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Walther Dannecker Blog Entry |
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July 21, 2023, 2:00:52 AM 7/21/23: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's character from my anthro WWII storyline is Walther Dannecker. He's the husband of Margit Dannecker and father of Lt. Col. Ernst Dannecker. He's deceased by the time of the main storyline and happened to meet a particularly unfortunate end because his entire family is messed up. There'll be more about him later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. Regarding his design, he's a Siberian husky. TUMBLR EDIT: Walther is the posthumous background character father of another posthumous secondary character (Lt. Col. Dannecker appears only in flashback in the bulk of the story, Reborn and Reunion, and has nothing to do with Ultima Thule, though I'm unsure about Genesis--he does play a major role in the "lore" prequel story Weltuntergang, however), therefore I've not developed his own background yet, if ever. I imagine he had a normal middle-class upbringing. Most of his action in the storyline, including his disturbing end, can be found in Margit Dannecker's entry. The Dannecker family is hopelessly f**ked up, for want of a better term, though Walther himself is actually sane and stable. Unlike other characters who start out good but go bad, such as Georg Klemper or Jürgen Werner, Walther is genuinely decent, and never falls down that particular hole; he just has the misfortune to marry into a family line with lots of problems he can't fix. When he finally does learn the extent and seriousness of what's going on, he even correctly identifies his son Ernst as a victim--despite Ernst willingly participating in his mother's actions, he's not old enough to make such decisions on his own. Result, Walther's anger is aimed at Margit, not Ernst. He realizes that the only reasonable course of action is to separate the two, and accordingly sends Ernst off to a military academy. It's an act that ensures both wife and son will forever hate him, though he hopes they'll come back to their senses, and even if they don't...well, he couldn't just stand by and do nothing. Walther is a good person, like I said, and that's why it doesn't occur to him that his son Ernst, aside from being victimized by his mother, was additionally just born broken. If not a full-blown psychopath, Ernst is quite close, and that's something that no amount of motherly "love" or fatherly discipline can fix. Margit herself starts to catch on as to their son's true dark nature after he comes home from the Great War--full grown now, and taller and stronger than his own father--and treads carefully. Walther never has the chance to reach this realization, mostly because Ernst murders him before he can, but also because, being a good person himself, it simply goes against everything he's ever known or learned about people, to realize that some of them are just born bad. Walther figures that, like Margit (who's not what I'd technically call a "bad person," but does do bad things), bad people are made that way through their experiences (Margit, too, was similarly abused by her own father), not born that way--why would it ever occur to him that a child who's been raised sternly but was otherwise loved and well cared for might turn out broken, anyway? The concept is just beyond his understanding. Even if someone were to inform him, I bet he would've thought there was something he could do, to change his son for the better. Walther is no fatalist. This is a hopeless task, however, and Ernst has a lot stacked against him. Walther's attempt to straighten him out by sending him to the military academy, and by extension unwittingly sending him to the Western Front (he hadn't counted on war actually breaking out while Ernst was away), only exacerbates Ernst's dysfunction by teaching him how to be an even more effective predator and killer. Ironically, Walther--in an attempt to save his family by saving his son--ends up helping Ernst destroy it. (Ernst Dannecker then carries on the tradition by victimizing his stepdaughter Gret, who then, with the aid of another of his victims, helps kill him, in turn. She takes his honor sword both as a trophy, and as a means to protect herself...far better than Ernst ever did.) Walther ends up a victim of not just his own broken family, but also his own good yet misguided intentions...well, Ernst Dannecker later earns the nickname "Der Teufel" (the Devil), and what is the road to Hell paved with, after all? As well, he becomes just another rusty cog in the malfunctioning machinery of the Dannecker clan, all too easily disposed of and forgotten after playing his part in ensuring the family's collapse. Maybe, though, in some small roundabout way, that's a good thing after all. [Walther Dannecker 2023 [Friday, July 21, 2023, 2:00:52 AM]] |