Università, mediocrità, infelicità. Gli scienziati tormentati di Daniel Kehlmann

University, mediocrity, unhappiness. Daniel Kehlmann’s tormented scientists The Austrian writer Daniel Kehlmann (born in 1975) has achieved worldwide fame with the novel Die Vermessung der Welt (2005), whose main characters are two scientists: the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß and the explorer Alexander von Humboldt. But well before this success other scientists, mostly tormented, populated the works of Kehlmann, for example mathematicians in the novels Mahlers Zeit (1999)and Der fernste Ort (2001). And because in German language (and for the Germans) even those who deal with literature and art are ‘scientists’, here are two more examples mocked by Kehlmann: the ‘Literaturwissenschaftler’ in the story Unter der Sonne (1998 ) and the ‘Kunstwissenschaftler’ in the novel Ich und Kaminski (2003). This analysis deals with the stature and psychological distortions of all these characters, focusing on the ‘scientists’ in Kehlmann’s lesser-known books, almost leaving aside the novel Die Vermessung der Welt.