Goldmund's father is an elderly man in the service of the Emperor when he brings his son to the Mariabronn cloister at the start of the novel. After that early scene, he does not reappear in the book, except in discussions about him between Narcissus and Goldmund, and in Goldmund's thoughts. Devastated and embittered by his wife's desertion of him and the boy, Goldmund's father develops a twisted plan to commit their son to a lifetime as a monk in atonement for his mother's sins. In young manhood, Goldmund realizes what his father has done, which diminishes his love for him even as his attachment to the memory of his mother grows. Goldmund's father represents the logic, rigor, and discipline that Hermann Hesse identifies with masculinity, in contrast to the feminine, artistic side of the human personality represented by Goldmund's mother.
