The Eternal Recurrent of the Same
The Challenge of Raising Teenagers in the Early 1960’s
Peter writes from the present post onward.
‘The children now love luxury; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are tyrants, not servants of the households. They no longer rise when their elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize over their teachers.’ This quote is attributed to Socrates. While it has not been authenticated, it reflects the idea, based on painful parental experiences, that, throughout the millennia, children have always been perceived as unruly, rude and disrespectful to their parents and those in authority.
Portrait of Socrates. Marble, Roman artwork (1st century), perhaps a copy of a lost bronze statue.
Papa Panknin wrote many letters addressing and responding to friends and relatives. His literary ruminations could easily exceed the volume of a 500-page novel. The correspondence entailed a plethora of topics, such as politics, the rapidly changing customs and mores, the ills of post-war West Germany, and the challenges of bringing up their two teenage twins, Walter and Gertrud (Biene).
I will focus only on matters relating to the history of the Walter and Elisabeth family and their children. Furthermore, to make the final chapters more colourful and authentic, I will at times deviate from the strictly chronological path. I will make extensive use of Papa’s correspondence and will try my best to translate the German passages to give all of you a genuine understanding of my father-in-law, mother-in-law, Walter and Gertrud (Biene). Biene and I, as some of you may recall, met on the Pentecost weekend at Lake Baldenay and four years later, got married in Calgary on the Victoria weekend in 1966.
The Peter and Gertrud Klopp Family 
We’re looking forward to hearing more of the story about your in-laws, especially from the writings of Walter Panknin.
As you prudently noted, the opening quotation has not been authenticated. I’ll go a step further in pointing out that it’s common for people to purposely misattribute sayings to Socrates, Plato, Confucius, Einstein, Mark Twain, and other wise and clever people, in order to give credibility to the thoughts being expressed.
I’ve seen another version of the quotation, which Quote Investigator traced back to Kenneth John Freeman in his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. “Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. The words he used were later slightly altered to yield the modern version. In fact, more than one section of his thesis has been excerpted and then attributed [to] classical luminaries.”
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Times were sure different in the 60s and it won’t hurt to have a refresher of those days.
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I am looking forward to learning more about Biene and her brother as teenagers in post-war Germany. And whether or not Socrates said that, I guess kids have been driving parents crazy since the beginning of time. But I bet parents responded differently back then than they do now.
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Dear Peter,
well, the 60th were quite different but not better or worse than today and we can’t imagine how it was at the time of Socrates.
But such quotes are usually projection and especially concerning Socrates as we don’t have any sources of what he said. This is usually a magnet for projections.
We are looking forward reading more about your family history.
Happy Easter holidays
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I don’t know if it’s comforting or depressing to know that humans have never really changed.
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