Udo Samel (Narrator) — Gerold Huber, Wolfgang Hörlin, Christian Pleines, Raphael Kohlhäufl,

Achim Hoffmann, Renner Ensemble, Hans Pritschet (Music)

"Venetian Journey"
A travel diary from Franz Schubert's circle of friends – by Joseph Kreil.
Read by Udo Samel (german), literary-musical audio edition with explanations and afterword in the 100-page booklet (german).
Published by Dr. Michael Kohlhäufl, Dr. Stefan Lindinger and Dr. Miriam Pfad-Eder.


Hardly any other city has been romanticized as much in literature as Venice: poetry, love, dreams and an almost magical melancholy – leitmotifs of Venice literature are also key concepts of Romanticism. With this musical audio book, one of the first testimonies of the beginning of Venice Romanticism is made accessible again. The author of this travel diary, Joseph Kreil (1790–1855), who came from Linz, was close to the circle of friends of the great romantic composer Franz Schubert and visited Venice in the wake of the Austrian Emperor Franz I – at a time (1815/16) when the once proud republic had fallen to the Habsburgs after years of Napoleonic occupation.
Kreil's Venice Memoirs are the first milestone in the aesthetic reinvention of Venice in the early 19th century since its publication (1817). The basic features of the modern image of Venice are already emerging here: While Goethe once mocked the lagoon city as a "water nest", Venice was rediscovered after 1800 as a place of longing par excellence.

Like so many poets after him, Kreil, who was about 25 years old at the time, fell under the spell of this "miracle city". In the memory of the splendour and grandeur of the once "free" Venice, the (also politically motivated) "world-weariness" of many Schubert songs can be heard. For Kreil, too, Venice became a place of melancholy and the longing for a better world. His impressions of Venice, published here under the title Venetian Journey, are not only inspired by the unique topography, the architectural and artistic monuments and the special atmosphere of the lagoon city, but also regard the Serenissima itself as a work of art in which the human border situation between the awareness of transience and the longing for eternity is reflected.
Kreil's Venice memoirs, which come from his Italy travelogue Mnemosyne, were printed or discussed in renowned contemporary magazines after their publication. The leading philosopher of Romanticism, Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, recommended Kreil's travelogue to the poet August von Platen. His Venice sonnets, in turn, inspired Thomas Mann to write his novella Death in Venice. The fundamental idea for Platen and Thomas Mann's Venice poems, that the transience of the beautiful seems to be suspended in the eternal, is already encountered in Kreil.

At the same time, Venetian Journey is an impressive art and cultural guide through the lagoon city – hauntingly read by Udo Samel ("Babylon Berlin"), who has embodied Franz Schubert in two award-winning films ("With My Hot Tears" in 1986 and "Notturno" in 2006).

In a detailed booklet (100 pages) – with photos by Uta Poss and Uwe Moosburger – the historical, biographical and literary background of the author and text is scientifically explained and commented on by the editors.
(Further Info, Photos etc.: inside Booklet, 100 pages, german)

2 CD programme / Tracklist: