ABSTRACT

Heredity and its related concepts are visible everywhere: in the science of biological transmission (I am my father’s daughter, because I share his genetic makeup); in folk and legal taxonomies of kinship (I am my father’s daughter, and thus have implicit claims upon the social groups to which he belongs, as well as legal claims to his support); in metaphors of power (paternal) and love (motherly, brotherly). Stories of violence within hereditary lines-the violations ancient gods perpetrate on their sons and fathers, Cain’s murder of his brother, the multiple betrayals and tragedies suffered by siblings of the Nibelungen saga from its Eddic roots through Wagner’s Ring-are compelling and frightening precisely because they contradict a law that is at once moral, political, and “natural,” a law uniting parents and children with love, loyalty, and shared identity. The earliest fragment of German literature, the ninth-century Hildebrandslied, is a tragedy because the blood that Hildebrand the father and Hadubrand the son share fails to speak clearly enough to prevent the son’s death by the sword of his father.