father state
Father state as personification of the state is a political metaphor . As a further development of the traditional fatherland metaphor, it has set new accents in political culture since the 19th century. It is mostly used in a loving and ironic way and ascribes the - paternal - role of a caring and just, sometimes strict authority to the state, which regulates the social order and thus ultimately the life of every individual person more or less extensively.
The phrase "father state" has become a common standing term in the political debate.
use
The picture tends to correspond to the understanding of the state of the socialist and partly also conservative currents of the political spectrum . Some see the state primarily as a welfare state (socialists), others as a guarantor of order (conservatives).
Such an approach seems alien to liberalism and they use the metaphor of the father state in a derogatory and polemical way as a term against a “ statist ” understanding of the state, which in their eyes shifts the responsibility of the individual to the state.
The trade unionist Heinrich Stühmer (1863-1945), for whom the bourgeois German state as a refuge of capitalism was a clearly overpowering and as such questionable father figure, sums up the different, ideologically motivated appropriations of the "father state" as follows:
“There is nothing closer to the German entrepreneurs, who regard the father state as the night watchman and protector of 'their sourly acquired property', than to call for police help against these 'eternally dissatisfied' workers who were incited by 'unscrupulous agitators' presumptuous to demand a higher share of the yield of their work. "
The term is sometimes used to complement Mother Nature .
See also
- Father State (Thomas Schütte)
-
National allegory
- z. B. Uncle Sam
- but Germania , mother Russia (mother home)
- Father Rhine
- Fatherland and mother tongue
- Father patriae
- Patriarchy (sociology)
- Absolutism , Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes)
literature
- Daniela Dahn : We are the state! Why being a people is not enough. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-498-01333-2 .
- Alexander Neubacher: Totally limited. How the state gets us used to thinking with ever new regulations. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt et al., Munich et al. 2014, ISBN 978-3-421-04655-0 .
- Rolf Winter : Who the hell is the state? Confessions, questions and outrages from a pacifist. Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-89136-450-4 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ z. E.g. parliamentary speech (Czechoslovakia) of December 15, 1922 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Heinrich Stühmer: Trade unions, cooperatives, politics. In: Socialist monthly books . Vol. 3 = 5, Heft 3, 1899, pp. 524-530, here p. 524].
- ↑ See e.g. B. Eva Lang (Ed.): "Mother Nature and Father State". Future perspectives and approaches to shaping a difficult relationship under the sign of sustainability (= Association for Ecological Economy. Articles & Reports. 4). Association for Ecological Economy, Karlsruhe 2003, ISBN 3-00-011297-9 ; Gerhard Wolf : In the German poet garden. Poetry between mother nature and father state. Views and portraits (= Luchterhand collection. 626). Luchterhand, Darmstadt et al. 1985, ISBN 3-472-61626-1 ; Hans-Jürgen Quadbeck-Seeger : Aphorisms & quotations about nature and science. Wiley-VCH-Verlag, Weinheim 2013, ISBN 978-3-527-33613-5 .
