noble family, travels to South America to measure the continent and to discover a different way of life. Carl Friedrich Gauß, who comes from a poor family, conducts research at his desk at home and becomes a famous mathematician. Eventually, the now-famous Germans meet – they are old and have not necessarily found happiness. For the film-adaptation of this international bestseller, which is a rare occurrence in recent German literature, the novelist Daniel Kehlmann was personally involved in the writing of the script.