No. 112/2021

29 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 112/2021 advancement from a working-class or petit-bourgeois background to the exalted heights of an academic or artis- tic career, a subject that has recently enjoyed popularity on the book market, as evidenced by the works of French authors like Didier Eribon and Annie Ernaux. The socio- logical anthology “VomArbeiterkind zur Professur” com- bines scientific analysis with personal experience. Some 20 professors in both the sciences and humanities from Germany look back on their educational path. In some respects, I found the book an eye-opener. Given my back- ground, it was hardly to be expected that I would ever pur- sue an academic career at a British university. My mother was a political refugee from Slovenia, my father came from a family of small farmers and labourers in rural Germany. Neither of them finished school with any qualifications; my father worked for years as a simple lathe operator in a fittings factory. There were barely any books in the house, but there was plenty of ambition for their son to do better – although they hardly envisaged a career as a scholar of literature. THE PARANOIA OF BEING OUTED AS AN IMPOSTOR However different the individual stories of upward social mobility from lower social classes may be, you still encounter the same points time and again, namely, feel- ings and imprinting that Eribon and Ernaux also focus on in their memoirs: such as the feeling of having betrayed their social origins, paired with shame about being a social climber; then, having reached a top position in aca- demia, bouts of paranoia about being exposed as an impostor. Moreover, professors from a working-class background share a basic consciousness – especially at informal meetings amongst colleagues – of not belong- Photo: Getty Images / skynesher › THE SO-CALLED EDUCATIONAL FUNNEL: One out of 100 Ger- man “first-generation students” from a non- academic background manages to take a doctorate in compari- son with ten out of 100 from an academic background.