Das Unbekannte vermessen. Die Bergbaureise der Sulzbacher Prinzen Christian August und Johann Ludwig

This article examines the first part of the educational journey of the Sulzbach princes, Christian August and Johann Ludwig, designed to revitalize their territory’s mining economy by systematically documenting Europe’s leading mining regions. Analysing their handwritten travelogue, the paper demonstrates how the description is based on an epistemological practice of quantification – an attempt to understand, order, and assert control over the unfamiliar through measurement and enumeration. This paper argues, however, that this reliance on measurement and visual evidence as a tool of control fails within the disorienting, subterranean darkness of the mines. As the travellers venture deeper, the narrative record of their perceptions shifts: precise figures give way to vague estimations and expressions of awe, culminating in the experience of a space characterized by danger, the supernatural, and overwhelming scale and marking the limits of narrative representation.