Lack of gas, inflation, Layla: This is the summer of 2022. Anyone looking for answers to all these mysteries will quickly end up with Franz Kafka, the great swimmer.
Lack of gas, inflation, Layla – this summer is full of plagues, and in their distress not a few already feel confronted with the great questions of mankind – like the writer Franz Kafka, who also struggled with his existence. In the summer heat, however, the brooding mind turned into a rogue who preferred to jump into a river and turned his joy in the water into world literature.
A good century ago, Kafka lived the strange belief that he had only taken possession of a landscape when he had bathed in its lively, flowing waters. Of course, even then there was the problem that many bathers did not come out alive from these lively, flowing waters. “Dasuffa sans!” is how some Bavarians sum up those dramas that were also familiar to Kafka, which can be gathered from his novel “The Judgment”, in which a father condemns his son to drowning.
For hygienic reasons, it used to be advisable to climb into a pond or a river. In order to protect their shoes, the children ran around barefoot from April to October, which caused thick calluses on their feet, but also toe crusts of all shapes and consistencies. And if the feet got cold on rainy days, then a farmer’s child would simply stand in a fresh cow dung so that the warm baaz could gently wash over the toes.
When Prince Charles stepped into a cow dung at an agricultural fair some time ago, the unlucky raven was comforted by saying that such a mishap would bring good luck. The purest happiness, however, once consisted of climbing into a steaming heap on the cow meadow. The fact that the village school stank like Lucifer’s mouth was just the way it was, everyone stank.
But of what use were clean feet when a child fell into the mill stream and was then dragged out lifeless. An everyday fate in Kafka’s day, a child’s life didn’t count for much. Nevertheless, the order was satisfied. The “good old days” were definitely on a par with the present in terms of absurdity. The Munich mill owner Maria Walser recorded in her diary at the time that a court official had to ask the drowned person loudly and clearly three times: “Why did you drown yourself?” The clerk then noted: “He gave no answer to three questions.”