History of the Human Sciences 2007 Harrington 41 63

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DOI: 10.1177/0952695107079334 2007 20: 41History of the Human Sciences

Austin Harringtonthe evidence of an influence

Alfred Weber's essay `The Civil Servant' and Kafka's `In the Penal Colony':

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Alfred Webers essay The CivilServant and Kafkas In the

Penal Colony: the evidence ofan influence

AUSTIN HARRINGTON

ABSTRACT

In 1977 a German literary scholar, Astrid Lange-Kirchheim, publishedan article announcing an astonishing discovery: credible evidence existsto suggest that Kafkas famous disturbing short story, In the PenalColony, published in 1919 but first written in 1914, echoes andreworks, in several of its key images and turns of phrase, elements ofan essay published in 1910 in the German literary magazine, Die neueRundschau, bearing the title Der Beamte (The Civil Servant, or TheOfficial or The Functionary) by Alfred Weber, younger brother ofMax Weber. Most Kafka scholars today accept Lange-Kirchheimsfindings and recognize the importance of Der Beamte as at least onecrucial reference point for Kafkas writing. Yet little wider awarenessof the connection seems to exist among historians of sociology andother scholars of the history of the human sciences. This articlecomprises a summary of Lange-Kirchheims analysis together with acomplete annotated translation of Der Beamte by Alfred Weber inEnglish.

Key words bureaucracy, Franz Kafka, In the penal colony,Alfred Weber, Max Weber

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 20 No. 3 2007 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) pp. 4163[20:3; 4163; DOI: 10.1177/0952695107079334]


In 1977 a German literary scholar, Astrid Lange-Kirchheim, published anarticle announcing an astonishing discovery: credible evidence exists to suggestthat Kafkas famous disturbing short story, In the penal colony, publishedin 1919 but first written in 1914, echoes and reworks, in several of its keyimages and turns of phrase, elements of an essay published in 1910 in theGerman literary magazine, Die neue Rundschau, bearing the title DerBeamte (The civil servant, or The official or The functionary) by AlfredWeber, younger brother of Max Weber.1 Lange-Kirchheim underlined twofactors suggesting that an appearance of affinity between the two texts mightbe more than coincidental. First, Alfred Weber held a professorship at theGerman 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 thatconvened to examine Kafkas doctoral dissertation for the faculty in June1906 (at a time when Kafka was not yet an internationally famous author).Second, substantial documentation shows that Die neue Rundschau was oneof the few literary magazines that Kafka read on a relatively regular andcontinuous basis. Lange-Kirchheim argued that these two facts make it atleast likely that when Kafka began writing In the Penal Colony in 1914 hewould have recognized his former examiners name in the pages of themagazine and may very well have read Alfred Webers essay on the Beamteat some point after 1910.2

Lange-Kirchheim noted that a link between the two texts immediatelyseems to suggest itself from the one word that dominates both from the outset:der Apparat, the apparatus. Where Weber repeatedly writes of an immenseapparatus rising up in our life with a tendency to pervade more and more ofour free and organic facets of existence (98) the apparatus of bureaucracy Kafka opens with the words:

Es ist ein eigentmlicher Apparat, sagte der Offizier zu demForschungsreisdenden und berblickte mit einem gewissermassenbewundernden Blick den ihm doch wohlbekannten Apparat. (199)

Its a remarkable piece of apparatus, said the officer to the explorerand surveyed with a certain air of admiration the apparatus which wasafter all quite familiar to him. (169)3

Where Weber writes of a gigantic mechanism (101), of a gigantic roboticSomething (ein riesenhaftes rechnerisches Etwas) (99), Kafka writes of amachine (200/170) capable of precisely calculated movements (. . . Bewe-gungen genau berechnet) (204/173), operated by a zealous officer ormechanic (200/169). Weber describes an immense construction (unge-heurer Bau) (112) of bureaucracy, while Kafkas visitor to the colony theexplorer or traveller gaze[s] up at the structure as at a huge affair(grosser Aufbau) (203/172). Weber writes of civil servants being chained

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES 20(3)42


(104) to the apparatus, while Kafka describes a condemned man chaineddown 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, itscompartments and sub-compartments, yearn to make a career for them-selves in it (99) and climb up its ladders (. . . wie sie einkriecht . . . dieLeitern auf aufkriecht) (99), while Kafkas officer creep[s] beneath thestructure and climb[s] its ladder (. . . whrend der Offizier bald unter den. . . Apparat kroch, bald auf eine Leiter stieg) (199/169). Webers apparatuslays over and draws over (100) the field of life (100) as over unploughedland (100), on which it casts a poison of schematization (98), while Kafkascontraption contains a harrow (die Egge) which ploughs and inscribes theletters of the law into the body of the condemned man. Webers apparatus isworshipped like a mystical wonderful Something (ein mytisch wunderbaresEtwas) (110), while Kafkas officer gazes wondrously at the marvellouscreation of the former commandant and is a devoted admirer of the appar-atus (200/169). Webers functionaries become absorbed and sucked (98)into the catacombs of their existence (112), while Kafkas officer at the endof the story becomes caught in the mechanism of the contraption, his bodymangled by the needles of the harrow, and dies.

Lange-Kirchheim argues that in these and other instances Kafka graphicallyliteralizes images that appear in Alfred Webers text in more abstract connec-tions. Lange-Kirchheim does not, however, claim that Webers text could havebeen Kafkas only or single most important trigger or initial influence. Scholarshave also pointed to other sources, including particularly Octave Mirabeausnovel The Torture Garden (Le Jardin des supplices) of 1899, published inGerman translation in 1901, as well as the once widely read Handbook forCriminal Investigators (1893) by Hans Gross, professor of law at Prague atthe turn of the century and the central biographical subject for Kafkas figureof the examining magistrate in The Trial. But most Kafka scholars acceptLange-Kirchheims findings today and recognize the importance of DerBeamte as at least one crucial reference point for Kafkas writing.4

Little wider awareness of the connection, by contrast, seems to exist amongscholars and teachers of sociology today.5 For years scholars have beencontent to evoke affinities between Kafkas and Max Webers portraits ofbureaucracy, without ever being able to establish a link between the twowriters at anything like a level of conscious authorial intentionality. Lange-Kirchheims findings indicate that it is in fact Alfred Weber, not Max Weber,who suggests such a link, despite the fact that the younger Weber brotherseems not to have noticed Kafkas allusions to his essay later in life anddespite the fact that the younger Alfreds statement lacks all the depth, objec-tivity and scientific rigour of the elder Maxs analysis.

In the following pages of this contribution, my concern is to bring theseimportant findings to a wider audience of readers. I continue first with a

THE CIVIL SERVANT AND IN THE PENAL COLONY 43


summary of some of the most striking correspondences of phrase betweenthe two texts and then follow with a complete annotated translation of AlfredWebers original essay in English.

KAFKA AS A READER OF ALFRED WEBER

Lange-Kirchheim notes Alfred Webers spatial image of a great mountainrange (101) of bureaucracies and industrial formations rising up likefantastic crystalline forms (101) over a more natural horizontal ground.Weber writes of monopolistic giant organisms folding over into one anotherlike a canopy (1001). This image seems to reappear in Kafkas picture of aguillotine-like contraption rising up above the supine body of the condemned.Where Weber describes a bureaucratic edifice and a great bureaucratic headrising up over a labouring body (1012) of toiling workers, Kafkas contrap-tion has an upper part and a lower part or bed to which the condemnedman is chained (201/170). Weber describes a scaffolding (Gestange) (99)with cogs and gears (Getriebe) (100), while Kafka evokes a scaffoldedcontraption with four rods of brass (Messingstangen) (203/172) and cog-wheels (Rderwerk) (203/172). Weber also notably echoes his brothersreference to the steel-hard shell (stahlhartes Gehuse) in The Protestant Ethicand the Spirit of Capitalism, published five years previously. Where AlfredWeber writes of grey barren uniform shells (grauen den gleichartigenGehuse) (100) and the cage (der Kfig) that has become our fate (112),Kafkas officer speaks of a colony so perfect (so in sich geschlossen), so wellorganized, that any successor to the old commandant will find it impossibleto alter anything, at least for many years to come (201/170).

Weber writes of a dead system of soulless substitutions and bit-by-bitrepetitions (99) oriented to dedicated clerical tasks (schreib-und anord-nungsverwendet) (101). Kafkas officer describes the cog-wheels of theapparatus as being regulated according to the inscription on the body ofthe condemned (das Rderwerk, welches . . . nach der Zeichnung . . . ange-ordnet [wird]) (210/178). Weber writes of the conquest of a free and natu-rally evolved existence (98) and of the colonization of a social landscape thatonce lay beneath or beyond the threshold of mechanization (100). Kafkaseems to echo the image in the ploughing motion of the harrow over the fleshof the condemned, like a body of nature subjected to machine cultivation.Weber writes of the schematism of the bureaus (103) and of a body ofofficials pressed into a uniform mass of men (111), while Kafka writes of theincision of duty on the body of the negligent guard. Webers apparatusforms an impeccably centralized (104) backbone (99, 109), while Kafkasofficer describes the shape of the harrow as fitting perfectly to the humanform (208/176). Weber writes of the revolutionizing (umwlzen) of life by



rational organization (100), while Kafkas officer speaks of the turning,rolling movement (Umwlzung) (212/178) of the condemned under the actionof the harrow. Weber writes of the convulsions and pains (Zuckungen undSchmerzen) (102) inflicted on the lower classes by industrialization, whileKafkas condemned man quivers from the very rapid vibrations (sehrschnelle Zuckungen) (204/173) of the bed of the apparatus.

Weber writes of a population of climbers (111) with a lifelong attach-ment to the apparatus (104), graduating from one position to another (104)and from one little warm spot to another (99). Kafkas officer, similarly,discharges his duties in unswerving loyalty to the directives of the formercommandant, cherishes his masters 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 nations continuous need and consciousness ofauthority (110), while Kafka evokes a juridical apparatus functioningcontinuously across changes in its personnel. Weber writes of the inscriptionof a mans duty on the door of his office (109), while Kafka imagines itsimprint on the body of the condemned. Weber writes of the vocationalphilistine (106) living in a paradise of narrow-mindedness (Paradies derbraven Enge) (107), a slave of his stupid little task (111), while Kafka writesof the officers narrow mind (der beschrnkte Kopf des Offiziers) (208/176).Webers civil servant is addressed by nothing but his title and rank (110),while Kafkas nameless officer is known only by his function in the colony.Webers functionaries stand before an abyss of vocational mindlessness(Berufsverstumpfung . . . Abgrund der Verstumpfung) (106, 111), while Kafkascondemned man is a stupid-looking, wide-mouthed creature (ein stumpsin-niger, breitmuliger Mensch) (199/169). Weber writes of the stifling air(Stickluft) (107) of the corridors of bureaucracy, while Kafkas condemnedman has a gag of felt (Filzstumpf) stuffed into his mouth to muffle andstifle (gedmpft . . . ersticken) his sighs (218/184). Weber writes of a peopleworking from blind zeal (blinden Eifer) (106), while Kafkas officerperforms his duties with great zeal (grossen Eifer) (200/169). Weber writesof a German peoples lack of a golden handrail (goldenes Gelnder) (106)able to guide them away from the morass of vocational atrophy, while Kafkasofficer speaks nostalgically of a time when so many people gathered to watchthe executions that it was necessary to construct a strong railing (ein starkesGelnder) (219/185) around the apparatus. Webers functionary washes hishands (111) each morning before work, while Kafkas officer is obsessedwith the cleansing action of the mechanism, designed to rinse away the bloodof the condemned with each incision of the needles.

Weber writes of the killing off (98, 115) and impoverishment (110) of theindividual and of individual self-reliance in the machine. His functionary islost, pushed, pulled, absorbed, sunk and sucked into the apparatus andits countless desolate chambers (112). Weber writes of a dead mechanism



absorbing all forces of the free life (99), while Kafkas officer devotes all [his]energy to maintain [the apparatus] as it is (216/178). Weber laments a vanish-ing of the personality (Verschwinden der Persnlichkeit) (111), while Kafkawrites that sometimes the officers head vanished altogether from sightinside the Designer (manchmal verschwand der Kopf des Offiziers vllig imZeichner) (228/192). Webers officials live a living death in the apparatus,while Kafkas officer appears to live like a dead part of the machine, almostidentical with its existence, even before his fate at its needles. Webersfunctionaries mistake the dead empty spectre of the apparatus for the spiritof the time (104), while Kafkas officers eyes continue to stare in the momentof death with the same expression as in life (234/197). Weber writes of thegrotesque inner meaninglessness (113) of the present after the decay of the oldreligious foundation of life so important to his brothers study of the Protes-tant ethic while Kafkas dead officer at the end of the story, his foreheadimpaled by an iron spike, reveals no sign . . . of the promised redemption(234/197).

Weber cites his brothers reference to Germanys metaphysics of official-dom (Metaphysik des Beamtentums). German people, he proclaims, practisean idolatry of officialdom (Gtzendienst vor dem Beamtentum) (110), atheocratization of the civil servant (110), bow down in sacrifice before thealtars of their sacred idols (111). Webers apparatus is blessed with mysticalpowers (110), while Kafka evokes an archaic ritual sacrifice which spellbindsthe people. Webers apparatus is shrouded in a nimbus (109) of religiosity,consecrated with clouds of incense (111), while Kafkas colonys penalcode has the aura of a state religion. Weber writes of the appearance ofbureaucratic infallibility (110), while Kafkas officers guiding principle isthat guilt is never to be doubted (206/175). Weber at one point portrays theapparatus addressing its servants in direct speech: You are mine . . . I canorder you, promote or demote you . . . tell you your occupation . . . call onyou to represent me (11516) a rhetorical technique of personifying thething and reifying the person uniquely perfected by Kafka.

Lange-Kirchheim also notes how Weber repeatedly refers to the apparatuswith minimal adjectival attribution, as with existence in the apparatus orbondage to the apparatus a device again highly characteristic of Kafkaswriting. Webers immense construction (ungeheuerer Bau) (112) of thebureaus also seems to point forward to Kafkas story Der Bau. Webersconstant use of the words gigantic and enormous (Riesen-, riesenhaft)makes us think of Kafkas theme of the towering edifice in The Trial (on whichhe was also working in 1914) and The Castle. Riesenhaft is also an attributeof 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 (Riesen-grsse) of his fathers boots. Even Kafkas key word Verwandlung occurs inWebers text, as when Weber writes of the bureaucratic metamorphosis(bureaukratische Verwandlung) (100) of the traditional social landscape.



Lange-Kirchheim speculates that Kafka might even have thought of thefigure of the explorer as standing for the personality of Weber himself. Butshe notes that in contrast to Webers call for restitution of the worth of theperson (113) through liberation from the apparatus (115), Kafkas soldierand condemned man, despite finally escaping from the apparatus, continueto subsist at the end of the story like half-animal natures, still below thethreshold of any civilized life. Kafka also in general appears to couple orderand regimentation with the very elements that Weber sees as offering releasefrom 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 liberalcommandant. Where Weber writes of an imperative to abolish the old idolatrywithout killing the man himself (wir wollen milde sein . . .) (114), Kafkasofficer disparages the new mild doctrine (die neue milde Richtung) (215/182)of the new commandant. The reader is left throughout the story with asense of the powerlessness, paralysis and complicity of the explorer in theaction unfolding before him. Like the greatest of the European modernistwriters from Musil to Beckett, Kafka casts a note of sceptical irony overWebers humanistic vision of the soul, spirit and vitality of the self and itsstruggle 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 lifeshighest state consists in a nice well-ordered existence, to people who think if they venture to think philosophically that a divine system of life inheresin 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 peoplewho think that it is on this nice idea of order that cultural development andthe inclusion of the weaker sections of the population depend. Rather, mywords are meant for those who feel that great things in life and historydepend not on mechanism and mechanization but on an unleashing of thecreative powers of the individual, for people who feel that collective lifedepends on individuality and that only through the creation of things thatare most unique and incommensurable can the nation and its great childrentruly unfold themselves for people who see every individual part as essen-tial to the life of the whole and every death of a part as dangerous to thepsychic growth of the whole.

People who sense that a common feeling of culture is at stake today seesomething monstrously problematic growing up around us. They see animmense apparatus rising up in our life with a tendency to pervade moreand more of our more native, free and organic facets of existence, and to suck



us into its chambers, into its compartments and sub-compartments. Theysense a poison of schematization radiating out from this apparatus, killing offeverything foreign to it, everything individual and organically independent,and installing a gigantic robotic Something, a dead system of soulless substi-tutions 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 thisapparatus, to detach himself from it at least inwardly and mentally; yet theylook with horror on a population and a psyche that adapts itself to the appar-atus, creeps into its chambers, its compartments and sub-compartments andmakes itself comfortable and at home in it, clambers up its ladders6 from onelittle warm spot to another, and shrivels into a yearning to be cared for by itand to make a career in it. They see a dead mechanism absorbing and dissolv-ing 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 lesswith the constitution and inner form of the new mechanization of life thanwith the question of how to rescue ourselves from it, with the culturalfoundations of life that lead beyond its purview, and with its significancefor our middle and upper social strata, our office-workers and civil servantswhose absorption into its operation has created todays bureaucratizationof 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 and15th centuries we have experienced these elements as firmly wrought rationalorganisms, making up a kind of apparatus with a backbone that held themtogether and enabled them to function. This apparatus laid the foundationfor our bureaus and thus our bureaucratization. But this rational mechanismat first only touched our life like a slender scaffolding, only diffusely, withoutaffecting any of lifes details. Most everyday existence, most economic andsocial life, most daily work and most individual action in the communityeluded bureaucratic regulation. Organized on a small scale, informally,through kin and neighbourhood relations, through feeling complexes, andnot according to an economic principle, most daily work was not capable ofbureaucratization. Like unploughed land, it lay beneath or beyond thethreshold of mechanization and the bustle of machinery.

If a future sociology asks itself about the most historic alteration in mansexternal conditions of life, about the changes that have most profoundlyrevolutionized mans lived contents of experience,7 it will surely have to pointto the process that brought us from this earlier situation to our positiontoday, from a naturally evolved state of life to a world of rational organiz-ation. This was the real social revolution of the 19th century. The first phaseof the process lasted all of the last century up to its last quarter and is nowto be seen all around us in our great factories and industries. But now a



second phase has just dawned upon us and envelops us in the great bureau-cratic transformation of which I am speaking.

A single great process of rationalization created the industrial social re-structuring of life that we today describe as the essence of technologicaldomination by machines and by advanced economic division of labour in acapitalist society. This process ejected our lower social orders from theirformer free existence, inexorably absorbing their labour power in the greybarren uniform shells that today cover over our fields of life. Everythingknown as the social question reflects nothing but the fate of our lowerorders before this great mechanism of absorption.

This process is complete, or nearly complete,8 but what now confronts usis a second phase of this upsurge of rational organization over the economyand other areas of life. We now witness this process at a higher step of theladder, where economically dominated mechanisms create states of total unifi-cation and interlocking monopolistic incorporation across giant organisms.This is the external peculiarity,9 the exterior face of something whose innerfunction is now self-evidently to strip the middle and higher social orders ofa free existence and to incorporate them too into the great rational mechan-ism as labour forces dedicated to technical, commercial, clerical and adminis-trative tasks in the bureaucratic head of the totality.10

This process is only externally connected with the modern capitalist formof economy. Its more real cause is the universal process of intellectualizationof practical action discerned by Saint-Simon: the compulsion to use cogni-tion to determine everywhere the path of least resistance to human action,which is the principle of the division of labour. That capital availed itself ofthis intellectualization as a means to profit and has thereby become the agentof this new organization is historically contingent. It could equally wellhave been the state which anyway is in part the case. The outcome isnonetheless universal bureaucratization, and every new social problem of thepresent reflects nothing but the fate of the middle and upper social orderswho are today drawn into the mechanism no less than the lower orders.

Our transportation system in Germany is a complex web of gigantic mech-anisms, today indispensable to our existence, which has suddenly sprung upby a great technological leap out of our earlier small-scale organization. Inconsequence, no fewer than 150,000 bureaucratic functionaries operatealongside half a million other workers to maintain the apparatus of our roadsand railway lines. In our manufacturing, cartels, syndicates and trusts havegrown up over our older large industries like fantastic crystalline forms,creating unified organizations above our older forms like a great mountainrange of accumulated mass forces. The consequence is that 8.5 million manualworkers alongside no fewer than 686,000 officials and clerks toil for thebureaucratic edifice of this labouring body11 (and note that as recently as1890 the figure was only in the region of 90,000). And then there are those



50,000 clerks and officials who work at the banks and institutes that pervadeour capitalist business life like states within a state.

Quite clearly, then, what stand before us are unified mammoths of organiz-ation, not limited to the economic sphere but composed of many differentspheres locked together with one another, whether in private hands or underthe control of the state, or increasingly in a mix of both public and privateelements. Only 25 years ago little more than 700,000 Germans worked in thebureaus, 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 onceenjoyed by the middle and upper social classes has degraded now to some-thing well-nigh exceptional. The statistics also show us that in the non-agrarian economy only 200,000 to 300,000 Germans work as self-employedentrepreneurs. It is clear that all strata of society middle and upper as wellas lower are transformed into dependants on this great dead mechanism.

II A tremendous revolution full of pains and convulsions12 stripped thelower orders of their independence. Raging against the machines that hadbecome their robbers, they sought to reconquer their losses by violent politi-cal revolt and socialistic actions. Only a teaching [Marxism] that told themthat it is this process itself [capitalist industrialization] that eventually willlead them out of slavery to a higher freedom gave them the will to bear theirnew condition.

The new revolution of the upper orders, by contrast, has unfolded almostin silence. In its outward appearance, it has been incomparably less cruel andhas not been bound up with dclassement and disempowerment by machinesor banishment to a complete precariousness of existence. It appears rather tohave brought greater comfort and security, and even greater respect forprofessional standing. But it has been no less profound in its impact. If some-thing monstrous robbed the lower orders of the freedom to shape theirworking lives, an even more ominous fate now befalls the upper strata; forthese strata now stand to lose everything they have acquired by way of adistinctive 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 inwork and comradely life stolen from him. Nothing will ever compensate theworking masses for this loss. But what when a similar fate now afflicts asmaller sector of the population that once possessed a much greater degreeof self-reliance? What when the self-reliant entrepreneur now also disappearsas a character-building factor in the life of the nation? Is it any less conse-quential that an entrepreneurs talents and powers that made his work whatit was now also seep away into the schematism of the bureaus? The upperclasses ability to shape themselves through their work and their profession



once gave them an importance for the nation as carriers of the culture of thepeople, but now these elements of independence and free manliness, ofautonomous action and uninhibited self-flourishing look set to be wiped out a fate as momentous as the privations that once led the masses to attemptto overturn the pyramid of society.

The lower strata have found ways of rescuing themselves from the destruc-tion of their work values by treating their devalued occupations as nothingmore than something given. Distancing themselves from their work, theyattempt to find a centre of mental life outside the mechanism that embroilsthem, a kind of freedom of personal life outside their place of work. If theystill possess a freshness and a reserve of strength in their barren labour, ifthey still retain an openness for culture, a political sense and readiness forself-sacrifice in struggle, a sense of the good, the just and the beautiful, anda mental character, they do so by dint of conquering a kind of world forthemselves out of the world they have lost.

But what of the new office-workers and civil servants? Now they arechained to the apparatus13 and absorbed into their vocations by every avail-able means. Now they are offered comfort and security in place of restlessstruggling through the stream of life; and for this they must pay a price:lifelong attachment14 to the apparatus and obedience to it. Now they aregiven the opportunity to climb their way up in the apparatus from positionto position, with the prospect of a career and future power; and for thisthey must surrender their entire powers of labour15 and their entire exist-ence as men. They gain respect and standing and nice titles at the cost oftheir soul.

It is to be feared that unlike the less educated but physically stronger lowerorders, they will forget to distance themselves from the apparatus andmistake life in the apparatus for life itself, mistake circumscribed, regimented,collectivized tasks in the apparatus for personal accomplishment, mistakeinterest 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 theapparatus and the need for guarantees for self-management. One hopes thatat least here and there a little of the universal bureaucratization processmight be avoided, curtailed, even prevented. Better a flexible labour force (einaufgelockerter . . . Krper), 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 factof its existence is ineluctable. In no way can we spare ourselves any part ofit without ending with a less rationally developed constitution and a lessadvanced division of labour; for once a system has acquired a certain magni-tude, it must operate at a certain level of force and rate of turnover; and then



nothing, not even a most concerted effort of attenuation, can prevent itsfunctions of direction, order and control from uncoupling themselves fromproductive manual activities and becoming purely functionary. Deploy-ment of a labour force of technicians is in this sense an inevitable part of therationalization process. Schmoller was always right to underline that bureau-cratization is an integral technical symptom of any developed societal orderand is nowhere to be escaped.

III The danger of a peoples descent into the apparatus differs widelyaccording to country. Some peoples by temperament are immune to it; somecan distance themselves from this clattering monotony of the machinery. Youwill never reduce a Frenchman to a mere bureaucrat. Monsieur can calculate,formulate, decree and parry off problems without being swallowed up byroutine, for he habitually whistles at everything that bores him and alwaysseeks a change, excitation or warmth when life becomes troublesome. WeGermans, on the other hand, are quite different. It is true that Bismarck twicecame close to being dragged into the apparatus and nevertheless on bothoccasions, by temperament, ran right away from it; all his life he preservedhis aversion to the desiccation of the juices in the bureau, as he put it. Buthow many of us resemble Bismarck today? How strong are our defencesagainst the cogs of the machine (Geklapper) and the enormous mechanismsmonotony? Too many affinities exist between our sluggish German way offeeling and the feelingless stasis of the apparatus; too great are the dangers ofour mental forces being wound up in its mechanism.

Some peoples historical character has protected them from being swal-lowed up by the apparatus more effectively than ours. Some peoples havebeen skilled at inculcating a type of cultured person among their upper socialstrata free from pettiness and narrowness, and at doing so at an early enoughstage to enable them to enter the revolutionary upheavals of the 19th centurywith a fairly solid moral backbone already in place. Achieving national unifi-cation at an early stage, these peoples the French and the English becamepopulous centres of development by the 16th century, and a universal metro-politan type of culture grew up in their capital cities by the 17th and 18thcenturies, composed of the old aristocracys courtly refinement with a mixof bourgeois entrepreneurial spirit. Both thus created a picture for them-selves of appropriate conduct of life, still effective today, even if altered in itscontent, like a golden handrail16 that has enabled them to avoid slidingdown by blind zeal17 into the vocational mindlessness.18

Others such as we Germans, by contrast, managed nowhere to developbeyond a small-town form of existence before the social revolutions of the19th century. We failed to acquire this character type, and in consequence,when courtly life began to disappear in our land, the only type of socialleadership capable of being taken up by the bourgeoisie on a mass basis was



the mass non-form of the vocational philistine, the slipper-wearing pedestrianpetty bourgeois, leaving us ill-equipped for the bureaucratic age looming onthe horizon.

It is true that not all peoples whose anciens rgimes managed to establishsomething greater and freer than this have fully rid themselves of the old mistof conformity, the perfume of complacency. Despite the 19th centurys revol-utionary unleashing of new forces, even these peoples mental atmospheresstill today contain elements that have not been saved from the bureaucraticmechanisms tendencies to reinforce contented cosiness and a pension insur-ance attitude to the whole of life, trapping them once again in a paradise ofplain narrow-mindedness. Still, let us also not forget these peoples humoristsand satirists, their Dickens, their Thackeray and their Balzac, and let us notconfuse the tenacious and capable with the pedestrian and plain. Not allBalzacs villains Rouget, Brideau, Grandet and not all Englands andFrances petty bourgeois fit neatly into this nice little paradise. All have infact eaten from a tree of knowledge that has ejected them for ever from anymere garden of uprightness.

But our German reality remains, by contrast, exactly as Seidel19 depicts itfor us. So well have we conserved the old atmosphere, so little have we beentouched by the competitive shaking-up of all things, so little have we openedup the windows of our existence to change, that we may simply walk quietlyunchanged out of the stifling air20 of the old narrowness into a new suffoca-tion. 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 exchangingone kind of pettiness of psyche and timidity of existence for another. For westill lack an exemplary type of character among our upper social classescapable of banishing narrowness from the average man.

It is also clear that in the course of the 19th centurys upheavals, olderpeoples have been forced to simplify their structures of personality. One hearstalk of a new voluntarism of man, of a new domination of all life by politicaland economic interests after the collapse of the old world. This we have seenin the exigencies of reconstruction, in the battles unleashed by this wholeprocess that have pitted all against all, in the tremendous crowds of menerupting primevally out of the belly of the European earth, and in the demo-cratic idea asserted from below by the masses, from one people to another.Everywhere people have been compelled to turn away from the inner life, torelieve themselves of the luggage of the mind in the struggle for existence, andto concentrate more and more on the practically useful and commodious. Alldrawn into the whirlpool have been forced to act in this way, and in conse-quence our cultured psyche of the 18th century has all but disappeared.

Confronting all civilized peoples today stands the portent of a life of purebusiness in a purely economically dominated apparatus of organization. All



civilized people now see the writing on the wall, but none see it more thanwe Germans; for we have lacked a generalized character type able to stemthis hollowing-out of our structures of personality. We have felt the pressureof tasks to be solved more acutely than others. For we have had to build notonly 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. Withan incredible force, the new regime has catapulted us into disciplined labourand into every practically functional activity. Only thus, it seems, has ourthoroughly artificially constructed strength in the world been able to holdits own. Yet as a result, we have thrown away, in a great paroxysm, all ourfine culture, all our immeasurably rich types of individual character, our fineinner critical spirit, our developed imagination, our deep ideal optimism, andso much else besides all to the gutters of history. In exchange we now havethat new German of our time, that wondrous strangest thing history eversaw: the realist the supposedly modern realist; yet a realist shot throughwith the most primitive and archaic habits, with the most antiquated cosinessand encrusted plainness, geared to petty social climbing: precisely the typeof man the bureaucratic mechanism requires.

In one of his letters, Ibsen says that the Jews today are superior in culturetoday because for all their involvement in business, they are mostly excludedfrom the apparatus, and are thus pushed toward individually distinctive andcomplex ways of life composed of a diversity of situations that give them aninner wealth. This is indeed a wise observation when one considers ourswelling masses of people today who no longer even notice how their exist-ence has assumed a form that reminds one of nothing so much as a Danishsnow-slide: at the front door of their homes stands the enigmatic inscriptionMatura, and from out of this door they fly along a fixed piste to their othergreat door inscribed in golden letters with the words: Mr Privy Councillor(Herr Geheimrat).

IV Absorption into the apparatus also differs greatly according to the extentof its cultural influence over mens minds: great differences prevail betweencountries not only in its external power but also especially in its commandover mental life. In parliamentary democracies, where sometimes the appar-atus appears as the instrument of one majority and sometimes of another,sometimes of this president and sometimes of another, it seems impossible thatit could assume the nimbus it exudes in countries ruled by, or thought to beruled by, a state power able to grip its population like a spinal cord. In suchcountries, civil servants acquire all the elevated values of their personalitypurely from this nimbus, from their rank, work and vocation, and becomeenthralled by an idea of service to it: such is our distinctively German fate.

Unlike countries in which a mans standing depends on the personality hecan display in society and only incidentally on his public office, among us



and in other autocratic-bureaucratic countries he is nothing in himself andeverything as an official.21 Among us he is addressed and esteemed bynothing but his title, office and rank. Woe betide him if he should one dayventure to detach himself from this shibboleth and play the man himself.Perhaps other similar countries will rid themselves one day of this pure occu-pationalism; but our German problem is that not only do we possess thismerely vulgar bureaucratic nimbus; we also suffer from what Max Weberhas aptly called a certain metaphysics of officialdom (Metaphysik des Beam-tentum). One might even speak of our theocratization of the civil servant(Theokratisierung des Beamten), our trans-substantiation of the official intosomething absolute. We feel ourselves so mightily conditioned by this artificeof organization, so beholden to state action, that we have acquired a moodand a teaching preached by all too many of our premier jurists, our mostrespected historians and most influential economists that can only bedescribed as an idolatry of officialdom (Gtzendienst vor dem Beamtentum).Inasmuch as each official believes himself devoted purely to the matter athand, it is not so much the civil servant that we raise up on high as the appar-atus itself. Unlike in any other bureaucratic country, the apparatus rises upin our land like a mystical miraculous Something amid the most mysteriousclouds with the effect that an individual official becomes all the more hope-lessly, unconditionally, and totally absorbed and tangled in it.

Our daily sense of a need for organized authority and limitless conscious-ness of authority causes us anxiously to close all divisions of officialdom tothe outside world and to construct that fiction of unity so necessary for anappearance of infallibility, leading in turn to atrophy of the lower echelonsand impoverishment of every spirit of self-reliance: the phenomenon of theincompetent burgomaster, the pedantic teacher, and so on. All of this occurswhen a body of officials is pressed into a uniform mass of men, when serviceand life are pushed along the narrowest of tracks of duty and loyalty to theorganization, when all of a mans existence on duty and off duty acquiresa definite tone and cadence, such that even only the slightest brooking of itspath causes each and every official to be ruffled.

This visible core of the public apparatus also affects all other organizationsof our society: functionality, vocational dedication, objectively alienatedlabour, and the vanishing of personality22 all become universally consecrated.Not all of this can be explained by any traditionally religious factor, such asmight also be observed in other countries. It has to do specifically with thoseclouds of incense with which we Germans shroud our altars of state official-dom and in which we bow down in sacrifice before our sacred idols.

Our dried-up, shrivelled-up bureaucrats soul is Jobst, the upright comb-maker 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 lifeneeds each day24 the slave of his stupid little task, and a climber. Such is



how it looks at the lower echelons. At the upper levels, meanwhile, dwellthose men of duty25 who sacrifice themselves for fatherland and nation withsuch fervour they fail to see that it is precisely in this sacrifice that they sendthe nations soul to its ruin.

But enough. We are a people without defences against sinking into amindless abyss. We have adorned our abyss with flowers and garlands andwillingly condemned the man who sinks in it to near-total despotism overhimself.

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 toprivate enterprise, the same machinery and the same immense constructionconfront us. In the machinerys countless desolate chambers our soul dies, asin the catacombs of its existence. Who created it or to whom it belongs isunimportant. The cage has been built and now it is our fate.26

Our goal should be to seek to salvage ourselves from this apparatus ashuman beings, as vital persons. Let us therefore at least destroy its publicnimbus; let us consider it no more than the technical framework of our exist-ence, abandon our pious feelings for it, rid ourselves of its clothing of meta-physics; and let us be courageous, consistent, efficacious and honest.

We know that we acquired our concept of vocation from the inner-worldlyasceticism of the Puritans. Self-sacrifice and unflinching dedication grew upon the soil of a belief in this-worldly existence as probation and preparationfor another life. There was a time when this concept of vocation was entirelyrational; but now it has become nonsense for a man for whom an after-lifelacks any full reality. Only fools could demand of a man that he continue tothrow himself into the pursuit of something with no immediate meaning forhim. Now that the old basis of the vocational idea is destroyed, it confrontsus 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 toprotect 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 theold teaching of the calling. Naturally, one rescues by building, not by tearingdown: it would be ridiculous to think we could want to abolish duty andlabour and planning of life, but equally ridiculous to think we might still needthe old theological foundations.27 This predicament engulfs us from all sides perhaps less our highest social strata but certainly our broadest middlingmass, whose life impels them to work from duty, even if not in the samemanner as the lower classes. Our life has become one great project of workthat 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 ofthe community, for the nation and the universal human community; but it is



not a compulsion to work that we need but a more meaningful measure ofour progress, grounded in personal realization through activity in life. Todaythis means self-realization of the person as such, not the person of anyparticular religious faith; it means recognition of the individual as the lastcreative source of great things. This is all that we should feel willing to sacri-fice ourselves for. That a man should devote himself to his vocation is onematter; that he should perceive his entire goal in life in his vocation is quiteanother.

Talk of the worth of the personality ought for once to be taken more seri-ously. We ought to consider our metaphysical ideas about the ends of theperson more concretely and ask ourselves how life and vocation might appro-priately be joined to one another or detached from one another. Perhaps thenour intuitions about people existing before their work and before theirvocation, and our inclination to regard the latter as merely one means of apersons unfolding, might gain a greater immediacy for us. Only particulardimensions of our existence ought to be embedded in the apparatus of voca-tions, not our great values; occupational commitment ought to represent onlya secondary means of our self-fulfilment, not its most important aspect.

We know labours value for us, its way of steeling us and confronting uswith our resistance to things inwardly and outwardly alien to us. In thisexperience of steeling can be recognized the last traces the evaporated ghost of our old idea of labour, which once proffered a sense of wholeness forus. But labours activity is not our goal in life, only its material underpinning,something to be taken tacitly for granted. Therefore a man should be judgednot 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 remainvitally 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 canreach this point, we will have begun to change the foundations of life, andother consequences will follow.

If a new valuation of mans vital powers and a new atmosphere of lifecauses our theocratized German bureaucrats to shed their metaphysicalraiment, we will have begun to reverse the objectification of our values anddestroyed our fetishism. It may be that only a democratic revolution willachieve this end. But we should show moderation28 and beware that it is onlyour bureaucrats false regalia, this remnant of former times,29 loaded with thedesires and images of todays political romanticism, that we should want todestroy, not the man himself. The bureaucrats downfall will give us back theman from his vocational sclerosis and dissolve the veritable hearth he hasmade 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 bindhim to the apparatus externally must also be broken; he must also be liber-ated materially.30 Here arises the perennial conundrum of the needs of the



state and the community over against the rights of the person: all the oldquestions of constitutional law, administration and the foundations ofcommunity life. To the question of whether yet more areas of life should besubmitted to state control, the answer must be no. Whatever increases ingeneral material welfare and comfort and security for functionaries accruefrom state ownership and collectivization, the danger of a dying-off ofpersonal initiative is too great and overwhelming at present. The questiontherefore remains as to how to establish an at least external juridical guaran-tee of freedom for our masses of both public- and private-sector servants ofthe apparatus. Previously we met this question of the regulation of life andlabour in the plight of our manual workers; now we face it in a new and evenmore complicated guise in our office-workers and officials.

I have no doubt that one day it will be impossible to understand a timewhen 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 ordemote you and tell you your occupation without your influence; I can callon you to represent me even when you are off-duty; for you are my vassal.31One day it will be impossible to understand that hundreds of thousands ofpeople could accept such servitude for their daily bread and that crowds ofpeople could multiply through the ceaseless state collectivization of resources,forming a more and more massive type of social class. It will be accepted thatthe state requires human capital for a few limited functions of public orderand policing, but we will reject its way of enslaving us through its newlyacquired control over the economy, education and corporeal health. We willaccord rights to our office-workers, but not any kind of special status distinc-tion for them; we will establish rights human rights for our functionar-ies, but rights against, not by grace of, the apparatus: rights able to releasethem from their servitude and help them regain purchase over their lives.

I also have no doubt that one day our public functionaries will makecommon cause with our private-sector workers. All our engineers, tech-nicians and businessmen who perform the most important kinds of labourin the apparatus today have found a new level of collective organization;perhaps one day this new mode of organization will also attract our stateofficials, and our current middle class will gain a new consciousness of itsunity and significance in society. It is to be hoped that our middle class willnot think solely of its interests and power, of its pension insurance and otherbenefits, but instead take fate into its own hands and endeavour actively tobring about the process of its legal emancipation. If it can shed its inner chainsand its outer chains, without exceeding the limits of community life, a futureof great possibilities opens up before us. It is to be hoped that we can rescuethe substance of cultural becoming that has disappeared into the mechaniza-tion of life and that our upper social classes will one day be able to feel greatfeelings and create great things again. What is called culture always grows; it



is never ready-made for us; so let us never allow the soil that nurtures ourculture to dry up completely; let us be sure to keep ourselves fit for a futuredance of our spiritual powers.

NOTES

1 See Lange-Kirchheim (1977, 1986); Alfred Weber (2000[1910]). Alfred Weberstext also appeared in abridged form in the Frankfurter Zeitung on 18 October1910, no. 288.

2 It is also a well documented fact that Max Brod, Kafkas close friend and editor,attended Webers lectures regularly and later maintained a friendly correspon-dence with him throughout the rest of his life, although no evidence exists of anyconversation between Brod and Kafka about Weber and no documentationremains of any exchange of words between Weber and Kafka in 1906.

3 Kafka references are to In der Strafkolonie (1950[1919]), followed by In the PenalColony (1961[1933]). Weber references are to the Alfred-Weber-Gesamtausgabe,vol. 8 (Alfred Weber, 2000).

4 See especially Mller-Seidel (1986); also Binder (1966, 1968); Krollop and Zimmer-mann (1994); Stach (2005[2002]); Heinemann (1996).

5 Two notable exceptions are the studies by Gonzalez Garca (1989) and Demm(1990); also Demm (2000).

6 W 99: Wie sie einkriecht . . . die Leitern aufkriecht.K 199: . . . whrend 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 . . .7 W 100: . . . die Vernderung . . . die alle seine Lebensinhalte am tiefsten

umgewlzt hat . . .K 212: . . . beim weiteren Umwlzen des Krpers . . .K 178: . . . as the body turns farther round . . .

8 W 100: Das ist vollendet oder nahezu vollendet.K 201: Dieser Apparat, sagte er [der Offizier] . . . ist eine Erfindung unseres

frheren Kommandanten. Ich . . . war auch bei allen Arbeiten bis zurVollendung beteiligt.

K 170: This apparatus, he [the officer] said . . . was invented by our formerCommandant. I assisted . . . until its completion.

9 W 101: Das ist die ussere Eigentmlichkeit . . .K 199: Es ist ein eigentmlicher Apparat . . .K 169: Its a remarkable piece of apparatus . . .

10 W 101: den schreib- und anordungsverwendeten, den bureaukratischen Kopfdes Ganzen.

K 210: Dort im Zeichner ist das Rderwerk, welches . . . nach der Zeichnung. . . angeordnet [wird] . . .

K 178: In the Designer are all the cog-wheels . . . and this machinery isregulated according to the inscription . . .



11 W 102: das bureaukratische Gebude . . . das sich ber jenem blossen Arbeitskrper 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.

12 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 . . .

13 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 dieauch 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 communicatinglinks.

14 W 104: . . . dafr 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? 15 W 104: . . . man . . . verlangt dann aber . . . die ganze Arbeitskraft . . .

K 209, 216: Wir haben eben keine Mhe gescheut. . . . ich verbrauche alle meine Krfte, um zu erhalten, was vorhanden ist.

K 176, 182: No trouble was too great for us to take, you see. . . . it takes allmy energy to maintain it as it is.

16 W 106: Ein goldenes Gelnder . . .K 219: Damals mussten wir ein starkes Gelnder um die Grube anbringen.K 185: In those days we had to put a strong fence round the grave.

17 W 106: . . . das vor dem blinden Eifer . . . sichert.K 200: . . . der Offizier fhrte [seine Arbeiten] mit einem grossen Eifer aus . . .K 169: . . . the officer performed [his tasks] with great zeal . . .

18 W 106: . . . in Berufsverstumpfung . . .K 199: . . . der Verurteilte, ein stumpfsinnger, breitmuliger Mensch.K: 169: . . . the condemned man, who was a stupid-looking wide-mouthed

creature . . . 19 Heinrich Seidel (18421906): German engineer and writer of fiction in a

bourgeois didactic style.20 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

strkeres 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.21 W 110: er bedeutet bei uns nichts als solche, alles aber als Beamte.

K 218: ich [der Offizier] allerdings durfte kraft meines Berufes immerdabeistehen.



K 184: I [the officer], of course, because of my office, had the privilege ofalways being at hand.

22 W 111: . . . das Aufgehen in der wesensfremden objektiven Arbeit, dasVerschwinden der Persnlichkeit als solcher.

K 228: Es war eine mhselige Arbeit . . . manchmal verschwand der Kopf desOffiziers vllig im Zeichner . . .

K 192: It was a troublesome piece of work . . . for sometimes the officershead vanished altogether from sight inside the Designer . . .

23 Jobst the comb-maker is a character in Gottfried Kellers novella, Die dreigerechten Kammacher (1856).

24 W 111: . . . ob alles Leben auch die frische Wsche wert sei.K 205, 215: Dann sah er [der Offizier] prfend seine Hnde an; sie schienen

ihm nicht rein genug . . . er ging daher zum Kbel und wusch sienochmals. . . . ich knnte ja morgen, wenn der Apparat wiedergereinigt ist dass er so sehr beschmutzt wird, ist sein einziger Fehler die nheren Erklrungen nachtragen.

K 173, 176: Then he inspected his hands critically; they did not seem cleanenough to him . . . so he went over to the bucket and washed themagain. . . . tomorrow, when the apparatus has been cleaned its onedrawback is that it gets so messy I can recapitulate the details.

25 W 111: Auf den oberen aber gibt es jenen Pflichtmenschen, der fr Vaterlandund fr Nation sich opfert . . .

K 207: . . . er [der Verurteilte] hat nmlich, die Pflicht, bei jedem Stundenschlagaufzustehen und vor der Tr des Hauptmanns zu salutieren. Gewisskeine schwere Pflicht . . . Der Hauptmann wollte in der gestrigenNacht nachsehen, ob der Diener seine Pflicht erflle.

K 175: It is his [the condemneds] duty . . . to get up every time the hourstrikes and salute the captains door. Not an exacting duty . . . Lastnight the captain wanted to see if the man was doing his duty.

26 W 112: Sicherlich auf keine Weise ist der bureaukratischen Organisation zuentfliehen . . . der Kfig wird gebaut; er ist nun unser Schicksal.

K 201: die Einrichtung der ganzen Strafkolonie [ist] . . . so in sichgeschlossen, dass sein Nachfolger . . . nichts von dem Alten wirdndern knnen.

K 170: The organization of the colony was so perfect that his [the formerCommandants] successor . . . would find it impossible to alteranything, at least for many years to come.

27 W 113: es ist lcherlich zu glauben, dass wir die zerstren wollten oderknnten. Lcherlich aber auch zu meinen, dass wir heute jene altetheologische Fundierung fr sie brauchten.

K 236: Es besteht eine Prophezeiung, dass der Kommandant . . . auferstehen. . . wird. . . . Als der Reisende das gelesen hatte . . . sah er rings umsich die Mnner stehen und lcheln, als htten sie mit ihm dieAufschrift gelesen, sie lcherlich gefunden und forderten ihn auf, sichihrer Meinung anzuschliessen.

K 198: There is a prophecy that after a certain number of years theCommandant will rise again . . . When the explorer had read this . . .



he saw the bystanders around him smiling, as if they too had read theinscription, had found it ridiculous and were expecting him to agreewith 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 Knigsmantel, dies Gebilde aus

Verdienste frherer Zeiten . . .K 21920: Wie war die Exekution anders in frherer Zeit! . . . ich weiss, es ist

unmglich, jene Zeiten heute begreiflich zu machen.K1835: 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, mssen 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 11516: Du bist mein, wenn du dich einmal mir verkauft hast; ich kann dich

befrdern, du hast keinen Einfluss; ich kann dich versetzen, duhast keinen Einfluss . . . ich verlange, dass du ausserhalb des Dienstesgleichfalls 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!

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Kafka, F. (1961)[1933]) In the Penal Colony, in Metamorphosis and Other Stories,trans. E. Muir and W. Muir. Harmondsworth, Mx: Penguin, pp. 16999.



Krollop, K. and Zimmermann, H. D., eds (1994) Kafka und Prag. Berlin: Walter deGruyter.

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Weber, A. (2000[1910]) Der Beamte, Die neue Rundschau 21: 132139; reprinted inAlfred-Weber-Gesamtausgabe, vol. 8, Schriften zur Kultur- und Geschichtssozi-ologie. Marburg: Metropolis Verlag, pp. 98117.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

AUSTIN HARRINGTON is Reader in Sociology at the University of Leeds, UK,and Research Associate at the Max Weber Kolleg fr kultur- und sozialwis-senschaftliche Studien at the University of Erfurt, Germany. His publicationsinclude Art and Social Theory: Sociological Arguments in Aesthetics (PolityPress, 2004) and, as editor, Modern Social Theory: An Introduction (OxfordUniversity Press, 2005). He is completing a monograph on conceptions ofEurope and Europeanism among German liberal social thinkers in the yearsof the Weimar Republic.

Address: Max Weber Kolleg fr kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien,Am Hgel 1, 99084 Erfurt, Germany. [email: [email protected]/[email protected]]



Documents

History of the Human Sciences 2007 Harrington 41 63