The latter is also the case with Kleist in the "Prinz von Homburg." He takes for the mother he desires, at one time the electress, at another time Natalie, "his girl, his bride."[32] It agrees strikingly also that the prince in the fear of death expects to be saved only by the electress, that is the mother, from the punishment with which the elector father threatens him. So a child who knows no way out for himself, no help any more, flees to his mother. Such an unusual, shocking fear of death on the part of a field officer needs explanation. It is nothing else than the child's fear in face of the stern parent. It is further overdetermined in an infantile way. In the drama the prince for a long time does not believe in the grim seriousness of his position. The elector father will only put him to the test. The sudden transition to frantic fear follows first when the friend informs him that Natalie has sent back the addresses carried by the ambassador, because she is betrothed to the latter. This would have so roused the elector against him. From this time on the prince--and the poet--holds everything as possible and is ready to sacrifice even the hand of the beloved for his life. [32] It is now plainly understood that the prince can name among the dear ones who appear to him the elector and the electress, that is his mother, but not the third, who is merely a split-off from the latter, at bottom identical with her. A second determination likewise is not wanting, which is also infantile. Freud has shown in the "Interpretation of Dreams" that the child does not at all connect the ideas of older people with the words "death" and "to die." He knows neither the terror nor the shuddering fear of the eternal nothingness. To be dead means to him merely to be away, gone away, no longer to be disturbed in his wishes. For his slight experience has already taught him one thing, dead people, as perhaps the grandparents, do not come back. From this it is only a step that the child sometimes wishes death to his father, when the latter disturbs him. Psychoanalysis tells us that this is not perhaps a shocking exception but a matter of everyday occurrence. Such thoughts are touched upon in the "Prinz von Homburg." The false report has come that the elector father has been shot and Natalie laments, "Who will protect us from this world of foes?" Then is the prince ready on the spot to offer his hand to the orphaned girl, also apparently to her mother. A child wish comes to fulfilment, the setting aside of the father who interferes with his plans for the mother. When the man believed to be dead nevertheless returns, he pronounces, as we can understand, the sentence of death upon his treacherous son. Only when the latter had acknowledged the justice of the sentence--I might almost have said, after he had asked forgiveness, is he not only pardoned but more than that recompensed, while now the father voluntarily grants him his wish.