Papa Panknin’s Criticism of His Son

Gleaned from Papa Panknin’s Correspondence with Friends and Family

1963-11-13 “Walter, my son, received a very good report card and Biene also received a satisfactory one. But Walter also sometimes worries and annoys me. He had asked for an umbrella from Mom for his birthday and of course, received it from Mom. The thing about the umbrella gave me a stab in the heart. In the years that I have stood in a hail of bullets and breathed iron-rich air, my son wants to protect his head from raindrops. Of course, I hope he will have a better life than us parents, but an umbrella for a German boy is going too far for me. I find this difficult to come to terms with. Walter is a bit small. But he has brains and a strong will and has also grown well and strong. So he could one day become a whole guy, a whole man.

Yes, I don’t like the education system anymore, the upbringing of our young people, I think everything in the world has gone crazy and I can no longer understand it all. As it is well known, children are more likely to take advice from their teachers than from their parents. So my son says that he has to wear sunglasses. Of course, he wants expensive sunglasses, cheap sunglasses are no good. He also believes that after a bath in the salty ocean, you should shower yourself with fresh water. Indeed, he can prove this scientifically. His school constantly asks the students to buy new books, especially brochures, with my money. When it comes to literature, the students don’t live in the age of supersonic speed, but in the age of Romanticism. The poems I read in their books are mostly trash in my opinion.

They deal a lot at school with so-called modern literature and art. I’ve written it before. Some of their most frequently used words are the words interpret and interpretation. They indulge in the use of these words and feel very important. In the past, it was considered correct to train a person linguistically so they could express themselves clearly and unambiguously. Today you are looking for something to interpret. And so many of our laws are so unclear that they can be interpreted in multiple ways. In an otherwise completely sensible history book there are illustrations of modern art that can only be described as totally incomplete and idiotic. These are presentations that cannot be interpreted even with the greatest imagination.”