Alfred Weber`s essay `The Civil Servant`

H IS T ORY OF T H E H UMA N S C I E N C E S
Vol. 20 No. 3
© 2007 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
pp. 41–63
[20:3; 41–63; DOI: 10.1177/0952695107079334]
Alfred Weber’s essay ‘The Civil
Servant’ and Kafka’s ‘In the
Penal Colony’: the evidence of
an influence
AUSTIN HARRINGTON
ABSTRACT
In 1977 a German literary scholar, Astrid Lange-Kirchheim, published
an article announcing an astonishing discovery: credible evidence exists
to suggest that Kafka’s famous disturbing short story, ‘In the Penal
Colony’, published in 1919 but first written in 1914, echoes and
reworks, in several of its key images and turns of phrase, elements of
an essay published in 1910 in the German literary magazine, Die neue
Rundschau, bearing the title ‘Der Beamte’ (‘The Civil Servant’, or ‘The
Official’ or ‘The Functionary’) by Alfred Weber, younger brother of
Max Weber. Most Kafka scholars today accept Lange-Kirchheim’s
findings and recognize the importance of ‘Der Beamte’ as at least one
crucial reference point for Kafka’s writing. Yet little wider awareness
of the connection seems to exist among historians of sociology and
other scholars of the history of the human sciences. This article
comprises a summary of Lange-Kirchheim’s analysis together with a
complete annotated translation of ‘Der Beamte’ by Alfred Weber in
English.
Key words bureaucracy, Franz Kafka,
Alfred Weber, Max Weber
‘In the penal colony’,
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In 1977 a German literary scholar, Astrid Lange-Kirchheim, published an
article announcing an astonishing discovery: credible evidence exists to suggest
that Kafka’s famous disturbing short story, ‘In the penal colony’, published
in 1919 but first written in 1914, echoes and reworks, in several of its key
images and turns of phrase, elements of an essay published in 1910 in the
German literary magazine, Die neue Rundschau, bearing the title ‘Der
Beamte’ (‘The civil servant’, or ‘The official’ or ‘The functionary’) by Alfred
Weber, younger brother of Max Weber.1 Lange-Kirchheim underlined two
factors suggesting that an appearance of affinity between the two texts might
be more than coincidental. First, Alfred Weber held a professorship at the
German University of Prague from October 1904 until the summer of 1907,
and by chance was assigned by the Faculty of Law to chair the panel that
convened to examine Kafka’s doctoral dissertation for the faculty in June
1906 (at a time when Kafka was not yet an internationally famous author).
Second, substantial documentation shows that Die neue Rundschau was one
of the few literary magazines that Kafka read on a relatively regular and
continuous basis. Lange-Kirchheim argued that these two facts make it at
least likely that when Kafka began writing ‘In the Penal Colony’ in 1914 he
would have recognized his former examiner’s name in the pages of the
magazine and may very well have read Alfred Weber’s essay on the ‘Beamte’
at some point after 1910.2
Lange-Kirchheim noted that a link between the two texts immediately
seems to suggest itself from the one word that dominates both from the outset:
der Apparat, ‘the apparatus’. Where Weber repeatedly writes of ‘an immense
apparatus rising up in our life with a tendency to pervade more and more of
our free and organic facets of existence’ (98) – the apparatus of bureaucracy
– Kafka opens with the words:
‘Es ist ein eigentümlicher Apparat’, sagte der Offizier zu dem
Forschungsreisdenden und überblickte mit einem gewissermassen
bewundernden Blick den ihm doch wohlbekannten Apparat. (199)
‘It’s a remarkable piece of apparatus’, said the officer to the explorer
and surveyed with a certain air of admiration the apparatus which was
after all quite familiar to him. (169)3
Where Weber writes of a ‘gigantic mechanism’ (101), of ‘a gigantic robotic
Something’ (ein riesenhaftes rechnerisches Etwas) (99), Kafka writes of a
‘machine’ (200/170) capable of ‘precisely calculated movements’ (. . . Bewegungen genau berechnet) (204/173), operated by a zealous officer or
‘mechanic’ (200/169). Weber describes an ‘immense construction’ (ungeheurer Bau) (112) of bureaucracy, while Kafka’s visitor to the colony – ‘the
explorer’ or ‘traveller’ – ‘gaze[s] up at the structure’ as at ‘a huge affair’
(grosser Aufbau) (203/172). Weber writes of civil servants being ‘chained’
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
(104) to the apparatus, while Kafka describes a condemned man chained
down to the ‘bed’ of the apparatus and punished for neglect of his duty.
Weber writes of people who ‘creep into the apparatus’, into its ‘chambers, its
compartments and sub-compartments’, ‘yearn to make a career for themselves in it’ (99) and ‘climb up its ladders’ (. . . wie sie einkriecht . . . die
Leitern auf aufkriecht) (99), while Kafka’s officer ‘creep[s] beneath the
structure’ and ‘climb[s] its ladder’ (. . . während der Offizier bald unter den
. . . Apparat kroch, bald auf eine Leiter stieg) (199/169). Weber’s apparatus
‘lays over’ and ‘draws over’ (100) the ‘field of life’ (100) as over ‘unploughed
land’ (100), on which it casts a ‘poison of schematization’ (98), while Kafka’s
contraption contains a ‘harrow’ (die Egge) which ploughs and inscribes the
letters of the law into the body of the condemned man. Weber’s apparatus is
worshipped like a ‘mystical wonderful Something’ (ein mytisch wunderbares
Etwas) (110), while Kafka’s officer gazes wondrously at the marvellous
creation of the former commandant and is ‘a devoted admirer of the apparatus’ (200/169). Weber’s functionaries become ‘absorbed’ and ‘sucked’ (98)
into the ‘catacombs of their existence’ (112), while Kafka’s officer at the end
of the story becomes caught in the mechanism of the contraption, his body
mangled by the needles of the harrow, and dies.
Lange-Kirchheim argues that in these and other instances Kafka graphically
literalizes images that appear in Alfred Weber’s text in more abstract connections. Lange-Kirchheim does not, however, claim that Weber’s text could have
been Kafka’s only or single most important trigger or initial influence. Scholars
have also pointed to other sources, including particularly Octave Mirabeau’s
novel The Torture Garden (Le Jardin des supplices) of 1899, published in
German translation in 1901, as well as the once widely read Handbook for
Criminal Investigators (1893) by Hans Gross, professor of law at Prague at
the turn of the century and the central biographical subject for Kafka’s figure
of the examining magistrate in The Trial. But most Kafka scholars accept
Lange-Kirchheim’s findings today and recognize the importance of ‘Der
Beamte’ as at least one crucial reference point for Kafka’s writing.4
Little wider awareness of the connection, by contrast, seems to exist among
scholars and teachers of sociology today.5 For years scholars have been
content to evoke affinities between Kafka’s and Max Weber’s portraits of
bureaucracy, without ever being able to establish a link between the two
writers at anything like a level of conscious authorial intentionality. LangeKirchheim’s findings indicate that it is in fact Alfred Weber, not Max Weber,
who suggests such a link, despite the fact that the younger Weber brother
seems not to have noticed Kafka’s allusions to his essay later in life – and
despite the fact that the younger Alfred’s statement lacks all the depth, objectivity and scientific rigour of the elder Max’s analysis.
In the following pages of this contribution, my concern is to bring these
important findings to a wider audience of readers. I continue first with a
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summary of some of the most striking correspondences of phrase between
the two texts and then follow with a complete annotated translation of Alfred
Weber’s original essay in English.
KAFKA AS A READER OF ALFRED WEBER
Lange-Kirchheim notes Alfred Weber’s spatial image of ‘a great mountain
range’ (101) of bureaucracies and industrial formations ‘rising up’ like
‘fantastic crystalline forms’ (101) over a more natural horizontal ground.
Weber writes of ‘monopolistic giant organisms’ folding over into one another
like a ‘canopy’ (100–1). This image seems to reappear in Kafka’s picture of a
guillotine-like contraption rising up above the supine body of the condemned.
Where Weber describes a ‘bureaucratic edifice’ and a great ‘bureaucratic head’
rising up over a ‘labouring body’ (101–2) of toiling workers, Kafka’s contraption has an ‘upper part’ and a ‘lower part’ or ‘bed’ to which the condemned
man is chained (201/170). Weber describes a ‘scaffolding’ (Gestange) (99)
with ‘cogs’ and ‘gears’ (Getriebe) (100), while Kafka evokes a scaffolded
contraption with ‘four rods of brass’ (Messingstangen) (203/172) and ‘cogwheels’ (Räderwerk) (203/172). Weber also notably echoes his brother’s
reference to the ‘steel-hard shell’ (stahlhartes Gehäuse) in The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism, published five years previously. Where Alfred
Weber writes of ‘grey barren uniform shells’ (grauen öden gleichartigen
Gehäuse) (100) and ‘the cage’ (der Käfig) that has ‘become our fate’ (112),
Kafka’s officer speaks of a colony ‘so perfect’ (so in sich geschlossen), so well
organized, that any successor to the old commandant will ‘find it impossible
to alter anything, at least for many years to come’ (201/170).
Weber writes of a ‘dead system of soulless substitutions and bit-by-bit
repetitions’ (99) oriented to ‘dedicated clerical tasks’ (schreib-und anordnungsverwendet) (101). Kafka’s officer describes the cog-wheels of the
apparatus as being ‘regulated according to the inscription’ on the body of
the condemned (das Räderwerk, welches . . . nach der Zeichnung . . . angeordnet [wird]) (210/178). Weber writes of the conquest of a ‘free and naturally evolved existence’ (98) and of the colonization of a social landscape that
once lay ‘beneath or beyond the threshold of mechanization’ (100). Kafka
seems to echo the image in the ploughing motion of the harrow over the flesh
of the condemned, like a body of nature subjected to machine cultivation.
Weber writes of the ‘schematism of the bureaus’ (103) and of a ‘body of
officials pressed into a uniform mass of men’ (111), while Kafka writes of the
incision of duty on the body of the negligent guard. Weber’s apparatus
forms an ‘impeccably centralized’ (104) ‘backbone’ (99, 109), while Kafka’s
officer describes the shape of the harrow as fitting perfectly ‘to the human
form’ (208/176). Weber writes of the ‘revolutionizing’ (umwälzen) of life by
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
‘rational organization’ (100), while Kafka’s officer speaks of the turning,
rolling movement (Umwälzung) (212/178) of the condemned under the action
of the harrow. Weber writes of the ‘convulsions and pains’ (Zuckungen und
Schmerzen) (102) inflicted on the lower classes by industrialization, while
Kafka’s condemned man ‘quivers’ from the ‘very rapid vibrations’ (sehr
schnelle Zuckungen) (204/173) of the bed of the apparatus.
Weber writes of a population of ‘climbers’ (111) with a ‘lifelong attachment to the apparatus’ (104), ‘graduating from one position to another’ (104)
and from ‘one little warm spot to another’ (99). Kafka’s officer, similarly,
discharges his duties in unswerving loyalty to the directives of the former
commandant, cherishes his master’s creation as ‘the work of a life-time’
(217/183), and succeeds him at a young age to become judge of the colony.
Weber writes of a German nation’s continuous ‘need’ and ‘consciousness of
authority’ (110), while Kafka evokes a juridical apparatus functioning
continuously across changes in its personnel. Weber writes of the inscription
of a man’s duty on the door of his office (109), while Kafka imagines its
imprint on the body of the condemned. Weber writes of the ‘vocational
philistine’ (106) living in a ‘paradise of narrow-mindedness’ (Paradies der
braven Enge) (107), a ‘slave of his stupid little task’ (111), while Kafka writes
of ‘the officer’s narrow mind’ (der beschränkte Kopf des Offiziers) (208/176).
Weber’s civil servant is ‘addressed by nothing but his title and rank’ (110),
while Kafka’s nameless officer is known only by his function in the colony.
Weber’s functionaries stand before an ‘abyss of vocational mindlessness’
(Berufsverstumpfung . . . Abgrund der Verstumpfung) (106, 111), while Kafka’s
condemned man is ‘a stupid-looking, wide-mouthed creature’ (ein stumpsinniger, breitmäuliger Mensch) (199/169). Weber writes of the ‘stifling air’
(Stickluft) (107) of the corridors of bureaucracy, while Kafka’s condemned
man has a ‘gag of felt’ (Filzstumpf) stuffed into his mouth to ‘muffle’ and
‘stifle’ (gedämpft . . . ersticken) his sighs (218/184). Weber writes of a people
working from ‘blind zeal’ (blinden Eifer) (106), while Kafka’s officer
performs his duties with ‘great zeal’ (grossen Eifer) (200/169). Weber writes
of a German people’s lack of a ‘golden handrail’ (goldenes Geländer) (106)
able to guide them away from the morass of vocational atrophy, while Kafka’s
officer speaks nostalgically of a time when so many people gathered to watch
the executions that it was necessary to construct ‘a strong railing’ (ein starkes
Geländer) (219/185) around the apparatus. Weber’s functionary ‘washes his
hands’ (111) each morning before work, while Kafka’s officer is obsessed
with the cleansing action of the mechanism, designed to rinse away the blood
of the condemned with each incision of the needles.
Weber writes of the ‘killing off’ (98, 115) and ‘impoverishment’ (110) of the
individual and of individual self-reliance in the machine. His functionary is
‘lost’, ‘pushed’, ‘pulled’, ‘absorbed’, ‘sunk’ and ‘sucked’ into the apparatus and
its ‘countless desolate chambers’ (112). Weber writes of a ‘dead mechanism
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absorbing all forces of the free life’ (99), while Kafka’s officer devotes ‘all [his]
energy to maintain [the apparatus] as it is’ (216/178). Weber laments a ‘vanishing of the personality’ (Verschwinden der Persönlichkeit) (111), while Kafka
writes that ‘sometimes the officer’s head vanished altogether from sight
inside the Designer’ (manchmal verschwand der Kopf des Offiziers völlig im
Zeichner) (228/192). Weber’s officials live a living death in the apparatus,
while Kafka’s officer appears to live like a dead part of the machine, almost
identical with its existence, even before his fate at its needles. Weber’s
functionaries ‘mistake the dead empty spectre of the apparatus for the spirit
of the time’ (104), while Kafka’s officer’s eyes continue to stare in the moment
of death ‘with the same expression as in life’ (234/197). Weber writes of the
‘grotesque inner meaninglessness’ (113) of the present after the decay of the old
religious foundation of life so important to his brother’s study of the Protestant ethic – while Kafka’s dead officer at the end of the story, his forehead
impaled by an iron spike, reveals ‘no sign . . . of the promised redemption’
(234/197).
Weber cites his brother’s reference to Germany’s ‘metaphysics of officialdom’ (Metaphysik des Beamtentums). German people, he proclaims, practise
an ‘idolatry of officialdom’ (Götzendienst vor dem Beamtentum) (110), a
‘theocratization of the civil servant’ (110), bow down ‘in sacrifice’ ‘before the
altars of their sacred idols’ (111). Weber’s apparatus is blessed with ‘mystical
powers’ (110), while Kafka evokes an archaic ritual sacrifice which spellbinds
the people. Weber’s apparatus is shrouded in a ‘nimbus’ (109) of religiosity,
‘consecrated’ with ‘clouds of incense’ (111), while Kafka’s colony’s penal
code has the aura of a state religion. Weber writes of the appearance of
bureaucratic ‘infallibility’ (110), while Kafka’s officer’s ‘guiding principle’ is
that ‘guilt is never to be doubted’ (206/175). Weber at one point portrays the
apparatus addressing its servants in direct speech: ‘You are mine . . . I can
order you, promote or demote you . . . tell you your occupation . . . call on
you to represent me’ (115–16) – a rhetorical technique of personifying the
thing and reifying the person uniquely perfected by Kafka.
Lange-Kirchheim also notes how Weber repeatedly refers to ‘the apparatus’
with minimal adjectival attribution, as with ‘existence in the apparatus’ or
‘bondage to the apparatus’ – a device again highly characteristic of Kafka’s
writing. Weber’s ‘immense construction’ (ungeheuerer Bau) (112) of the
bureaus also seems to point forward to Kafka’s story ‘Der Bau’. Weber’s
constant use of the words ‘gigantic’ and ‘enormous’ (Riesen-, riesenhaft)
makes us think of Kafka’s theme of the towering edifice in The Trial (on which
he was also working in 1914) and The Castle. Riesenhaft is also an attribute
of the figure of the father in Brief an den Vater. Father Bendemann is ‘a giant’
(ein Riese), while Gregor Samsa is astonished at the ‘enormous size’ (Riesengrösse) of his father’s boots. Even Kafka’s key word Verwandlung occurs in
Weber’s text, as when Weber writes of the ‘bureaucratic metamorphosis’
(bureaukratische Verwandlung) (100) of the traditional social landscape.
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
Lange-Kirchheim speculates that Kafka might even have thought of the
figure of the explorer as standing for the personality of Weber himself. But
she notes that in contrast to Weber’s call for restitution of the ‘worth of the
person’ (113) through ‘liberation from the apparatus’ (115), Kafka’s soldier
and condemned man, despite finally escaping from the apparatus, continue
to subsist at the end of the story like half-animal natures, still below the
threshold of any civilized life. Kafka also in general appears to couple order
and regimentation with the very elements that Weber sees as offering release
from the machine – with moral, artistic and religious values and ‘Culture’.
Doubt seems to be cast over the integrity of the reign of the new more liberal
commandant. Where Weber writes of an imperative to abolish the old idolatry
without killing ‘the man himself’ (wir wollen milde sein . . .) (114), Kafka’s
officer disparages ‘the new mild doctrine’ (die neue milde Richtung) (215/182)
of the new commandant. The reader is left throughout the story with a
sense of the powerlessness, paralysis and complicity of the explorer in the
action unfolding before him. Like the greatest of the European modernist
writers from Musil to Beckett, Kafka casts a note of sceptical irony over
Weber’s humanistic vision of the ‘soul’, ‘spirit’ and ‘vitality’ of the self and its
struggle for liberation from the shackles of bureaucracy and rationalization.
ALFRED WEBER
‘The civil servant’ (1910)
What follows is not addressed to those masses of people for whom life’s
highest state consists in a nice well-ordered existence, to people who think –
if they venture to think philosophically – that a divine system of life inheres
in this everyday order with a warm little pocket reserved specially for them.
Nor is my discourse likely to be heard by those ever swelling ranks of people
who think that it is on this nice idea of ‘order’ that cultural development and
the inclusion of the weaker sections of the population depend. Rather, my
words are meant for those who feel that great things in life and history
depend not on mechanism and mechanization but on an unleashing of the
creative powers of the individual, for people who feel that collective life
depends on individuality and that only through the creation of things that
are most unique and incommensurable can the nation and its great children
truly unfold themselves – for people who see every individual part as essential to the life of the whole and every death of a part as dangerous to the
psychic growth of the whole.
People who sense that a common feeling of culture is at stake today see
something monstrously problematic growing up around us. They see an
immense ‘apparatus’ rising up in our life with a tendency to pervade more
and more of our more native, free and organic facets of existence, and to suck
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us into its chambers, into its compartments and sub-compartments. They
sense a poison of schematization radiating out from this apparatus, killing off
everything foreign to it, everything individual and organically independent,
and installing a gigantic robotic Something, a dead system of soulless substitutions and bit-by-bit repetitions that spread over all work and all creating.
Such people may think it possible for a man to gain inner distance from this
apparatus, to detach himself from it at least inwardly and mentally; yet they
look with horror on a population and a psyche that adapts itself to the apparatus, creeps into its chambers, its compartments and sub-compartments and
makes itself comfortable and at home in it, clambers up its ladders6 from one
little warm spot to another, and shrivels into a yearning to be cared for by it
and to make a career in it. They see a dead mechanism absorbing and dissolving all forces of the free life as the future of our civilization.
Only one aspect of this gigantic problem will be discussed here, to do less
with the constitution and inner form of the new mechanization of life than
with the question of how to rescue ourselves from it, with the cultural
foundations of life that lead beyond its purview, and with its significance
for our middle and upper social strata, our office-workers and civil servants
whose absorption into its operation has created today’s bureaucratization
of society.
I It is true that elements of our society, such as the state and the church,
have been organized in massive structures for a long time. Since the 14th and
15th centuries we have experienced these elements as firmly wrought rational
organisms, making up a kind of ‘apparatus’ with a backbone that held them
together and enabled them to function. This apparatus laid the foundation
for our bureaus and thus our bureaucratization. But this rational mechanism
at first only touched our life like a slender scaffolding, only diffusely, without
affecting any of life’s details. Most everyday existence, most economic and
social life, most daily work and most individual action in the community
eluded bureaucratic regulation. Organized on a small scale, ‘informally’,
through kin and neighbourhood relations, through feeling complexes, and
not according to an economic principle, most daily work was not capable of
bureaucratization. Like ‘unploughed land’, it lay beneath or beyond the
threshold of mechanization and the bustle of machinery.
If a future sociology asks itself about the most historic alteration in man’s
external conditions of life, about the changes that have most profoundly
revolutionized man’s lived contents of experience,7 it will surely have to point
to the process that brought us from this earlier situation to our position
today, from a ‘naturally evolved’ state of life to a world of rational organization. This was the real social revolution of the 19th century. The first phase
of the process lasted all of the last century up to its last quarter and is now
to be seen all around us in our great factories and industries. But now a
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
second phase has just dawned upon us and envelops us in the great bureaucratic transformation of which I am speaking.
A single great process of rationalization created the industrial social restructuring of life that we today describe as the essence of technological
domination by machines and by advanced economic division of labour in a
‘capitalist society’. This process ejected our lower social orders from their
former free existence, inexorably absorbing their labour power in the grey
barren uniform shells that today cover over our fields of life. Everything
known as ‘the social question’ reflects nothing but the fate of our lower
orders before this great mechanism of absorption.
This process is complete, or nearly complete,8 but what now confronts us
is a second phase of this upsurge of rational organization over the economy
and other areas of life. We now witness this process at a higher step of the
ladder, where economically dominated mechanisms create states of total unification and interlocking monopolistic incorporation across giant organisms.
This is the external peculiarity,9 the exterior face of something whose inner
function is now self-evidently to strip the middle and higher social orders of
a free existence and to incorporate them too into the great rational mechanism as labour forces dedicated to technical, commercial, clerical and administrative tasks in the bureaucratic head of the totality.10
This process is only externally connected with the modern capitalist form
of economy. Its more real cause is the universal process of intellectualization
of practical action discerned by Saint-Simon: the compulsion to use ‘cognition’ to determine everywhere the path of least resistance to human action,
which is the principle of the division of labour. That capital availed itself of
this intellectualization as a means to profit and has thereby become the agent
of this new organization is ‘historically contingent’. It could equally well
have been the state – which anyway is in part the case. The outcome is
nonetheless universal bureaucratization, and every new social problem of the
present reflects nothing but the fate of the middle and upper social orders
who are today drawn into the mechanism no less than the lower orders.
Our transportation system in Germany is a complex web of gigantic mechanisms, today indispensable to our existence, which has suddenly sprung up
by a great technological leap out of our earlier small-scale organization. In
consequence, no fewer than 150,000 bureaucratic functionaries operate
alongside half a million other workers to maintain the apparatus of our roads
and railway lines. In our manufacturing, cartels, syndicates and trusts have
grown up over our older large industries like fantastic crystalline forms,
creating unified organizations above our older forms like a great mountain
range of accumulated mass forces. The consequence is that 8.5 million manual
workers alongside no fewer than 686,000 officials and clerks toil for the
bureaucratic edifice of this ‘labouring body’11 (and note that as recently as
1890 the figure was only in the region of 90,000). And then there are those
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50,000 clerks and officials who work at the banks and institutes that pervade
our capitalist business life like states within a state.
Quite clearly, then, what stand before us are unified mammoths of organization, not limited to the economic sphere but composed of many different
spheres locked together with one another, whether in private hands or under
the control of the state, or increasingly in a mix of both public and private
elements. Only 25 years ago little more than 700,000 Germans worked in the
bureaus, while today the figure is more like 2 million (800,000 in the public,
1,200,000 in the private sectors).
Only one conclusion can be drawn from this: a life of freedom once
enjoyed by the middle and upper social classes has degraded now to something well-nigh exceptional. The statistics also show us that in the nonagrarian economy only 200,000 to 300,000 Germans work as self-employed
entrepreneurs. It is clear that all strata of society – middle and upper as well
as lower – are transformed into dependants on this great dead mechanism.
II A tremendous revolution full of pains and convulsions12 stripped the
lower orders of their independence. Raging against the machines that had
become their robbers, they sought to reconquer their losses by violent political revolt and socialistic actions. Only a teaching [Marxism] that told them
that it is this process itself [capitalist industrialization] that eventually will
lead them out of slavery to a higher freedom gave them the will to bear their
new condition.
The new revolution of the upper orders, by contrast, has unfolded almost
in silence. In its outward appearance, it has been incomparably less cruel and
has not been bound up with déclassement and disempowerment by machines
or banishment to a complete precariousness of existence. It appears rather to
have brought greater comfort and security, and even greater respect for
professional standing. But it has been no less profound in its impact. If something monstrous robbed the lower orders of the freedom to shape their
working lives, an even more ominous fate now befalls the upper strata; for
these strata now stand to lose everything they have acquired by way of a
distinctive value of personality and personal growth.
It was bad enough that the self-reliant master craftsman fell by the wayside,
his place taken by the waged foreman on the factory floor, all pleasure in
work and comradely life stolen from him. Nothing will ever compensate the
working masses for this loss. But what when a similar fate now afflicts a
smaller sector of the population that once possessed a much greater degree
of self-reliance? What when the self-reliant entrepreneur now also disappears
as a character-building factor in the life of the nation? Is it any less consequential that an entrepreneur’s talents and powers that made his work what
it was now also seep away into the schematism of the bureaus? The upper
classes’ ability to shape themselves through their work and their profession
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
once gave them an importance for the nation as carriers of the culture of the
people, but now these elements of independence and free manliness, of
autonomous action and uninhibited self-flourishing look set to be wiped out
– a fate as momentous as the privations that once led the masses to attempt
to overturn the pyramid of society.
The lower strata have found ways of rescuing themselves from the destruction of their work values by treating their devalued occupations as nothing
more than something ‘given’. Distancing themselves from their work, they
attempt to find a centre of mental life outside the mechanism that embroils
them, a kind of freedom of personal life outside their place of work. If they
still possess a freshness and a reserve of strength in their barren labour, if
they still retain an openness for culture, a political sense and readiness for
self-sacrifice in struggle, a sense of the good, the just and the beautiful, and
a mental character, they do so by dint of conquering a kind of world for
themselves out of the world they have lost.
But what of the new office-workers and civil servants? Now they are
chained to the apparatus13 and absorbed into their vocations by every available means. Now they are offered comfort and security in place of restless
struggling through the stream of life; and for this they must pay a price:
lifelong attachment14 to the apparatus and obedience to it. Now they are
given the opportunity to climb their way up in the apparatus from position
to position, with the prospect of a ‘career’ and future power; and for this
they must surrender their entire powers of labour15 and their entire existence as men. They gain ‘respect’ and standing and nice titles – at the cost of
their ‘soul’.
It is to be feared that unlike the less educated but physically stronger lower
orders, they will forget to distance themselves from the apparatus and
mistake life in the apparatus for life itself, mistake circumscribed, regimented,
collectivized tasks in the apparatus for personal accomplishment, mistake
interest in achievement and progress through the mechanism for life itself,
and mistake a dead empty spectre for the spirit of the age.
So much is said today about decentralization, about a loosening-up of the
apparatus and the need for guarantees for self-management. One hopes that
at least here and there a little of the universal bureaucratization process
might be avoided, curtailed, even prevented. Better a flexible labour force (ein
aufgelockerter . . . Körper), it is said, than an impeccably centralized one;
better a system permitting more initiative at the lower echelons. Yet in truth,
whatever room for manoeuvre we try to create within this apparatus,
whatever little residuum of the ‘human’ we try to preserve within it, the fact
of its existence is ineluctable. In no way can we spare ourselves any part of
it without ending with a less rationally developed constitution and a less
advanced division of labour; for once a system has acquired a certain magnitude, it must operate at a certain level of force and rate of turnover; and then
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nothing, not even a most concerted effort of attenuation, can prevent its
functions of direction, order and control from uncoupling themselves from
productive manual activities and becoming purely ‘functionary’. Deployment of a labour force of technicians is in this sense an inevitable part of the
rationalization process. Schmoller was always right to underline that bureaucratization is an integral technical symptom of any developed societal order
and is nowhere to be escaped.
III The danger of a people’s descent into the apparatus differs widely
according to country. Some peoples by temperament are immune to it; some
can distance themselves from this clattering monotony of the machinery. You
will never reduce a Frenchman to a mere bureaucrat. Monsieur can calculate,
formulate, decree and parry off problems without being swallowed up by
routine, for he habitually whistles at everything that bores him and always
seeks a change, excitation or warmth when life becomes troublesome. We
Germans, on the other hand, are quite different. It is true that Bismarck twice
came close to being dragged into the apparatus and nevertheless on both
occasions, by temperament, ran right away from it; all his life he preserved
his aversion to the ‘desiccation of the juices in the bureau’, as he put it. But
how many of us resemble Bismarck today? How strong are our defences
against the cogs of the machine (Geklapper) and the enormous mechanism’s
monotony? Too many affinities exist between our sluggish German way of
feeling and the feelingless stasis of the apparatus; too great are the dangers of
our mental forces being wound up in its mechanism.
Some peoples’ historical character has protected them from being swallowed up by the apparatus more effectively than ours. Some peoples have
been skilled at inculcating a type of cultured person among their upper social
strata free from pettiness and narrowness, and at doing so at an early enough
stage to enable them to enter the revolutionary upheavals of the 19th century
with a fairly solid moral backbone already in place. Achieving national unification at an early stage, these peoples – the French and the English – became
populous centres of development by the 16th century, and a universal metropolitan type of culture grew up in their capital cities by the 17th and 18th
centuries, composed of the old aristocracy’s courtly refinement with a mix
of bourgeois entrepreneurial spirit. Both thus created a picture for themselves of appropriate conduct of life, still effective today, even if altered in its
content, like a ‘golden handrail’16 that has enabled them to avoid sliding
down by blind zeal17 into the vocational mindlessness.18
Others such as we Germans, by contrast, managed nowhere to develop
beyond a small-town form of existence before the social revolutions of the
19th century. We failed to acquire this character type, and in consequence,
when courtly life began to disappear in our land, the only type of social
leadership capable of being taken up by the bourgeoisie on a mass basis was
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
the mass non-form of the vocational philistine, the slipper-wearing pedestrian
petty bourgeois, leaving us ill-equipped for the bureaucratic age looming on
the horizon.
It is true that not all peoples whose anciens régimes managed to establish
something greater and freer than this have fully rid themselves of the old mist
of conformity, the perfume of complacency. Despite the 19th century’s revolutionary unleashing of new forces, even these peoples’ mental atmospheres
still today contain elements that have not been saved from the bureaucratic
mechanism’s tendencies to reinforce contented cosiness and a ‘pension insurance’ attitude to the whole of life, trapping them once again in a paradise of
plain narrow-mindedness. Still, let us also not forget these peoples’ humorists
and satirists, their Dickens, their Thackeray and their Balzac, and let us not
confuse the tenacious and capable with the pedestrian and plain. Not all
Balzac’s villains – Rouget, Brideau, Grandet – and not all England’s and
France’s petty bourgeois fit neatly into this nice little paradise. All have in
fact eaten from a tree of knowledge that has ejected them for ever from any
mere garden of uprightness.
But our German reality remains, by contrast, exactly as Seidel19 depicts it
for us. So well have we conserved the old atmosphere, so little have we been
touched by the competitive shaking-up of all things, so little have we opened
up the windows of our existence to change, that we may simply walk quietly
unchanged out of the stifling air20 of the old narrowness into a new suffocation. Our danger is that in quitting our old hazy parlours and petty comforts,
we fail to yearn for anything better and merely embrace our nicely appointed,
well-heated offices in the bureaucratic grand organization, merely exchanging
one kind of pettiness of psyche and timidity of existence for another. For we
still lack an exemplary type of character among our upper social classes
capable of banishing narrowness from the average man.
It is also clear that in the course of the 19th century’s upheavals, older
peoples have been forced to simplify their structures of personality. One hears
talk of a new voluntarism of man, of a new domination of all life by political
and economic interests after the collapse of the old world. This we have seen
in the exigencies of reconstruction, in the battles unleashed by this whole
process that have pitted all against all, in the tremendous crowds of men
erupting primevally out of the belly of the European earth, and in the democratic idea asserted from below by the masses, from one people to another.
Everywhere people have been compelled to turn away from the inner life, to
relieve themselves of the luggage of the mind in the struggle for existence, and
to concentrate more and more on the practically useful and commodious. All
drawn into the whirlpool have been forced to act in this way, and in consequence our cultured psyche of the 18th century has all but disappeared.
Confronting all civilized peoples today stands the portent of a life of pure
business in a purely economically dominated apparatus of organization. All
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civilized people now see the writing on the wall, but none see it more than
we Germans; for we have lacked a generalized character type able to stem
this hollowing-out of our structures of personality. We have felt the pressure
of tasks to be solved more acutely than others. For we have had to build not
only our economy but also our state. To recover what seemed lacking to us,
we had to create an organizational edifice of life with immense speed. With
an incredible force, the new regime has catapulted us into disciplined labour
and into every practically functional activity. Only thus, it seems, has our
thoroughly artificially constructed strength in the world been able to hold
its own. Yet as a result, we have thrown away, in a great paroxysm, all our
fine culture, all our immeasurably rich types of individual character, our fine
inner critical spirit, our developed imagination, our deep ideal optimism, and
so much else besides – all to the gutters of history. In exchange we now have
that new German of our time, that wondrous strangest thing history ever
saw: the ‘realist’ – the supposedly ‘modern’ realist; yet a realist shot through
with the most primitive and archaic habits, with the most antiquated cosiness
and encrusted plainness, geared to petty social climbing: precisely the type
of man the bureaucratic mechanism requires.
In one of his letters, Ibsen says that the Jews today are superior in culture
today because for all their involvement in business, they are mostly excluded
from the apparatus, and are thus pushed toward individually distinctive and
complex ways of life composed of a diversity of situations that give them an
inner wealth. This is indeed a wise observation when one considers our
swelling masses of people today who no longer even notice how their existence has assumed a form that reminds one of nothing so much as a Danish
snow-slide: at the front door of their homes stands the enigmatic inscription
‘Matura’, and from out of this door they fly along a fixed piste to their other
great door inscribed in golden letters with the words: ‘Mr Privy Councillor’
(Herr Geheimrat).
IV Absorption into the apparatus also differs greatly according to the extent
of its cultural influence over men’s minds: great differences prevail between
countries not only in its external power but also especially in its command
over mental life. In parliamentary democracies, where sometimes the apparatus appears as the instrument of one majority and sometimes of another,
sometimes of this president and sometimes of another, it seems impossible that
it could assume the nimbus it exudes in countries ruled by, or thought to be
ruled by, a state power able to grip its population like a spinal cord. In such
countries, civil servants acquire all the elevated values of their personality
purely from this nimbus, from their rank, work and vocation, and become
enthralled by an idea of service to it: such is our distinctively German fate.
Unlike countries in which a man’s standing depends on the personality he
can display in society and only incidentally on his public office, among us
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
and in other autocratic-bureaucratic countries he is nothing in himself and
everything as an official.21 Among us he is addressed and esteemed by
nothing but his title, office and rank. Woe betide him if he should one day
venture to detach himself from this shibboleth and play the man himself.
Perhaps other similar countries will rid themselves one day of this pure occupationalism; but our German problem is that not only do we possess this
merely ‘vulgar’ bureaucratic nimbus; we also suffer from what Max Weber
has aptly called a certain ‘metaphysics of officialdom’ (Metaphysik des Beamtentum). One might even speak of our theocratization of the civil servant
(Theokratisierung des Beamten), our trans-substantiation of the official into
something absolute. We feel ourselves so mightily conditioned by this artifice
of organization, so beholden to state action, that we have acquired a mood
and a teaching – preached by all too many of our premier jurists, our most
respected historians and most influential economists – that can only be
described as an idolatry of officialdom (Götzendienst vor dem Beamtentum).
Inasmuch as each official believes himself devoted purely to the matter at
hand, it is not so much the civil servant that we raise up on high as the apparatus itself. Unlike in any other bureaucratic country, the apparatus rises up
in our land like a mystical miraculous Something amid the most mysterious
clouds – with the effect that an individual official becomes all the more hopelessly, unconditionally, and totally absorbed and tangled in it.
Our daily sense of a need for organized authority and limitless consciousness of authority causes us anxiously to close all divisions of officialdom to
the outside world and to construct that fiction of unity so necessary for an
appearance of infallibility, leading in turn to atrophy of the lower echelons
and impoverishment of every spirit of self-reliance: the phenomenon of the
incompetent burgomaster, the pedantic teacher, and so on. All of this occurs
when a body of officials is pressed into a uniform mass of men, when service
and life are pushed along the narrowest of tracks of duty and loyalty to the
organization, when all of a man’s existence – ‘on duty’ and ‘off duty’ – acquires
a definite tone and cadence, such that even only the slightest brooking of its
path causes each and every official to be ‘ruffled’.
This visible core of the public apparatus also affects all other organizations
of our society: ‘functionality’, vocational dedication, objectively alienated
labour, and the vanishing of personality22 all become universally ‘consecrated’.
Not all of this can be explained by any traditionally religious factor, such as
might also be observed in other countries. It has to do specifically with those
clouds of incense with which we Germans shroud our altars of state officialdom and in which we bow down in sacrifice before our sacred idols.
Our dried-up, shrivelled-up bureaucrat’s soul is Jobst, the upright combmaker in his workshop:23 he who avers that it is always good to love politics
– or art or life – and constantly asks himself about the little laundry that life
needs each day24 – the slave of his stupid little task, and a climber. Such is
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how it looks at the lower echelons. At the upper levels, meanwhile, dwell
those men of duty25 who ‘sacrifice’ themselves for fatherland and nation with
such fervour they fail to see that it is precisely in this sacrifice that they send
the nation’s soul to its ruin.
But enough. We are a people without defences against sinking into a
mindless abyss. We have adorned our abyss with flowers and garlands and
willingly condemned the man who sinks in it to near-total despotism over
himself.
V It is certain that we will not escape bureaucratic organization in future.
Whether we entrust the system of our necessities of life to the state or to
private enterprise, the same machinery and the same immense construction
confront us. In the machinery’s countless desolate chambers our soul dies, as
in the catacombs of its existence. Who created it or to whom it belongs is
unimportant. The cage has been built and now it is our fate.26
Our goal should be to seek to salvage ourselves from this apparatus as
human beings, as vital persons. Let us therefore at least destroy its public
nimbus; let us consider it no more than the technical framework of our existence, abandon our pious feelings for it, rid ourselves of its clothing of metaphysics; and let us be courageous, consistent, efficacious and honest.
We know that we acquired our concept of vocation from the inner-worldly
asceticism of the Puritans. Self-sacrifice and unflinching dedication grew up
on the soil of a belief in this-worldly existence as probation and preparation
for another life. There was a time when this concept of vocation was entirely
rational; but now it has become nonsense for a man for whom an after-life
lacks any full reality. Only fools could demand of a man that he continue to
throw himself into the pursuit of something with no immediate meaning for
him. Now that the old basis of the vocational idea is destroyed, it confronts
us today with its grotesque inner meaninglessness for us.
This vocational reality cannot be avoided; but we must create a new basis,
a new meaning and new boundaries for it. If the old teaching sought to
protect man against the temptations of life for the sake of a realm beyond,
our task is to rescue man for life in this world against the absurdities of the
old teaching of the calling. Naturally, one rescues by building, not by tearing
down: it would be ridiculous to think we could want to abolish duty and
labour and planning of life, but equally ridiculous to think we might still need
the old theological foundations.27 This predicament engulfs us from all sides
– perhaps less our highest social strata but certainly our broadest middling
mass, whose life impels them to work from duty, even if not in the same
manner as the lower classes. Our life has become one great project of work
that governs us from within us like a primordially biological kind of morality,
one that instils in us a great gamut of feelings of labouring for the good of
the community, for the nation and the universal human community; but it is
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
not a compulsion to work that we need but a more meaningful measure of
our progress, grounded in personal realization through activity in life. Today
this means self-realization of the person as such, not the person of any
particular religious faith; it means recognition of the individual as the last
creative source of great things. This is all that we should feel willing to sacrifice ourselves for. That a man should devote himself to his vocation is one
matter; that he should perceive his entire goal in life in his vocation is quite
another.
Talk of the worth of the personality ought for once to be taken more seriously. We ought to consider our metaphysical ideas about the ‘ends’ of the
person more concretely and ask ourselves how life and vocation might appropriately be joined to one another or detached from one another. Perhaps then
our intuitions about people existing before their work and before their
vocation, and our inclination to regard the latter as merely one means of a
person’s unfolding, might gain a greater immediacy for us. Only particular
dimensions of our existence ought to be embedded in the apparatus of vocations, not our great values; occupational commitment ought to represent only
a secondary means of our self-fulfilment, not its most important aspect.
We know labour’s value for us, its way of steeling us and confronting us
with our resistance to things inwardly and outwardly alien to us. In this
experience of steeling can be recognized the last traces – the evaporated ghost
– of our old idea of labour, which once proffered a sense of wholeness for
us. But labour’s activity is not our goal in life, only its material underpinning,
something to be taken tacitly for granted. Therefore a man should be judged
not by his work per se but at most by the manner in which he carries it off,
by whether or not he loses himself in it and by whether he manages to remain
vitally and mentally independent of it, even as he performs his duties well.
Such ought to be our ‘golden yardstick’ for the measure of a man. If we can
reach this point, we will have begun to change the foundations of life, and
other consequences will follow.
If a new valuation of man’s vital powers and a new atmosphere of life
causes our theocratized German bureaucrats to shed their metaphysical
raiment, we will have begun to reverse the objectification of our values and
destroyed our fetishism. It may be that only a democratic revolution will
achieve this end. But we should show moderation28 and beware that it is only
our bureaucrat’s false regalia, this remnant of former times,29 loaded with the
desires and images of today’s political romanticism, that we should want to
destroy, not the man himself. The bureaucrat’s downfall will give us back the
man from his vocational sclerosis and dissolve the veritable hearth he has
made for himself in the dead mechanisms of the social body.
Yet this too will not suffice. If we want our man back, the chains that bind
him to the apparatus externally must also be broken; he must also be liberated materially.30 Here arises the perennial conundrum of the needs of the
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state and the community over against the rights of the person: all the old
questions of constitutional law, administration and the foundations of
community life. To the question of whether yet more areas of life should be
submitted to state control, the answer must be ‘no’. Whatever increases in
general material welfare and comfort and security for functionaries accrue
from state ownership and collectivization, the danger of a dying-off of
personal initiative is too great and overwhelming at present. The question
therefore remains as to how to establish an at least external juridical guarantee of freedom for our masses of both public- and private-sector servants of
the apparatus. Previously we met this question of the regulation of life and
labour in the plight of our manual workers; now we face it in a new and even
more complicated guise in our office-workers and officials.
I have no doubt that one day it will be impossible to understand a time
when our supposedly modern state could once say to its servants and officials:
You are mine, for you have sold yourself to me; I can order you, promote or
demote you and tell you your occupation without your influence; I can call
on you to represent me even when you are off-duty; for you are my vassal.31
One day it will be impossible to understand that hundreds of thousands of
people could accept such servitude for their daily bread and that crowds of
people could multiply through the ceaseless state collectivization of resources,
forming a more and more massive type of social class. It will be accepted that
the state requires human capital for a few limited functions of public order
and policing, but we will reject its way of enslaving us through its newly
acquired control over the economy, education and corporeal health. We will
accord rights to our office-workers, but not any kind of special status distinction for them; we will establish rights – ‘human rights’ – for our functionaries, but rights against, not by grace of, the apparatus: rights able to release
them from their servitude and help them regain purchase over their lives.
I also have no doubt that one day our public functionaries will make
common cause with our private-sector workers. All our engineers, technicians and businessmen who perform the most important kinds of labour
in the apparatus today have found a new level of collective organization;
perhaps one day this new mode of organization will also attract our state
officials, and our current middle class will gain a new consciousness of its
unity and significance in society. It is to be hoped that our middle class will
not think solely of its interests and power, of its pension insurance and other
benefits, but instead take fate into its own hands and endeavour actively to
bring about the process of its legal emancipation. If it can shed its inner chains
and its outer chains, without exceeding the limits of community life, a future
of great possibilities opens up before us. It is to be hoped that we can rescue
the substance of cultural becoming that has disappeared into the mechanization of life and that our upper social classes will one day be able to feel great
feelings and create great things again. What is called culture always grows; it
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
is never ‘ready-made’ for us; so let us never allow the soil that nurtures our
culture to dry up completely; let us be sure to keep ourselves fit for a future
dance of our spiritual powers.
NOTES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
See Lange-Kirchheim (1977, 1986); Alfred Weber (2000[1910]). Alfred Weber’s
text also appeared in abridged form in the Frankfurter Zeitung on 18 October
1910, no. 288.
It is also a well documented fact that Max Brod, Kafka’s close friend and editor,
attended Weber’s lectures regularly and later maintained a friendly correspondence with him throughout the rest of his life, although no evidence exists of any
conversation between Brod and Kafka about Weber and no documentation
remains of any exchange of words between Weber and Kafka in 1906.
Kafka references are to ‘In der Strafkolonie’ (1950[1919]), followed by ‘In the Penal
Colony’ (1961[1933]). Weber references are to the Alfred-Weber-Gesamtausgabe,
vol. 8 (Alfred Weber, 2000).
See especially Müller-Seidel (1986); also Binder (1966, 1968); Krollop and Zimmermann (1994); Stach (2005[2002]); Heinemann (1996).
Two notable exceptions are the studies by Gonzalez García (1989) and Demm
(1990); also Demm (2000).
W 99: Wie sie einkriecht . . . die Leitern aufkriecht.
K 199: . . . während der Offizier bald unter den . . . Apparat kroch, bald auf
eine Leiter stieg . . .
K 169: . . . while the officer . . . now creeping beneath the structure, . . . now
climbing a ladder . . .
W 100: . . . die Veränderung . . . die alle seine Lebensinhalte am tiefsten
umgewälzt hat . . .
K 212: . . . beim weiteren Umwälzen des Körpers . . .
K 178: . . . as the body turns farther round . . .
W 100: Das ist vollendet oder nahezu vollendet.
K 201: ‘Dieser Apparat’, sagte er [der Offizier] . . . ‘ist eine Erfindung unseres
früheren Kommandanten. Ich . . . war auch bei allen Arbeiten bis zur
Vollendung beteiligt.’
K 170: ‘This apparatus’, he [the officer] said . . . ‘was invented by our former
Commandant. I assisted . . . until its completion.’
W 101: Das ist die äussere Eigentümlichkeit . . .
K 199: ‘Es ist ein eigentümlicher Apparat . . .’
K 169: ‘It’s a remarkable piece of apparatus . . .’
W 101: den schreib- und anordungsverwendeten, den bureaukratischen Kopf
des Ganzen.
K 210: ‘Dort im Zeichner ist das Räderwerk, welches . . . nach der Zeichnung
. . . angeordnet [wird] . . .’
K 178: ‘In the Designer are all the cog-wheels . . . and this machinery is
regulated according to the inscription . . .’
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HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
20(3)
W 102: das bureaukratische Gebäude . . . das sich über jenem blossen
‘Arbeitskörper’ als sein Oberbau jetzt aufbaut.
K 201: ‘Er [der Apparat] besteht aus drei Teilen. . . . Der untere heist das Bett,
der obere heisst der Zeichner . . .’
K 171: ‘It consists . . . of three parts. . . . The lower one is called the “Bed”,
the upper one the “Designer”.’
W 102: Es war eine unheuere Revolution voll Zuckungen und Schmerzen . . .
K 204 ‘. . . das Bett . . . zittert in winzigen, sehr schnellen Zuckungen . . .’
K 173: ‘. . . the Bed . . . quivers in minute, very rapid vibrations . . .’
W 104: Man sucht sie . . . an den Apparat und den Beruf zu ketten.
K 199: . . . ein Soldat . . . der die schwere Kette hielt, in welche die kleinen
Ketten ausliefen, mit denen der Verurteilte . . . gefesselt war und die
auch untereinander durch Verbindungsketten zusammenhingen.
K 169: . . . the soldier who held the heavy chain controlling the small chains
. . . which were themselves attached to each other by communicating
links.
W 104: . . . dafür aber verlangt man Lebensbindung an den Apparat.
K 217: ‘Soll . . . ein solches Lebenswerk’ – er [der Offizier] zeigte auf die
Maschine – ‘zugrunde gehen’?
K 183: ‘. . . is such a piece of work, the work of a life-time’ – he [the officer]
pointed to the machine – ‘to fall into disuse?’
W 104: . . . man . . . verlangt dann aber . . . die ganze Arbeitskraft . . .
K 209, 216: ‘Wir haben eben keine Mühe gescheut. . . . ich verbrauche alle
meine Kräfte, um zu erhalten, was vorhanden ist.’
K 176, 182: ‘No trouble was too great for us to take, you see. . . . it takes all
my energy to maintain it as it is.’
W 106: Ein ‘goldenes Geländer’ . . .
K 219: ‘Damals mussten wir ein starkes Geländer um die Grube anbringen.’
K 185: ‘In those days we had to put a strong fence round the grave.’
W 106: . . . das vor dem blinden Eifer . . . sichert.
K 200: . . . der Offizier führte [seine Arbeiten] mit einem grossen Eifer aus . . .
K 169: . . . the officer performed [his tasks] with great zeal . . .
W 106: . . . in Berufsverstumpfung . . .
K 199: . . . der Verurteilte, ein stumpfsinnger, breitmäuliger Mensch.
K: 169: . . . the condemned man, who was a stupid-looking wide-mouthed
creature . . .
Heinrich Seidel (1842–1906): German engineer and writer of fiction in a
bourgeois didactic style.
W 107: . . . aus der Stickluft einer alten Enge . . . in die Stickluft einer neuen
Enge.
K 218: ‘Heute gelingt es der Maschine nicht mehr, dem Verurteilten ein
stärkeres Seufzen auszupressen, als der Filz noch ersticken kann.’
K 184: ‘Nowadays the machine can no longer wring from anyone a sigh
louder than the felt gag can stifle.’
W 110: er bedeutet bei uns nichts als solche, alles aber als Beamte.
K 218: ‘ich [der Offizier] allerdings durfte kraft meines Berufes immer
dabeistehen.’
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
22
23
24
25
26
27
K 184: ‘I [the officer], of course, because of my office, had the privilege of
always being at hand.’
W 111: . . . das Aufgehen in der wesensfremden objektiven Arbeit, das
Verschwinden der Persönlichkeit als solcher.
K 228: Es war eine mühselige Arbeit . . . manchmal verschwand der Kopf des
Offiziers völlig im Zeichner . . .
K 192: It was a troublesome piece of work . . . for sometimes the officer’s
head vanished altogether from sight inside the Designer . . .
Jobst the comb-maker is a character in Gottfried Keller’s novella, Die drei
gerechten Kammacher (1856).
W 111: . . . ob alles Leben auch die frische Wäsche wert sei.
K 205, 215: Dann sah er [der Offizier] prüfend seine Hände an; sie schienen
ihm nicht rein genug . . . er ging daher zum Kübel und wusch sie
nochmals. . . . ‘ich könnte ja morgen, wenn der Apparat wieder
gereinigt ist – dass er so sehr beschmutzt wird, ist sein einziger Fehler
– die näheren Erklärungen nachtragen.’
K 173, 176: ‘Then he inspected his hands critically; they did not seem clean
enough to him . . . so he went over to the bucket and washed them
again.’ . . . ‘tomorrow, when the apparatus has been cleaned – its one
drawback is that it gets so messy – I can recapitulate the details.’
W 111: Auf den oberen aber gibt es jenen Pflichtmenschen, der für Vaterland
und für Nation sich ‘opfert’ . . .
K 207: . . . er [der Verurteilte] hat nämlich, die Pflicht, bei jedem Stundenschlag
aufzustehen und vor der Tür des Hauptmanns zu salutieren. Gewiss
keine schwere Pflicht . . . Der Hauptmann wollte in der gestrigen
Nacht nachsehen, ob der Diener seine Pflicht erfülle.
K 175: ‘It is his [the condemned’s] duty . . . to get up every time the hour
strikes and salute the captain’s door. Not an exacting duty . . . Last
night the captain wanted to see if the man was doing his duty.’
W 112: Sicherlich auf keine Weise ist der bureaukratischen Organisation zu
entfliehen . . . der Käfig wird gebaut; er ist nun unser Schicksal.
K 201: ‘die Einrichtung der ganzen Strafkolonie [ist] . . . so in sich
geschlossen, dass sein Nachfolger . . . nichts von dem Alten wird
ändern können.’
K 170: ‘The organization of the colony was so perfect that his [the former
Commandant’s] successor . . . would find it impossible to alter
anything, at least for many years to come.’
W 113: es ist lächerlich zu glauben, dass wir die zerstören wollten oder
könnten. Lächerlich aber auch zu meinen, dass wir heute jene alte
theologische Fundierung für sie brauchten.
K 236: Es besteht eine Prophezeiung, dass der Kommandant . . . auferstehen
. . . wird. . . . Als der Reisende das gelesen hatte . . . sah er rings um
sich die Männer stehen und lächeln, als hätten sie mit ihm die
Aufschrift gelesen, sie lächerlich gefunden und forderten ihn auf, sich
ihrer Meinung anzuschliessen.
K 198: There is a prophecy that after a certain number of years the
Commandant will rise again . . . When the explorer had read this . . .
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HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES
20(3)
he saw the bystanders around him smiling, as if they too had read the
inscription, had found it ridiculous and were expecting him to agree
with them.
28 W 114: Wir wollen milde sein . . .
K 215: ‘. . . einen Tag vor der Exekution [soll] kein Essen mehr verabfolgt
werden. Aber die neue milde Richtung ist anderer Meinung.’
K182: ‘. . . the prisoner must fast for a whole day before the execution. But
our new, mild doctrine thinks otherwise.’
29 W 114: seinen falschen und erborgten Königsmantel, dies Gebilde aus
Verdienste früherer Zeiten . . .
K 219–20: ‘Wie war die Exekution anders in früherer Zeit! . . . ich weiss, es ist
unmöglich, jene Zeiten heute begreiflich zu machen.’
K183–5: ‘How different an execution was in the old days! . . . I know it is
impossible to make those days credible now.’
30 W 115: Wenn wir den Menschen wieder haben wollen, müssen wir . . . ihn
auch realiter freimachen . . .
K 227: ‘Du bist frei’, sagte der Offizier zum Verurteilten . . . ‘Nun, frei bist
du’, sagte der Offizier.
K 191: ‘You are free’, said the officer to the condemned man . . . ‘Yes, you are
free’, said the officer.
31 W 115–16: Du bist mein, wenn du dich einmal mir verkauft hast; ich kann dich
befördern, – du hast keinen Einfluss; ich kann dich versetzen, – du
hast keinen Einfluss . . . ich verlange, dass du ausserhalb des Dienstes
gleichfalls mich vertrittst, denn du bist mein . . .
K 205: ‘Diesem Veruteilten zum Beispiel’ – der Offizier zeigte auf den Mann
– ‘wird auf den Leib geschrieben werden: Ehre deinen Vorgesetzen!’
K 174: ‘This condemned man, for instance,’ – the officer indicated the man –
‘will have written on his body: HONOUR THY SUPERIORS!’
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Binder, H. (1966) Motiv und Gestaltung bei Franz Kafka. Bonn: Bouvier.
Binder, H. (1968) ‘Kafka und “Die neue Rundschau”’, Schiller-Jahrbuch 12: 94–111.
Demm, E. (1990) Ein Liberaler in Kaiserreich und Republik: der politische Weg Alfred
Webers bis 1920. Boppard am Rhein: H. Boldt.
Demm, E. (2000) Geist und Politik im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert: Gesammelte Aufsätze
zu Alfred Weber. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.
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Languages Association of America) 111(2): 256–70.
Kafka, F. (1950[1919]) ‘In der Strafkolonie’, in Erzählungen, Gesammelte Werke, ed.
M. Brod. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, pp. 199–236.
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trans. E. Muir and W. Muir. Harmondsworth, Mx: Penguin, pp. 169–99.
‘THE CIVIL SERVANT’ AND ‘IN THE PENAL COLONY’
Krollop, K. and Zimmermann, H. D., eds (1994) Kafka und Prag. Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter.
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“Der Beamte”’, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift N.F. 27: 202–21.
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Weber als Politiker und Gelehrter. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 113–49.
Müller-Seidel, W. (1986) Die Deportation des Menschen: Kafka’s ‘In der Strafkolonie’
im europäischen Kontext. Stuttgart: Metzler.
Stach, R. (2005[2002]) Kafka: The Decisive Years, trans. S. Frisch. Orlando, FLA:
Harcourt.
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
AUSTIN HARRINGTON is Reader in Sociology at the University of Leeds, UK,
and Research Associate at the Max Weber Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien at the University of Erfurt, Germany. His publications
include Art and Social Theory: Sociological Arguments in Aesthetics (Polity
Press, 2004) and, as editor, Modern Social Theory: An Introduction (Oxford
University Press, 2005). He is completing a monograph on conceptions of
Europe and Europeanism among German liberal social thinkers in the years
of the Weimar Republic.
Address: Max Weber Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien,
Am Hügel 1, 99084 Erfurt, Germany. [email: [email protected]
/[email protected]]
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