Talk:W. G. Sebald

message: I notice that Sebald redirects here. Given that there was a saint of the same name (a.k.a. Sebaldus; there is a rather prominent church in Nuremberg dedicated to this saint) this probably calls for a disambiguation rather than a redirect. However, we don't currently seem to have an article on the saint. - Jmabel | Talk 22:42, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Redirect issue 

message: This article is plagued with flamboyant and poorly-written -at least, when we take into consideration the fact that this is meant to be an encyclopaedia- sentences. The following quotation is a good example of this flaw, as it meanders without any direction.
"The fact that Sebald, a professional literary academic, managed to construct all this in minute detail and with Bach-like grandeur, then foist it on his unsuspecting fellow de-constructionists, illustrates another key to understanding the oeuvre.... an inscrutably dry, mischievous sense of humour!"
Ellipsis? An exclamation mark? Who is editing this article? A twelve year old with a fondness for Oscar Wilde?
Another point: the phrase "a professional literary academic" is ridiculous. If someone is in fact an academic, it means that he or she is a functional part of what we call "academia" and is -therefore- professional. There are no "amateur" academics.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.86.172.147 (talk) 27 November 2007
You're right, and I took that sentence out. I also did some more surgery on the article, notably removing the list of works. It seemed like unnecessary detail to me, overwhelming the informative-prose part of the article. I know that's a significant chunk of text to wipe out though, so I'm noting it here in case people disagree and want to put it back. Dreamyshade (talk) 09:41, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It seems bizarre to me to have an extensive list of "influences" (un-referenced at that!) and not a basic bibliography of the author's works in English. I have added this, in order of their publication in English translation, with the original German titles (where applicable) in parens. Note that the link to the Davidson bibliography is now seriously out of date. Darcykildare (talk) 20:25, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poor writing 

message: Surely, Sebald studied at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, not at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Norvo (talk) 01:26, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alma Mater 

message: The article doesn't mention Sebald's time at the University of Hamburg. The German article states that he earned his professoral degree there.--78.51.201.160 (talk) 19:27, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  University of Hamburg 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I have noticed some factual inaccuracies in this article: that he was one of three children; that from "1948 to 1963, he lived in Sonthofen"; these are contradicted by interviews and other authoritative sources. I am concerned there could be more factual errors and am looking for citations for the various other assertions in the "life" section.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tidaleffect (talk • contribs) 19:58, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: His time in Sonthofen was supported with a citation; why did you remove it? Sebald lived in Sonthofen from 1948 or 1952 until 1963 and attended primary school there; there are abundant references for this. I am concerned  there could be more erroneous removal of cited facts or additions of howlers like "in 1967 the three-year-old Sebald visited Munich". -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 05:06, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  Why do you think that citation is to an authoritative source? -- Tidaleffect (talk) 06:25, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

text:  The citation you note is contradicted by Sebald himself in an interview discussing his childhood: "Wertach was a village of about a thousand inhabitants, in a valley covered in snow for five months a year. It was a silent place. I was brought up largely by my grandfather, because my father only returned from a prisoner-of-war camp in 1947, and worked in the nearest small town, so I hardly ever saw him. I lived in that place until I was about eight." This is from the Guardian interview by Maya Jaggi published Dec 21, 2001. He says he lived in Wertach until he was 8 years old. In 1948 he would have been 3 or 4. It also disagrees with the source I've quoted below which says he moved to Sonthofen at the end of 1952 -- Tidaleffect (talk) 12:17, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

text: On visiting Munich in 1947. This is stated in his obituary in the New York Times. "He first visited Munich in 1947 as a 3-year-old with his parents. While their village in the foothills of the Bavarian Alps escaped the war undamaged, Allied bombing devastated Munich. 'You might have a few buildings standing intact and between them an avalanche of scree that had come down,' he recalled. 'And people didn't comment on it.' He would not have thought to ask about the debris, and if he had, his parents would have evaded the question. 'It seemed to me the natural condition of cities,' he said, 'houses between mountains of rubble.'" I don't think it is essential to include this, but it seems to me to have equivalent standing as the sentence in the current page, "Sebald was shown images of the Holocaust while at school in Oberstdorf and recalled that no one knew how to explain what they had just seen", which is given without context and is also derived from interviews with him. -- Tidaleffect (talk) 12:49, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

text: I've found a citation to support that he studied English and German at Freiburg and giving a more exact timeline: "Max then studied German and English for four semesters at the Alberg-Ludswigs Universitat in Freiburg im Breisgau, from autumn 1963 to summer 1965." This is on page 45 of Saturn's Moons. -- Tidaleffect (talk) 15:19, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

text: A chronology in the same book records "October 1965-summer 1966: studies at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland)" on page 623. The same page of this chronology also has a note "autumn 1966-summer 1968: Lektor at the University of Manchester"; this source could probably resolve the questions about the timelines above. -- Tidaleffect (talk) 15:37, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

text: Is there also an error on the current page here? it says "Sebald studied German and English literature first at the University of Freiburg and then at the University of Fribourg, where he received a degree in 1965" -- Tidaleffect (talk) 15:49, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  According to page 623 of the Saturn's Moons chronology: in July 1966 he receives his licence es lettres degree (summa cum laude) -- Tidaleffect (talk) 15:49, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Factual inaccuracies and citation errors 

message: Why is there a reference to the page of a documentary filmmaker Grant Gee prominently featured in the life section? This seems like promotion of that page and inappropriate for a section on Sebald's life. -- Tidaleffect (talk) 16:30, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Other issues with the life section 

message: From the page: "His concern with the Holocaust is expressed in several books delicately tracing his own biographical connections with Jews." Is this statement a confusion of the fictional narrator of the Emigrants and Austerlitz with the real person, W.G. Sebald, who is the topic of this article? With no citation this sentence should be removed. -- Tidaleffect (talk) 20:39, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Issues with the work section 

message: This article seems so poorly put together, but specifically one thing that crosses me is that there's no explination of the movie. In fact it links to a subsection of this article! Not a single explanation of the film, just a "yeah it's related to the album." But the album was made for the movie! Nothing about the movie is made clear at all! Dare I say it's almost pathetic. 174.92.103.19 (talk) 05:24, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: What movie are you talking about? This article is about a German novelist, who was not involved in movie making. --  Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 06:05, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Awful summary