The Old Commandant

The colony's dead founder, who invented the machine. He never appears, but everyone in the story lives in his shadow.

What they want

The inscription on his grave says his followers expect him to rise again after a certain number of years and retake the colony (pages 67 and 68).

The book

In the Penal Colony

Franz Kafka

In the Penal ColonyFranz Kafka, 1919

An officer shows a visiting traveler the machine that executes prisoners by writing the broken rule into their skin, and asks him to help save it.

Spoiler-free

Everything about him comes from other people. The officer speaks of him with devotion, and the soldier tells the traveler where he is buried.

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

The man who built everythingOn pages 8 and 9 the officer says the machine was his invention and that the whole organization of the colony was his work. His friends, the officer says, knew his successor could change nothing for years.
Soldier, judge, engineerOn page 15 the traveler asks whether he was soldier, judge, builder, chemist and draftsman all at once. The officer says yes. The officer still carries his hand-drawn designs in a leather folder.
Execution daysOn pages 36 to 38 the officer recalls him arriving early with his ladies to fanfares. He laid the condemned man under the Harrow himself and ordered that children be given the places nearest the machine.
A grave under a tableOn pages 66 to 68 the traveler finds his low gravestone under a table in the teahouse. The dockworkers drinking there smile at its prophecy as if it were a joke.

Lines spoken by or about The Old Commandant, each verified verbatim against the text and located in the book.

Everyone knew: now justice is being done.
alle wussten: Jetzt geschieht Gerechtigkeit.

— The Officer (dialogue) · Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony (1919); English translation by The Paris Atlas

Believe and wait!
Glaubet und wartet!

— The inscription on the old commandant's gravestone · Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony (1919); English translation by The Paris Atlas

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