Der Traum, oder: Mond-Astronomie

A still puzzling, visionary text by Johannes Kepler, accompanied by a brilliant essay by Beatrix Langner.

In a frenzy, Johannes Kepler wrote this mysterious dream narrative of a journey to the moon in two nights in 1609. In his final years, he supplemented it with an extensive astrological-mathematical commentary, but it was only published after his death. Rejected by contemporary astronomers as "bizarre" and "strange," it still poses riddles today; what is certain is that it contains far more than a bold defense of the Copernican worldview. In her accompanying essay, A Guide for Moon Travelers, Beatrix Langner recognizes Johannes Kepler as one of many dreamers and his dream as part of a "cosmic expansion of literature." She weaves a connection that spans from Pythagoras to Salvador Dalí, revealing the fascination of the moon as a topos of intellectual history, which Kepler tenderly processed in his account, and on whose foundation Nietzsche's truth can be found: "The problem of science cannot be recognized on the ground of science.".