Mercator Matinée:
Oceano nox - force of nature, habitat, space of destiny, Victor Hugo, Jules Michelet and the sea

Reading and lecture by Wolfgang Schwarzer and Dirk Schäfer

Ticket reservations recommended! Tel: 0203 28 3 2640 or ksm@stadt-duisburg.de

On November 23, 2025 at 11:15 a.m., the Kultur- und Stadthistorisches Museum in cooperation with the DEUTSCH-FRANZÖSISCHE GESELLSCHAFT DUISBURG E. V. for this year's closing event of the Mercator Matinée.

It is the experience of the sea that connects the historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874) and the great writer Victor Hugo (1802-1885). Michelet's "The Sea" (1861) and Hugo's "The Workers of the Sea" (1866), published at the same time, approach their subject from the perspective of the traveling and at the same time poetic scientist on the one hand and the writer exiled to the island of Guernsey on the other. The tension between the curiosity of the scientific traveler and the novel's passionate portrayal of a tremendous trial of strength between man and nature characterizes Dirk Schäfer's reading and Wolfgang Schwarzer's lecture.