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

The evidence of an influence

Bibliographic Data

ID12220487
AuthorsAustin Harrington (0000-0003-4635-2741, University of Leeds, UK and University of Erfurt, Germany, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume20
Issue3
Pages41-63
Publication date2007-07-26
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory of the Human Sciences (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0952-6951 • E-ISSN: 1461-720X
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0952695107079334
OpenAlexW2024105612
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited5

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

Art · Brother · Civil servant · Criminology · German · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Politics · Prison · Servant · Sociology · Anthropology · Classics · Franz Kafka Literary Studies · History · Law · Philosophy

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