Fathers in literature

German scholar Dominik Orth analyses the development of the role of the father from the Enlightenment to the present day

"In the history of literature, communication problems have always accompanied the role of fathers," says Dr Dominik Orth from the Department of Literature and Media Studies. Last semester, he therefore offered the seminar 'Father Figures - Fathers in Literature from the Enlightenment to the Present' at the University of Wuppertal.
Before the Enlightenment, the father stood for the system, the law, the idea, the prevailing conditions. The father had the greater role. "I believe that father figures became more diverse afterwards," explains the German scholar, "something new happened in dramas and narrative texts in the course of the Enlightenment in the mid-18th century, for example through the bourgeois tragedy. The father-daughter relationship in particular is then more strongly thematised than the father-son relationship." It was about the threat to family honour if the young women became involved with any men. "For example, if the men are aristocrats and the daughters come from middle-class backgrounds, then it becomes particularly difficult, as in 'Kabale und Liebe' by Schiller." The types of fathers changed in that they suddenly had a positive connotation and also showed weaknesses, for example by forgiving their daughters. This is particularly evident in Lessing's 'Miss Sara Sampson', in which the father is very emotionally characterised and often even cries. "Of course, there are also supposedly strong fathers, like in'Emilia Galotti'. The father is prepared to kill his daughter at her request so that she can uphold the family honour. And that is only possible in death. The father exercises power over his daughter's life." This ambivalence also continued in the Sturm und Drang period (1745 - 1790). In Schiller's 'The Robbers', we again see a very weak father who has hardly any strength and even experiences violence from his son. "Alongside the strong fathers, more and more weaker and more sensitive fathers appear."

When the son falls out of character

Competition often plays a role for fathers and sons in literature - as it does in life. Sons often have different ideas about life. "There's a great example from the realism period (1848 - 1890) by Theodor Storm," says Orth. "The text is called 'Hans and Heinz Kirch', a relatively short novella. It sums up this conflict situation quite well. The father believes or hopes that the son will follow in his footsteps. But the son has other plans, and this leads to a lifelong rift. They become estranged. The son is then also gone and in the end, when it is basically too late because the father has let attempts at rapprochement pass, he dies unreconciled. The conflict thus becomes tragic and remains unsolvable."

Fateful paternal affection

Strong emotions and heartfelt fatherly feelings found their way into literature in the 19th century. There are several examples of understanding fathers who are devoted to their children. "There is a text by Arthur Schnitzler, 'Liebelei', where the father wants to give his daughter the very modern right to have her own experiences, to enter into love affairs and not have to marry the next man straight away," says Orth, "but the daughter is still so stuck in the old ways of thinking that she believes she has to take her own life because the man she loves - and for whom it is just a love affair - has basically just used her and dies in a duel. She can't cope with this because she is still so attached to a romantic concept of love. The father, on the other hand, is much more progressive and shows understanding for his daughter." In another exciting text from this period, the father even forgoes a new love in favour of his daughter.

"'Twilight' is the name of this naturalistic drama by Elsa Bernstein, in which the father falls in love with his daughter's doctor. The daughter is a very weak character, you could say, she takes advantage of her father and she wants her father to stay with her all the time. She has a problem with her eyes, goes blind in the course of the drama and does not allow her father to break away from her in order to lead his own life. The father ultimately sacrifices his love in order to be there for his daughter. He knows that he will be unhappy, but he stays with her. In literature, the strong father figure is deviated from more and more over time."

Literature formulates a socially unspeakable problem

Even in modern times, father figures are a major obstacle to children's development. Franz Kafka's 'Letter to the Father', which he never sent and which is a testimony to a love-hate relationship at the beginning of the 20th century, has been preserved. In 1926, Thomas Mann's novella 'Disorder and Early Sorrow' was published, in which he describes his own family circumstances, his relationship with his six children, especially the extremely problematic relationship with his eldest son Klaus, in a barely coded manner. Literature formulates a problem that could not be expressed in society. "That's true," says Orth spontaneously, "and that is also a central function of literature. In literature, things can be said, or come up for discussion, that perhaps cannot be expressed in this way. That's also the exciting thing about this medium, that it stores social problems like an archive and makes them legible." One of the most important tasks of literary studies is to reveal this cultural knowledge. "Especially in Kafka - who is often reduced to this father-son problem - there are also some literary father figures who, in contrast to the characters in Schnitzler and Bernstein, appear very powerful, but at the same time always show weaknesses, including physical weaknesses. They are then no longer as fit, have to be cared for, or the son takes over the father's duties." Nevertheless, they acted strongly and powerfully by exercising power over their sons. Orth cites Kafka's'The Judgement' as an example, where the father sentences the son to death because he doesn't like the way the son is leading his life, and the son even carries out the sentence. Then in'The Metamorphosis', where the father cannot come to terms with his son's transformation into a beetle, he seriously injures him with an apple. "These fathers then use violence against their children, showing their power, but they are not only strong, they also show their weaknesses."

The present, absent fathers

After the Second World War, authors such as Matthias Brandt in 'Blackbird', Frank Witzel in 'Inniger Schiffbruch' and Walter Kohl in 'Leben oder gelebt werden' write about the fathers they grew up with in the 1960s and 70s. Readers no longer experience Nazi fathers, but fathers who were traumatised by the war. They don't talk at home and are described as the present, absent fathers. The expert believes that this has not changed to this day, as these silent, absent fathers can still be found in contemporary literature. "However, the reason why they remain silent changes. Often in family novels, some of the fathers' secrets or injuries have simply not been passed on, and this leads to conflicts in the families. There is a beautiful novel that was published three years ago, 'Dschinns' by Fatma Aydemir, which deals with exactly that. The father dies very young, but is still present in the novel and it is clear that there is a family secret that the father tried to hide for a long time." At the same time, of course, there is also literature from the 1980s that explicitly deals with the generation of perpetrators of the Nazi era, where the difficult relationship between children and their fathers, who were active during the Nazi era or were fellow travellers, is addressed. "There is also the term 'father literature'," says Orth, "these are often autobiographical texts."

Changing roles of fathers and children's engagement with them

The role of the father is also changing in literature in the course of emancipation. "There are examples of this, especially in children's and young adult literature," explains Orth. The very traditional role model, according to which mothers take care of things and fathers are not there, is constantly changing the closer we get to the present day. "Fathers then take on more tasks and are more present in picture books."

But the problems of adult 'children' with their now ageing fathers are also dealt with in literature. Orth explains: "There is a beautiful story by Judith Hermann, 'Acqua alta', where the adult protagonist travels to Venice to meet her parents. She finds it difficult to come to terms with the fact that they still treat her as a child and that her parents are getting weaker and can no longer look after themselves as well." Another recent text is called 'Dad' by Nora Gantenbrink. The novel is about the daughter's relationship with her absent father. "He was such a hippy father who was more concerned with himself and his drugs than with his child, and the novel describes how she deals with this. It's a story about a child trying to deal with this father figure, which really impressed me. After his death, she tries to find out what kind of person he was."

Fathers in literature have always been contradictory and yet they always deal with the same thing: the confrontation between the views of a representative of the older generation and the views of a representative of the younger generation.

Uwe Blass

Dominik Orth completed a Master's degree in Cultural Studies, German Studies and History at the Universities of Bonn and Bremen. He completed his doctorate at the University of Bremen in 2012. Since 2017, he has been working as a lecturer for special tasks in the field of Modern German Literature in the Department of German Studies at the University of Wuppertal.