["... being a father is difficult!" On the question of authority in the role of the father]

The terms "authoritarian" and "authority" are defined in the context of the process of education. Certain historic, cultural and anthropological aspects of father's role, some newer empirical results concerning the importance of the father for the psychic development of the child and the connection of father and authority are discussed under sociocultural and psychoanalytic viewpoints. Especially the relation between the father and the child in the preoedipal and oedipal phase is treated. This on the back-ground of the dialectic triangle of having a father, becoming father and being father.