For me, his most important contribution is his essay on post war German literature and how it failed to adequately reflect the mass bombing of German cities. (Title: On the natural history of destruction / Luftkrieg und Literatur)
It made me better understand what I felt was wrong about how young Germans are introduced to literature and national heritage. Contrast Sebald with Günther Grass. It's shocking to see how popular Grass' or Andersch's brand of literature is, and how forgotten Sebald already is in Germany.
It also made me realize that so many stories of personal loss and tragedy will die untold with my father's generation. I think the denial of suffering Sebald discusses is partly why liberalism still has a difficult stand in Germany, and why Sebald found greater freedom abroad. It took my father 62 years to tell me what happened to his 3 sisters when their refugee train from Saxony to the Ruhr Valley got attacked from the air. There are just so few stories like his published. This must have made it so hard to heal for the war generations. Sebald understood this suffering from a deeply moving, human perspective.
OP may find it illuminating to read Sebald's take on post war Germany and Heiner Müller's take at the same time. That's how I currently try to make sense of all this.
For me, his most important contribution is his essay on post war German literature and how it failed to adequately reflect the mass bombing of German cities. (Title: On the natural history of destruction / Luftkrieg und Literatur)
It made me better understand what I felt was wrong about how young Germans are introduced to literature and national heritage. Contrast Sebald with Günther Grass. It's shocking to see how popular Grass' or Andersch's brand of literature is, and how forgotten Sebald already is in Germany.
It also made me realize that so many stories of personal loss and tragedy will die untold with my father's generation. I think the denial of suffering Sebald discusses is partly why liberalism still has a difficult stand in Germany, and why Sebald found greater freedom abroad. It took my father 62 years to tell me what happened to his 3 sisters when their refugee train from Saxony to the Ruhr Valley got attacked from the air. There are just so few stories like his published. This must have made it so hard to heal for the war generations. Sebald understood this suffering from a deeply moving, human perspective.
OP may find it illuminating to read Sebald's take on post war Germany and Heiner Müller's take at the same time. That's how I currently try to make sense of all this.