Es war eine Kreatur des Chefs

Question

Und selbst wenn er den Zug einholte, ein Donnerwetter des Chefs war nicht zu vermeiden, denn der Geschäftsdiener hatte beim Fünfuhrzug gewartet und die Meldung von seiner Versäumnis längst erstattet. Es war eine Kreatur des Chefs, ohne Rückgrat und Verstand. Wie nun, wenn er sich krank meldete?

What does the bold line mean? It translates to, "It was a creature of the boss", but I am bit confused understanding what it means here.

Answer 1

There is two things here which require an explanation:

First, what or who does es refer to? As others mentioned, this is referring to Geschäftsdiener. There might be a typo involved, and maybe it is supposed to be Er instead of Es.

Second, what does it mean to be a Kreatur des Chefs? In current German, one would rather say Er war ein Geschöpf des Chefs. The phrase expresses that the Geschäftsdiener has been made, created by the boss. Hence, it expresses that he is totally dependent and obedient to the boss. The word Kreatur is originating in Latin (creare, "erschaffen, wählen, hervorbringen", "to make, to select, to create"), and means Geschöpf ("the one that is made"). In German it usually carries negative connotations such as erbärmlich ("deplorable", "pathetic"), indicating low status. More strongly so than in English, it carries a meaning of passiveness and dependency.

It might not even be a special use of the term by Kafka, but might just have been common at his time, when knowledge of Latin was assumed as a sign of higher education. To me, it transports a rather formal, stiff style of speaking.

Answer 2

The sentence in question is an incorrect reproduction in the text edition you have at hand from Franz Kafka's story Die Verwandlung. As you can see from the Figure below, my edition says:

Er war eine Kreatur des Chefs …

Therefore, not it but he, the Geschäftsdiener mentioned in the previous sentence, is a creature of his boss, which makes sense.

_{Figure: Beginning of Franz Kafka's Die Verwandlung. In: Romane und Erzählungen. Parkland Verlag, 1997, p. 766. The sentence in question is at the bottom.}

Answer 3

It sounds as crooked in German as it sounds in English. It obviously refers to the "Geschäftsdiener", and he seem to be likened to an animal, an obedient ugly pet of the boss.

"A ist eine Kreatur des B" is not a standing expression that I have come across before or would use.

Answer 4

The quote comes from Kafka's "Die Verwandlung" which was written in 1912 and published in 1915. You can have a look at the original in "Deutsches Textarchiv" page 1179 which actually contains the text

Es war eine Kreatur des Chefs

Björn Friedrich suspects that it is a typo and should correctly be

Er war eine Kreatur des Chefs

Indeed there are more recent editions with the er-variant which seems to be more logical here. But all we can say is that

• either the "es" was a typo in the first edition from 1915 which was later corrected based on Kafka's original manuscript
• or later editors made an unauthorized "improvement".

As explained by HalvarF and Björn Friedrich, the sentence means that the Geschäftsdiener was a creature of the boss. But this does not imply that Kafka used to er-variant which was erroneously changed to "es" in the printed editiion from 1915. Alternative explanations are

1. The "es" was a typo in Kafka's original manuscript which was taken over to the first printed edition.

2. Kafka used "er" in his original manuscript, but the 1915-edition was flawed. Even in that case Kafka must have approved the printing, and it would be difficult to say whether he overlooked the mistake or approved the mistake intentionally (perhaps because he liked the text in the new form).

3. Kafka intended to use "es". The purpose could be to deny that the Geschäftsdiener was a true human being - but only an it, a Kreatur ohne Rückgrat und Verstand.

4. It simply was Kafka's feeling for German language to use "es". This would not be that unusual. As an example take Johannes 1,6-7:

Es war ein Mensch, von Gott gesandt, der hieß Johannes.

Of course all that is speculation, but if one of the above explanations should be correct, then it would not belong to us to criticize the 1915-edition.

Update.

A few lines below the Kreatur-sentence Kafka writes

»Gregor,« rief es - es war die Mutter -, »es ist dreiviertel sieben. Wolltest du nicht wegfahren?«