A visit to the mine

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A visit to the mine is a story by Franz Kafka that appeared in 1920 as part of the volume Ein Landarzt . The top engineers visit a mine to take measurements so that a new tunnel can be built. The story is told by an anonymous miners.

Summary

The appearance of the engineers who are deployed underground for surveying work is reported. The ten engineers are all individual, despite their amazing youth. But everyone contributes to the work in their own way. Obviously, it is the miners who report, and they appreciate the skills of every engineer and register the arrogance of the attendant clerk who has no work function.

But what about engineering really? One gives explanations that the others don't need. One, apparently the highest in rank, does not tolerate company, so he is solitary and also pale and weak. Two beardless, bulbous-nosed gentlemen chatter and smirk. One is described as a child who touches everything and lies down in the dirt to conduct his investigations. Another pushes a kind of pram with the measuring devices, which would actually be the clerk's job. One accompanies this car and makes room for it. At his finger signal, the workers should move to the side, even if there is nowhere more space.

In any case, the visit of the top engineers to the mine is such a great, entertaining event that work is no longer an option for this work shift. The engineers, however, will continue their inspection beyond the end of the shift.

Text analysis

Similar to the story Der neue Advokat , an anonymous workforce reports on the appearance of new people in their working world. Here, the professional hierarchies are a major issue. The narrators are obviously the miners never mentioned in detail.

The engineers

The newcomers who only come to the mine specifically for a special job, namely surveying, appear young and individual. "They have all developed freely and their clearly defined nature shows itself unbound from a young age". The miners notice this as a special feature. You see here the contrast to your own, more similar existences, which are characterized by restrictive living conditions.

Most of the ten young engineers devote themselves to their respective tasks with particular seriousness. However, there are two who chat and laugh together. The fact that they are obviously allowed to do this suggests that they in particular have achieved special merits. The engineers seem to put extra effort into the work. In contrast to this stands the eleventh person in the story, the clerk of the mountain directorate, who is completely useless because an engineer has taken over his work. In addition, the clerk treats the miners condescendingly. The engineers, on the other hand, have no interaction at all with the miners - apart from the finger sign clearing the way.

They are only committed to their work, the exact meaning of which the miners do not always understand. One wonders whether the sometimes bizarre portrayal of the engineers is due to the miners' incomprehension or whether the miners, in their simple way, have a precise sense that the engineers are a hodgepodge of strange characters.

The engineer is repeatedly portrayed by Kafka as a recognized, seriously working person. At the same time, the difficulty of reaching this profession is discussed. See The Stoker and The Missing One .

Is the “free development” mentioned at the beginning a prerequisite for this higher-level professional activity, in which more free development is also possible?

The miners

The workers are never shown in their actual function. The appearance of the engineers is such an event for the miners that they hardly think about their own work for the rest of the shift. It would be inconceivable that, conversely, when the miners showed up, the engineers would let themselves be deterred from their important work. This is how the miners' shift ends, but there are no shifts for the engineers; they will continue to work until they have completed their particular task according to their own criteria.

So three working levels are presented. The engineers, the majority of whom give the impression of working intensively and seriously, the clerks as representatives of the useless administration and the miners, about whose actual work nothing is learned, except that they neglect them because of the visiting event. And yet it is they who keep the mine running and may have to pay for any mistakes made by engineers with their own lives.

Literary references

The eleven working people shown here are reminiscent of the story of Elf Sons . The narratives are similar in other respects as well, in that they both contain a kind of literary puzzle. The eleven people in the present story are supposed to represent the various authors of the publisher Kurt Wolff , including Heinrich Mann , Carl Sternheim , Maxim Gorki and Hugo von Hofmannsthal .

expenditure

  • Franz Kafka: All the stories. Paul Raabe . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • Franz Kafka: The stories. Edited by Roger Herms, original version. Fischer Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Franz Kafka: Prints during his lifetime. Edited by Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard Neumann . Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1996, pp. 276-280.

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikisource: A Visit to the Mine  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography . Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 , p. 510.