2. Beate Kellner on Cain and Abel

And so this is obviously a very important and famous story, but it's not so obvious that you as a professor of German literature would have been doing research on it.

So what drew you to it originally?

So I have been interested in genealogy and genealogical thinking ever since I carried out my research, which led to my second book about origins and continuity in the Middle Ages.

So it struck me that genealogical thinking can be found in every old culture, in every ancient culture, as a means of ordering knowledge and of legitimizing power.

Often rulers are legitimized by a long line of ancestors.

And this is also shown in the Bible.

So next to the line of descendants coming from Cain, we have another line coming from Seth.

Seth is another son of Adam and Eve, and this is the line of the righteous man, whereas the other is the line of the man who sinned.

And this kind of genealogical thinking is very widespread.

It's fundamental, I would say, for ancient cultures.

And it's often focused on stories who tell the origin.

And here, in this case, we have a truly foundational story about the first people in the world And what is striking there is that often the founding figures are deeply ambivalent.

You can see this and find this again in Romulus and Remus, the famous twins.

It's more or less the same pattern.

Romulus kills Remus and founds the city of Rome.

Cain kills Abel and founds in the next story, which is also told in Genesis, the first city in the world.

So the founding figures are often deeply ambivalent and the founding stories are intertwined with crime.

And this crime does not seldom happen within one's own family.

Yeah, so those two cases, you actually have fratricides.

Fratricides, yes.

So brothers in these primordial cities.

Yes.

In the one case, these are twins.

In the other case, we have a firstborn and a secondborn son.

Okay, right.