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FRANZ KAFKA BIOGRAPHY
(1883-1924) Jewish Czech-born Writer
Franz Kafka is
considered to be one of the most
important and influential writers of the
20th century.
His work, most of which was published
posthumously, continues to be a source
of research,
scholarship and philosophical discussion
in diverse academic, literary and
popular arenas.
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"A
first sign of the beginning of understanding is
the wish to Die".
Franz Kafka Diaries |
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Education, or
"German literature—may it roast in hell."
Kafka letter, 1902
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Enter:
Franz Kafka photos
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Franz Kafka Birth and childhood
Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883,
the first child of Hermann and Julie
(née Löwy) Kafka. His parents were
upwardly mobile middle class, his father
setting up a dry goods store and his
mother coming from a well-to-do family.
Hermann Kafka was born September 14,
1852 in the little town of Wossek, about
sixty miles south of Prague, near Pisek,
the fourth child of a butcher, Jacob
Kafka. His family was poor and at the
age of 18 he moved to Prague in hopes of
bettering his situation. He succeded,
opening his own store and winning Julie
Löwy, born March 23, 1856 in Podebray,
the second child of Jakob Löwy, a
well-to-do cloth merchant and brewer.
They were married on September 3, 1882
and Franz, named for Emperor Franz
Joseph of Austria-Hungary, came along
less than a year later.
Two years later, another son, Georg, was
born, but died a year later. Another
son, Heinrich, was born in 1887, but
also died less than a year later. The
effect of this on Franz is difficult to
assess. He later stated that the deaths
were preventable, due to doctor's
errors. Nevertheless, on September 22,
1889 the first of his sisters, Gabriele
"Elli", was born, followed by Valerie
"Valli" on September 25, 1890, and
Ottilie "Ottla" on October 29, 1892. The
children were brought up mostly by
governesses, a common practice among the
middle and upper classes of the time.
The family moved from apartment to
apartment as their financial situation
improved, owing to the success of the
store. Young Franz was quiet and
withdrawn. However, he liked to write
plays for his sisters to put on in their
spare time, and was a voracious reader.
Franz was sent to German schools, not
Czech ones, which demonstrates his
father's desire for social advancement.
At this time the vast majority of people
in Prague spoke Czech, but owing to the
power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
the language of the elites was German.
Franz had been speaking mostly Czech as
a child (owing to the fact that his
governesses were Czech), but learned to
master the German tongue early, as
reflected in his wonderful handling of
it in his stories. In school he did
well, taking classes like Latin, Greek
and history. At 13, he had his bar
mizvah, which he later remembered as
dull and meaningless. His religious
upbringing was limited mostly to that
and going to the synagogue four times a
year with his father, which didn't give
him much to go on. In 1901 he graduated
from the Altstädter Gymnasium, and went
on to Charles Ferdinand University,
where at first he decided to study
chemistry, as one of his friends was
doing. This only lasted for Twoweeks
before he switched to law. The next
semester he tried his hand at German
Literature, only to find that the
professors and the study didn't exactly
agree with him, and went back to law,
which he said he picked so it would not
interfere with his mental life. At
school he met another student a year
younger than he was, Max Brod, who was a
writer of some note and had his own
little circle. The Twowould become very
close friends for the rest of their
lives. In June 1906, he graduated with a
doctorate in law.
The Hermann & Co. Asbestos Factory, or
Early Adulthood
Franz had been trying his hand at
serious writing since about 1898, but
these early works were destroyed. Later
he began writing more seriously. His
first extant story, Description of a
Struggle, dates from 1904-1905. He got
his first job at the Assicurizioni
Generali Insurance Company in 1907 but
soon left, due to the lengthy hours and
intolerable conditions. Later, in 1908,
he began working at the Workers'
Accident Insurance Institute, where he
would work most of the rest of his life,
although only sporadically after 1917,
and in June 1922 he was put on
"temporary retirement" with a pension.
This job, although not great, had short
hours (8 to 2) and so allowed him time
to think and write. In 1911, however,
this state of affairs was shattered when
his father wanted him to take charge of
his brother-in-law Karl Hermann's
asbestos factory, which took up a lot of
his time until 1917 (when it was shut
down) and literally almost drove him to
suicide. He still looked extremely
young, sometimes being mistaken for
being 15 or 16 when in fact he was 28.
In 1911 he also made a trip to Paris,
Italy, and Switzerland with Brod. He
also became very interested in Yiddish
theater (think a more melodramatic, more
ethnic, shlockier, unintentionally funny
sitcom or soap opera), even going so far
as to give a talk on Yiddish in 1912 and
becoming close friends with Isaac Löwy,
a Yiddish theater actor, whom his father
considered a good for nothing. Besides,
Hermann Kafka thought his son was too
eccentric, with his vegetarianism and
quiet nature.
Max Brod convinced Kafka to publish some
of his work, and in January 1913
Meditation, a collection of some early
short stories and sketches, appeared. In
the meantime he was gathering
information for his "American novel,"
which he began writing in 1912.
Throughout his college days and well
into adulthood, Franz was definitely not
living the life of a monk. He had
numerous affairs and one-night stands
with barmaids, waitresses, and shopgirls,
not to mention his visits to the
whorehouses, activities that most men in
Prague at the time also indulged in.
However, these relations with women were
entirely sexual. They didn't mean
anything to him beyond immediate sexual
gratification.
The most bizarre aspect of his sex life,
though, was that sex was absolutely
repulsive and disgusting to him. Hence,
the very idea of "normal married life"
with a respectable woman was too much
for him. "Coitus as the punishment for
the happiness of being together," he
wrote in his diary, when faced with the
prospect of marriage and what that would
entail. He would time and again break
off engagements, sometimes nearly at the
last minute, in order to escape it.
Franz seems to have suffered from the
malady common to many at that place and
time: namely, the virgin/whore complex,
where every woman is either a "nice
girl" or a slut, with no room in
between. So a normal, adult affair with
a woman he liked and respected would
prove all but impossible, as Felice
Bauer soon found out.
Felice
On the evening of August 13, 1912, Franz
met Felice Bauer, born November 18, 1887
and living in Berlin, at Brod's house
and soon became enamored of her?at least
of the image of her he had in his mind.
He began writing her long letters about
everything, although mostly about
himself and his feelings of inadequacy.
In this first flush of love he wrote
"The Judgment" on the night of 22-23
September, which he dedicated to her. He
considered it his first mature work, and
proudly read it to his family and
friends. In November and December he
wrote "The Metamorphosis." He also
worked at Amerika, or Der Verschollene
(The Stoker, the first chapter, appeared
separately in book form in 1913); work
on it continued sporadically until 1914.
During this time, in September 1913 he
went to a sanatorium in Riva, Italy for
his health, which had never been
extrordinarily good, and there met an
18-year-old Swiss girl, Gerti Wasner,
whom he liked very much. He would do
cute things like knock on the ceiling
(their rooms were directly on top of
each other) and go to the window to talk
to her at night, or write fairy tales to
read her over breakfast. Although this
affair only lasted the ten days they
were there together, it seems to have
made a deep impression on him.
Meanwhile the courship by letter of
Felice continued. He would write her
every day, sometimes even more often,
frequently complaining about how bad or
dirty he was, but confident that she
would listen to it all. Eventually he
proposed to her in 1913, and she
accepted, although in the same letter
Franz wrote asking her he also went on
and on as to why he would be bad for
her.
Felice had a friend, Grete Bloch, born
1892, who also began writing to Franz.
She acted as an intermediary between
Franz and Felice; Franz would write to
her about some of his problems with
Felice, and she would try to help. They
wrote each other many letters and built
up a kind of friendship. Grete wanted
more, though—she seems to have wanted
Franz all to herself.
PRAGUE WRITER IN PATERNITY SUIT SHOCKER!
|The Prague Enquirer has recently found
out that Franz Kafka, 31, an insurance
worker who "scribbles" in his spare
time, has allegedly fathered a son by
one Grete Bloch, 22, a friend of his
fiancée, Felice Bauer, 26. Sources tell
the Enquirer that the Twolovers
supposedly sneaked away together during
the few times they met on visits,
sometimes with Bauer in tow. Kafka and
Bloch reportedly have been having a
hot-'n-heavy affair, with Bauer knowing
nothing of it. A teary Bloch told the
Enquirer that she didn't want to spoil
the relationship between Kafka and
Bauer, so she kept quiet about her
pregnancy and dropped out of sight. "I
love him, but I know what this
relationship means to him—escape from
his hellish life with his family."
Frankly, I think this whole episode is
tabloid material. I tend to doubt it
myself. For one thing, the only source
for it is Grete Bloch herself, in a
letter written to a friend 25 years
after the fact, in 1940, which Max Brod
got ahold of from a friend and printed
in the second revised edition of his
Kafka biography. She says she had a
little boy in 1914 that died at the age
of seven, in 1921. There is no other
concrete evidence for any of this, and
Grete said that Franz knew nothing about
the child, which seems to be a little
unbelievable, since they did in fact
keep in contact for a couple of years
after. In fact, when Franz, Felice, and
Grete met again seven or eight months
later, it should be noted that nobody
seemed to notice anything amiss! Grete
apparently became a bit enamored of him,
whom, we must note, she admired
fervently. Wishful thinking, perhaps?
Also, it's hard to believe Kafka, who
was deathly afraid of sex anyway and who
wrote pages and pages of letters to
Felice about why he couldn't bring
himself to do the nasty with her, would
then go after her friend. Franz was,
after all, virtually incapable of a
"normal" sexual affair with a "nice
girl" like Grete, owing to his rather
neurotic attitude towards sex.
Unfortunately, we can't ask Grete more
about it, since she was beaten to death
by the Nazis in 1944. The conclusion?
There's no way to know for certain,
although probably not.
The Trial, or Tuberculosis Takes its
Toll
August 2 — "Germany has declared war on
Russia. Swimming in the afternoon." —
Diary, 1914
Franz broke off the engagement in July
of 1914, undergoing a particularly nasty
scene in a hotel with Felice, her sister
Erna, and Grete Bloch, but nevertheless
continued writing to her. He began
writing The Trial that same year,
working on it off and on until 1916. Max
Brod hounded Franz to publish some more
of his work, and "The Judgment" appeared
in 1913. "The Stoker" also came out in
1913 and "The Metamorphosis" in 1915,
put out by Kurt Wolff Verlag, his
publisher, which had some faith in him
but he remained almost unknown. In 1915
he won the Theodor Fontane Prize, 800
marks and an ever more slightly
hightened reputation. He toyed with the
idea of being a soldier after World War
I broke out, apparently to prove his
manhood, or perhaps to escape his
engagement to Felice, even though he
professed to hate both sides, but
eventually lost interest. In any case,
he was exempt from it by his job in the
Worker's Accident Insurance Institute,
which was partially owned by the
government.
Although Franz proposed again to Felice
in July 1917 after actually spending a
week with her at Marienbad, and later
taking a trip with her to Budapest, he
began coughing up blood and in August
was diagnos ed with tuberculosis. Always
fearful of marriage and sex, this
spelled the end of his relationship with
Felice, who had had about enough of his
crap. She married another man in 1919
but kept his letters.
After the diagnosis of his tuberculosis,
he went to stay with his favorite
sister, Ottla, in Zürau, northwest of
Prague, which was peaceful, healthy, and
most of all for the
hypersensitive-to-noise Kafka, quiet.
Here he wrote what would become The Blue
Octavo Notebooks, a collection of
proverbs, thoughts and sketches. After
eight months of what he later termed the
happiest period in his life, he returned
to Prague.
Despite his failing health, he became
engaged again, this time to Julie
Whoryzek (1891-1939), the daughter of a
synagogue janitor and shoemaker, in
1919, causing his father to go on and on
about how he would have to sell the
store and emigrate to escape the shame
to the family name caused by this union,
one of the reasons he would write the
confessional, lacerating Letter to His
Father that same year. (Incidentally,
his father never saw this letter. Franz
gave it to his mother so that she would
give to him, but after looking at it she
thought better of it.) Nevertheless,
Franz went so far as to pick out an
apartment for him and Julie and came
within a couple of days of the wedding
before breaking it off. A new person had
come into his life.
Milena
Milena Jesenská-Pollak was the wife of
one of Franz's friends, Ernst Pollak.
She was born August 10, 1896, and was a
strong, intelligent woman who recognized
his talent and uniqueness. They began
writing to each other in 1920 and very
occasionally saw each other. Milena
wasn't Jewish but she did relate to
Jews. Her husband, she said, was
unfaithful to her "a hundred times a
year," and she found some solace in
Franz after separating from Pollak.
Whether or not they were lovers isn't
really clear. They did love and care for
each other very much, but Franz's fear
of sex remained, which he openly
discussed with her. She was very
understanding, not just with this matter
but with all his problems. They did go
to see each other a few times, but
again, as with Felice, this was mostly
an affair-by-mail. After a while, in
1923, Milena and Pollak were reconciled,
and Franz broke off the relationship,
saying they shouldn't see each other or
write. The Castle was written in about
nine months of feverish work during
1922. Kafka's most complex and perhaps
strangest work (no mean feat), it's
since been interpreted thousands of
times in hundreds of different ways,
even though (or perhaps because) it
remained unfinished. Milena seems to
have been a major inspiration,
specifically in the character of Frieda,
and a café she and her husband
frequented in Vienna, the Herrenhof,
turns up in the book.
Dora
"Ev'ry morning, ev'ry evening, Ain't we
got fun?/ Not much money, oh but honey,
ain't we got fun?" — 1921
In the summer of 1923, owing to his
interest in Judaism and Zionism, Franz
was trying to learn Hebrew (which had
been taught at school but didn't make an
impression on him at the time), and went
through a couple of teachers before
meeting Dora Diamant (sometimes spelled
Dymant), an Orthodox Jewish girl from
Poland who could read Hebrew fluently.
She purpoted to be about 19 years old,
but in fact was more like 24. They met
in July in the resort town of
Graal-Müritz on the German coast of the
Baltic Sea and hit it off more or less
immediately. They became very close, and
in September Franz moved out of his
parents' apartment, which, aside from a
few attempts from 1915-1917 to have his
own place, he had never left and moved
to Berlin with Dora. The nature of the
relationship between them is not really
clear. Although they shared a Tworoom
apartment in a boarding house, Franz
seems to have had more of a friendly
rather than a sexual relationship with
her. Despite their poverty, being unable
to pay even the electric bill, he seemed
happier than he had ever been in his
life, writing "A Little Woman," "The
Burrow," and "Josephine the Singer, or
the Mouse Folk."
My love, my love, my good one!"
As 1924 began, Franz's health got worse
and worse. He was forced to go to a
couple of sanatoriums, and his weight
plummeted. In April he went to a
sanitorium in Kierling, Austria, near
Vienna. He agreed to the publication of
"A Hunger Artist," with some other
stories, and began proofing the galleys.
He asked Dora's rabbi father for
permission to marry her, even though he
was almost totally wasted away, and was
turned down. But he seemed happy enough
with Dora at his bedside. He died on
June 3, 1924.
Dora was inconsolable. "My love, my
love, my good one!" she went around
crying (which always breaks my heart and
brings a tear to my eye). The funeral
was held on June 10th at the Jewish
Cemetery in Prague.
Epilogue
Franz's dad and mom lived until 1931 and
1934, respectively. They were buried in
the same plot he was.
His sisters did not meet so kind a fate.
During World War II, Elli and Valli and
their families were shipped off to the
Lodz ghetto, and apparently died in the
uprisings there or were sent to death
camps. Ottla separated from her Gentile
husband, Josef David, since she felt she
had no right to avoid the suffering of
her people, and was sent to the
Theresienstadt (Terezin) concentration
camp in northwestern Bohemia. She
volunteered, in 1943, to help accompany
a trainload of children somewhere, which
turned out to be Auschwitz. Here's the
entry in Auschwitz Chronicle 1939-1945
by Danuta Czech
7 October [1943] 1,260 Jewish children
and their 53 care givers are transferred
from Theresienstadt in an RSHA
transport. They are killed the same day
in the gas chambers.
Felice Bauer moved after her marriage to
Switzerland and later, in 1936, to New
York. She was widowed in 1937 and later
started her own business. Shocken Books
offered to buy the letters from Franz to
her in the 50s, but she refused. Finally
she gave in and sold them for $5,000.
She needed the money, mostly due to her
failing health. She died in 1960,
leaving a son and a daughter.
Milena Jesenská remained a fierce
devotee of Franz, writing a lengthy
obituary for him and becoming his Czech
translator. She eventually divorced
Pollak, remarried, had a daughter, Jana,
and divorced again. She worked to
improve the situation of the Jews, who
were starting to be persecuted by the
Nazis. She was sent to the Ravensbrück
concentration camp for this, where
Margarete Büber-Neumann met her and was
impressed enough to eventually write a
book about her Kafkas Freundin Milena,
translated into English with the
ridiculous title, Mistress to Kafka,
(now available as Milena, The Tragic
Story of Kafka's Great Love). Milena
died from kidney failure there on May
17, 1944. Her daughter wrote a book
about her mother in 1968 and was killed
in a car wreck in 1981. For more
information about Milena, see my Milena
Jesenská tribute page.
Dora Diamant never really got over
Franz's death. She eventually married
and had a daughter, only to have her
husband deported by the Nazis and never
heard from again. She sometimes talked
about Franz, awestruck and quite
possesive, calling herself Dora Kafka
and complaining that his instructions to
burn his works should have been carried
out. She moved to London with her
daughter, where she died August 15,
1952. Her daughter Marianne died in
1982.
Max Brod didn't carry out his friend's
instructions to burn his works, of
course (or you wouldn't be here looking
at this page). He edited and had
published virtually everything Franz
wrote. In 1939 he moved to Tel Aviv in
Israel, taking with him almost all of
Kafka's manuscripts, in order to avoid
the Nazis, where he lived until his
death in 1968, with a reputation as
either the man who saved Kafka for the
world or as the man who disregarded his
friend's dying wishes.
Franz Kafka has become an icon of sorts,
emblematic of modern times. His
popularity increased exponentially after
the publication of his stories in the
20s and 30s, especially in the English
translations done by the Muirs. He is
now an institution, his own adjective.
About ten years ago, somebody bought the
manuscript of The Trial for close to
Twomillion dollars. Not quite as good as
Stephen King or John Grisham, but not
bad for an uncompleted manuscript meant
for the flames. (Just imagine the
royalties!) Few writers have had such an
effect on their times as he has. |
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Kafka photos
Gerard Bertrand French
photographer |
"How could a photograph
convey with such complete
certainty the secret
feelings of the person shown
in it ?"
"To die would mean nothing
else than to surrender a
nothing to the nothing, but
that would be impossible to
conceive, for how
could a person, even only as
a nothing, consciously
surrender himself to the
nothing, and not merely to
an empty nothing but
rather to a roaring nothing
whose nothingness consists
only in its
incomprehensibility."
Franz Kafka - December 4,
1913
"I waver, continually fly to
the summit of the mountain,
but cannot stay up there for
more than a moment. Others
waver too, but in lower
regions, with greater
strength; if they are in
danger of falling, they are
caught up by the kinsman who
walks beside them for that
purpose. But I waver on the
heights; it is not death,
alas, but the eternal
torments of dying Kafka
diaries |
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click on image for full size Kafka
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"Couldn’t read it for its
perversity. The human mind
isn’t complicated enough"
Albert Einstein, after
returning a Kafka novel
loaned to him by Thomas
Mann.
"The look in Kafka’s eyes
was always a little puzzled,
full of the wisdom of
children and of melancholy
slightly counter pointed by
an enigmatic smile. He
always seemed to be somewhat
embarrassed."
John Urzidil, The Kafka
Problem
"In Kafka we have the modern
mind, seemingly
self-sufficient,
intelligent, skeptical,
ironical, splendidly trained
for the great game of
pretending that the world it
comprehends in sterilized
sobriety is the only and
ultimate real one – yet a
mind living in sin with the
soul of Abraham. Thus he
knows Two things at once,
and both with equal
assurance: that there is no
God, and that there must be
God"
Erich Heller, Franz
Kafka |
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"The Prague that I not only love but also fear."
Letter to Ottla, 10/8/23 |
"And yet Kafka was Prague and Prague
was Kafka. Never had it been
Prague so perfectly, so typically,
as during Kafka's lifetime and never
would it be so again. And we, his
friends, 'the happy few'...we knew
that the smallest elements of this
Prague were distilled everywhere in
Kafka's work."
Johannes Urzidil - The World of
Franz Kafka. |
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"My life was sweeter than other people’s
and my
death will be more terrible by the same
degree."
Franz Kafka |
The city of Prague paid
tribute to its most renowned
literary son unveiling a
monument to Franz Kafka. The
12ft tall bronze
sculpture, a walking
headless figure with Kafka
sitting on the
shoulders, was created by a
Czech artist Jaroslav Rona.
The sculpture was inspired
by Kafka’s work, especially
the story “Description of a
Struggle.” The monument was
erected in a tiny park
between the Spanish
Synagogue and the Church of
the Holy Spirit, on the
border of Prague’s Jewish
district in a place that
symbolizes the city’s
religious and cultural
diversity. “It’s an
extraordinary unique day for
both Franz Kafka and the
capital, Prague,” Prague
Mayor Pavel Bem told a crowd
of several hundred people
who had gathered in the cold
gray evening to watch the
ceremony.
“Today we redeem a debt
we owe our history and one
of the greatest writers of
the 20th century.” The crowd
was served bread, pate,
pickled cucumbers and
Riesling wine. About a dozen
young men attending the
ceremony wore black suits,
ties and hats – the apparel
Kafka wore. The monument was
erected by the Franz Kafka
Society, which was founded
shortly after the collapse
of communism in 1989 to
promote the legacy of Kafka
and other Jewish and
German writers from Prague.
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Photo taken by Rick
Hansen CA |
"The experience of life consists of the
experience which the
spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in
mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc."
Franz Kafka
"By believing passionately in something that
still does not
exist, we create it." Franz Kafka
"The nonexistent is whatever we have not
sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in
solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In
death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night,
the soot gets washed from his body" Franz
Kafka
I recently moved to Santa Rosa California. Just
around the corner
is a Franz Kafka Road. The name was familiar but
I knew little
or nothing about the man...
Rick Hansen CA |
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Human nature, ever changing and as
unstable as the dust, can endure no
restraint. If it binds itself it
soon begins to tear madly at its
bonds, rending everything asunder,
the wall, its bonds, its very self.
"I have powerfully assumed the
negativity of my times "
"Only our concept of time makes it
possible for us to speak of the
Day of Judgment by that: in reality
it is a summary court in perpetual
session"
Amusement-park photograph from
the Parter in Vienna.
Left to right: Kafka, Albert
Ehrenstein, Otto Pick, and Lise
Kaznelson. These three were in
Vienna for the Eleventh Zionist
Congress when Kafka was there.
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"In science one tries to tell
people, in such a way as to be
understood by everyone, something
that no one ever knew before.
But in poetry, it's the
exact opposite."
"Theoretically there is a perfect
possibility of happiness: believing
in the indestructible element in
oneself and not striving towards it"
"But questions that don’t answer
themselves at the very moment of
their asking are never answered."
Later in life Franz Kafka would learn Hebrew
and dream
of going to Israel.
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"We are as forlorn as children lost
in the wood. When you stand in
front of me an look at me, what do
you know of the grief's that
are in me and what do I know of
yours. And if I were to cast
myself down before you and tell
you, what more would you know about
me that you know about Hell when
someone tells you it is hot and
dreadful? For that reason
alone we human beings ought to stand
before one another
as reverently, as reflectively, as
lovingly, as we would before
the entrance to Hell."
Franz Kafka written at 20 years of
age-
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On the stamp issued in Czechoslovakia
in 1969, Kafka’s portrait is shown with a
drawing of medieval Prague - the home of one of
the biggest Jewish communities in Europe
and with tombstones of
Old Jewish Cemetery on the background. It
was a part of UNESCO cultural heritage set of 6
stamps with famous people in caricatures style
made by one of UNESCO original activist Adolf
Hoffmeister (1902 – 1973) , a famous Czech
artist and diplomat who knew Kafka personally as
well as Salvador Dali, Bertolt Brecht, and James
Joyce. |
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When Israel Postal Authorities in 1998 released set of 6 stamps with
selection of renowned figures represented the multifaceted
nature of the Jewish contribution to general culture- Franz Kafka stamp
was among them too. One the stamp and the tab is his
portrait based on the last pictures made in 1924 in a sanitarium in
Kierling, Austria, near Vienna.
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Around the corner from the
Unicorn in Celetna, the
Kafka
family lived at
Number 3, "At the Three
Kings," from 1896
to 1907 while Franz
was attending gymnasium and
then
the German section of
Prague University in the
next street,
Zelezna (Eisengasse.)
His room on the first
floor gave out on
the street, a benefit he set
forth in
The Street Window, one
of his earliest literary
fragments. As he
recalled in a 1920
letter to Milena Jesenska,
the window served as
the vehicle
for his first guilt-ridden
sexual encounter with
a prostitute.
"I remember the first night. We
were living at the time in
Celetna Street, across from
a dress shop, where a shop
girl always used to stand in
the door. There I was in my
room, just a little past my
twentieth birthday,
incessantly passing back and
forth, busy cramming for the
first State Boards...(by
trying to memorize material
that made no sense to me
whatsoever.) It was summer,
very hot at the time,
altogether unbearable. I
kept stopping at the window,
the disgusting Roman law
clenched between my teeth,
and finally we managed to
communicate by sign
language..."
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Franz Kafka born July 3 in Prague
-Alstandt, the first child of the
merchant Hermann Kafka (1852-1931)
and his wife Julie, née Löwy
(1856-1934). His brothers and his
sisters: Georg (born 1885, died
fifteen months later; Heinrich (born
1887, died six
months later); Gabriele, called Elli
(1889-1941); Valerie, called Valli
(1890-1942); and Ottilie, called
Ottla (1892-1943). |
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"An innocent child, yes, that you
were, truly, but still more truly have you been a
devilish human being !".
The Judgment. Father speaking to
son.
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Kafka was Two-year
old. Almost thirty years later Kafka sent this picture to his fiancée,
Felice Bauer, with the comment:
"I enclose picture of myself when I was perhaps five years
old. At that time, that angry face was just for fun, but now I think
of it as the secret truth... I probably wasn't really five in this
photograph more like Two-but you, as someone who likes children, would
be a better judge of that than I. When there are children
around I prefer to keep my eyes shut."
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"The tremendous world I have inside my head.
But how [to] free
myself and free it
without being
torn to pieces. And
a thousand times
[I'd] rather
be torn to pieces
than rather it in me
or bury it.
That, indeed, is
why I am here, that
is quite clear
to me."
"For me as a child everything you called
out to me was
positively a
heavenly
commandment, I never
forgot it,
it remained for me
the most important
means of forming a
judgment of the
world, above all of
forming a judgment
of you yourself, and
there you failed
entirely"
Franz Kafka's
Letter to his Father
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"I was so insecure about
everything that all I
was really sure of was what I already held
in my hands or my mouth or what was
well on its way there."
- "Anything that has real and lasting
value
is always a gift from within."
"There art Two cardinal sins from which all
others spring: Impatience and Laziness"
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"There are Two main human
sins from which all
the others derive:
impatience and indolence. It
was because of
impatience that they
were expelled from Paradise,
it is because of
indolence that they do not
return. Yet perhaps there is
only one major sin:
impatience. Because of
impatience they
were expelled,
because of impatience they
do not return."
"The fact that there is
nothing but a spiritual
world deprives us of hope
and gives us certainty."
House number 27/I at the
corner of Karpfensgasse and
Enge Gasse (later
Maiselgasse), where Kafka
was born on July 3,
1883.
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"Every revolution
evaporates and
leaves only the slime of a
new bureaucracy"
"The old castle often
loomed in K's dreams"
Model of the Old City made
by Anton Langweil between
1826 and 1834. Identifiable
are Kafka's birthplace ( o )
and Twoof the family's later
addresses, the Minute House
( ooo ) and Zeltnergasse 3 (
ooo ).
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Milená Jesenská (1896-1944)
was the daughter of a Czech
nationalist professor who
had her interned in a mental
clinic for eight months for
stealing money from him to
give to her lovers. Soon
after her release, she
married ernst Polak, a
German-speaking Jew, and
they settled in Vienna.
Neglected by her unfaithful
husband, Milená resorted to
taking cocaine. To provide
herself with independent
means, she took up
journalism, and in 1919
wrote to Kafka asking
permission to translate his
works. This triggered an
intense correspondence that
filled a mutual need for
intimacy. They had hour days
together in Vienna, but
Kafka could not sustain the
relationship, and Milená did
not want to leave her
husband.
Milena died in Ravensbruk
concentration camp in 1944.
victim of the Holocaust.
"My life is hesitation before birth" |
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"...Once more the odious
courtesies began, the first
handed the knife across K.
to the second, who handed it
across K. back again to the
first. K. now perceived
clearly that he was supposed
to seize the knife
himself, as it traveled from
hand to hand above him, and
plunge it into his own
breast. But he did not do
so, he merely turned his
head, which was still free
to move, and gazed around
him. He could not completely
rise to the occasion, he
could not relieve
the officials of all their
tasks; the
responsibility for this last
failure of his lay with him
who had not left him the
remnant of
strength necessary for the
deed.... from The Trial"
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Julie Wohryzek , daughter of a
synagogue servant, * 1891-1944
January 1919 Franz Kafka meets
Julie Wohryzek in a pension (pension
Stuedl) in Schelesen [ Zelezná ]
(noerdl. v. Prague), in which it is
for recovery. October/November. 1919
Planned marriage fails, because an
intended dwelling was otherwise
assigned. 6.Juli 1920 Last
well-known meeting |
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"If I felt in love, I
would be in a world in which
I could
not live."
"God
gives the nuts, but he does
not crack them".
Gerti Wasner- In September
1913, Franz went to a
sanatorium in Riva, Italy
and there met Gerti Wasner,
an 18-year old Swiss girl
whom he became very close
to. He later wrote that she
was one of the very few
women he had been intimate
with, but unfortunately they
were together only about
ten
days.
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"Isolation is a way to know ourselves."
"Intercourse with human beings
seduces one to self contemplation"
Minze Eisner Kafka met her in Schelesen
and advised her
in her plans to run a farm.
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Felice and Kafka in
Budapest, July 1917.
While attending a small
party, on August 13,
1912, Kafka met Felice
Bauer, a secretarial
assistant in a Berlin
office. The Two met at
the home of Max Brod's
father. On September 20,
Kafka began writing
letters to Felice. Many
biographers believe
Kafka "created" Felice
during this period; not
being near her he
created a mental image
Felice could never
equal. It was not until
Spring of 1913 that
Kafka met with Felice in
Berlin. A number of
sources indicate Kafka
did not love Felice, and
any attraction was
limited. It is possible
Kafka was looking to
prove to his father he
was "normal" and planned
to settle and start a
family. About the same
time, Kafka met an Swiss
woman, according to his
diary, and there is also
evidence of a close
friendship with Grete
Bloch, a friend of
Felice Bauer.
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The engagement announcement
Felice Bauer published in
the Prague paper, April 21,
1914.----"The engagement of
their children Felice and
Franz is humbly announced by
Carl Bauer and wife Anna née
Danziger, Berlin
Charlottenburg,
Wilmersdorterstrasse 73, and
Hermann Kafka and wife
Julie, Prague, Old Town
Square 6.
Felice Bauer
Dr. Franz Kafka
Engaged Berlin in April 1914
Reception to be held the
Monday after Pentecost, June
1" |
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One of Kafka's letters to
Felice. the address is that
of her workplace, the Carl
Lindstrom Parlograph
Company. Her mom had the bad
habit of reading her
daughter's mail, and
disapproved of
Franz's courtship by mail,
which she thought
was "excessive."
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1923- Dora Diamant, a
Polish, Orthodox Jew. Dora
was only 19 when the pair
moved to Berlin. Kafka
enjoyed Dora's company,
forming a relationship much
better than those of his
past. It is possible Dora
and Franz were in love, not
merely companions. They
traveled together during the
last year of Kafka's life.
Kafka was so pleased with
his life, he decided to burn
his previous writings. He
informed Dora, asking her to
destroy
the manuscripts if he was
unable. Curiously, after
making the request Kafka
produced The Burrow. In
April 10 1924 Kafka is taken
to sanatorium by Dora, the
Two remain together
until Kafka's death. August
1952 Dora Diamant dies in
London. |
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In the summer of 1923, owing
to his interest in Judaism and Zionism, Franz was trying to learn Hebrew
(which had been taught at school but didn't make an impression on him at
the time), and went through a couple of teachers before meeting Dora
Diamant, born 1904, a 25-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl who could read
Hebrew fluently. They met in July in the resort town of Graal-Moritz on
the German coast of the Baltic Sea and hit it off more or less
immediately. They became very close, and in September Franz moved out of
his parents' apartment, which, aside from a few attempts from 1915-1917
to have his own place, he had never left and moved to Berlin with Dora.
The nature of the relationship between them is not really clear.
Although they shared a Two room apartment in a boarding house, Franz
seems to have had more of a friendly rather than a sexual relationship
with her. Despite their poverty, being unable to pay even the electric
bill, he seemed happier than he had ever been in his life, writing "A
Little Woman," "The Burrow," and "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse
Folk." |
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"Man cannot live without
a permanent trust in
something indestructible
in himself, and at
the same time that
indestructible something
as well as his trust in
it may
remain permanently
concealed from him.''
Hedwig Weiler. Kafka met
her in Triesch in 1907 |
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1852-1931,Kafka's Father.
Son of the butcher Jacob
Kafka and his wife,Franziska
(nee Platowski),he was born
and raised in
Wossek,southern Bohemia.
From 1882 on, he was a
fancy-goods merchant in
Prague. Franz's relationship
with his father was, to put
it lightly, tempestuous, and
would end up becoming the
basis of much of his
work.-Kafka’s father was a
bully, both to his wife and
to Kafka himself. In his
autobiographical work "Brief
an der Vater" ("Letter to
the Father"), written in
1919, Kafka blamed his
father for his inability to
break his family ties and
establish an independent
married life for himself. He
believed that his father had
broken his will, and made
him feel permanently
impotent. Kafka’s father was
the very opposite of Kafka
himself: he was a
down-to-earth shopkeeper who
was obsessed with money and
social success. In Kafka’s
imagination, this man
belonged to a race of
"giants": at the same time
he hated and admired him.
Kafka’s relationship with
his father comes out in some
of his books as a hopeless
conflict against an
overwhelming power: for
example, in The Trial,
or The Castle. This
relationship is addressed
more directly in Das Urteil
(The Judgment) (1916). Yet
despite the obvious need to
get away from this person,
Kafka spent a major part of
his life living with this
awful man. |
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"I think we ought to read
only the kind of books
that wound and stab us...We
need the books that
affect us like a
disaster, that grieve us
deeply, like the death of
someone we loved more than
ourselves, like being
banished into forests far
from everyone, like a
suicide.
A book must be the axe for
the frozen sea inside us"
Kafka's mother's engagement
photo 1882 Julie Lowy
1856-1934, Kafka's mother.
Daughter of the Jewish
textile merchant and brewer
Jakob Lowy and his wife
Esther (ne'e Porias), she
was born and raised in
Podiebrad on the Elbe. She
married Hermann Kafka in
1882.Although Kafka was not
especially close to his
mother, he identified more
with her side of the
family.
These people were
intellectual, spiritual and
melancholy, and shared his
sensitive nature and
delicate physical
disposition.
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"You asked me recently
why I maintain that I am
afraid of you. As usual, I
was unable to think of any
answer to your question,
partly for the very reason
that I am afraid of you, and
partly because
an explanation of the
grounds for this fear would
mean going into far
more details than I could
even approximately keep in
mind while talking. And if I
now try to give you an
answer in writing, it will
still be very incomplete,
because, even in writing,
this fear and its
consequences hamper me in
relation to you and because
the magnitude of the subject
goes far beyond the scope of
my memory and power of
reasoning"
From:
Letter To His Father
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"The whole world is
growing smaller every
day."
"Was he an animal, that
music had such an effect
upon him?
He felt as if the way
were opening before him
to the unknown
nourishment he
craved."
The parents with Elli
Kafka's sister, her
husband Karl Hermann
they were married 1911
and their son Felix, on
summer
holiday, 1914.
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"If it had been
possible to Built the
Tower of Babel without
ascending it, the work
would have been
permitted."
"I've always admired,"
said my acquaintance,
clutching me with one
hand and pointing with
the other at the statue
of St. Ludmila, "I've
always admired the hands
of this angel here to
the left. Just see how
delicate they are! Real
angel's hands! Have you
ever seen anything like
them? You haven't, but I
have, for this evening I
kissed hands"
Description of a
Struggle |
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Max Brod, May 27, 1884,
Prague, Bohemia,
Austria-Hungary [now in
Czech Republic]. Dec.
20, 1968, Tel Aviv,
Israel), Czech-born,
German-language novelist
and essayist known
primarily as the friend
of Franz Kafka and as
the editor of his major
works, which
were published after
Kafka's death. Brod
studied law at the
University of
Prague, and in 1902 he
met and
befriended Kafka. Brod
later worked as a
minor government
official and as a
drama critic. He was an
active Zionist from
1912, and he went to
Israel in 1939, fleeing
the Nazi invasion of
Czechoslovakia. He was
subsequently a drama
adviser to the Habima
theatre company in Tel
Aviv Israel.
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Max Brod, Kafka's lifelong friend.
Brod in his last years. |
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Kafka's paternal grandparents,
Jakob Kafka (1814-1899),
a butcher in Wossek, and his wife,
Franziska (1816-1880/90) |
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"A belief is like a
guillotine just as heavy, just as light"
"Many people prowl round
Mount Sinai. Their
speech is
blurred, either they are
garrulous or they shout
or they are
taciturn. But none of
them comes straight down
a broad, newly
made, smooth road
that does its own part
in making one's
strides long and
swifter"
Jakob Kafka's Two-sided
whetstone with the
Hebrew inscription
"Kosher"
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"As Gregor Samsa awoke
one morning from uneasy
dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into
a gigantic insect. He was
lying on his hard, as it
were armor-plated, back and
when he lifted his head a
little he could see his
domelike brown belly divided
into stiff arched segments
on top of which the
bed quilt could hardly stay
in place and was about to
slide off completely. His
numerous legs, which
were pitifully thin compared
to the rest of his
bulk, waved
helplessly before his eyes".
The Metamorphosis
click for full size
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Kafka's third book, The Metamorphosis.
the first edition, 1916 The
cover illustration is a lithograph by
Ottomar Starke. When Kafka learned that
Starke was to-do an illustration, he
wrote: "The insect itself must not be
illustrated by a drawing. It cannot be
shown at all, not even from a distance". |
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"No
obligation will arise as far as you are
concerned."
"I do not mean that earlier
generations were essentially better than
ours, but only younger."
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"It is the thousandth
forgetting of a dream
dreamt a thousand times and
forgotten a thousand
times, and who can damn us
merely for forgetting
for the thousandth time?"
"Self-satisfaction will be
punished."
"Intercourse with human
beings seduces one to
self-contemplation."
"And how, in particular, can
anything be a false physical
state of an object ?"
Dr. Hoffman’s sanatorium in
Kierling, where Kafka died
on
June 3, 1924 |
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"A physiologist might give a complete
physical description of the brain and nervous
system at a particular time,
but he could never distinguish some of those
states as true and others as false, not would he
have any idea what to look for if he were asked
to do this."
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The picture on the right side-Sanatorium
guests: first row, left to right, Robert
Klopstock,the dentist Glauber,
Kafka: above them,
Irene Bugsch, Frau Galgon, unidentified
woman, Margarete Bugsch: third row,
right. Ilene Roth.
(the same group left picture as above) |
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The Pinkas-Synagogue, regularly attended by
the Kafka family during their first
years in Prague, photograph
from the time of the" sanitizing"
of the ghetto.
The
Pinkas Synagogue is the work of
the Horowitz family. In 1535 Aaron
Meshullam Horowitz had it built
between
his house "U Erbu*" and the site of
the Old Jewish Cemetery. After the
Second World War, the synagogue was
turned into
a Memorial to the Jews of Bohemia
and Moravia murdered by the Nazis.
On its walls are inscribed the names
of the
Jewish victims, their personal data,
and the names of the communities to
which they belonged. In 1968,
however, the
Memorial had to be closed because
ground water had penetrated
the building foundations, thus
endangering the structure.
During work on the underground
waterproofing of the building, a
discovery was made of vaulted spaces
with an ancient
well and ritual bath. The Communist
regime deliberately held up
renovation work and the inscriptions
were removed.
Not until 1990 was it possible to
complete the building alterations.
Finally, in 1992-1994, the 80,000
names of the
Bohemian an Moravian Jewish victims
were rewritten on its walls. |
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Franz with Ottla his favorite sister.
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"The tremendous world I have
inside my head. But how free
myself and free it without
being torn to pieces.
And a thousand times rather
be torn to pieces than
retain it in me or bury it.
That, indeed, is why I am
here,
that is quite clear to
me."
"Wisdom is thus not what men
first of all seek They
seek, instead, the
justification for what they
happen to cherish," |
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Franz, age twenty-seven,
Elli (Gabrele), age
twenty-one, Ottla (Ottilie),
age eighteen, Valli
(Valerie), age twenty.
All Franz three sisters were
murdered by the Nazis for
being Jewish at
Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz
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Elli (1889-1942?) at age
21. She would marry Karl
Hermann in 1910, who would
start the asbestos factory
that would cause Franz so
much grief, and have
three children, Felix (in
1911), Gerti (in
1912), and Hanne (in 1920).
1916 his youngest and most
supportive sister Ottla
rented the one-room cottage
and offered it to him as a
refuge from the noise in his
Old Town apartment. During
the next four months
the creative juices flowed;
closeted in silence from
dusk to midnight Kafka
produced more than a dozen
stories including The
Country Doctor, The
Great Wall of China and A
Report to an Academy.
Valli (1890-1942?) at age
20. In 1913 she married
Josef Pollack and had Two
daughters, Marianne (born
1913) and Lotte (born 1914).
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"In the fight between you
and the world, back the
world"
"If I abandon literature,
I'll cease existing."
"Someone must have been
telling lies about
you, because one fine
morning, you wake up to
find yourself in a
completely new village, a
different country, and after
remembering your
unsettling dreams, you
discover that behind it all
has sat a modest little crow
of a man."
House number 22, the dark
facade in left foreground,
was rented by Ottla to her
brother. Here he wrote
many of the stories later
incorporated in the
Country Doctor collection.
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"This
little woman, then, is very
ill-pleased with me, she always
finds something objectionable in me,
I am always doing the wrong thing to
her. I annoy her at every step; if a
life could be cut into the smallest
of small pieces and every scrap of
it could be separately
assessed, every scrap of my life
would certainly be an offense to
her"
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"..the
books we need are the kind that act upon
us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the
death of someone we love more than ourselves,
that make us feel as though we were on the verge
of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all
human habitation — a book should serve as
the ax for the frozen sea within us"
Franz Kafka
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Kafka's sisters Valli, Elli, Ottla, around 1898.
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Kafka's
sisters.
Ottla born 1892, Elli born 1889 and
Valli born 1890. All three sisters were murdered
by the Nazis for being Jewish
at
Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz
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Two Franz portrait photographs, taken
around 1899.
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"Youth
is happy because it has the ability to
see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability
to see beauty never grows old."
"The
actors by their presence always convince
me to my horror that most of what I’ve written about
them until now is false."
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Bar
mitzvah: June 13 1896 invitation from Hermann Kafka and wife,
sent to friends announcing his son's Bar mitzvah. An important
life cycle event for a young Jewish boy.
A boy is
Bar
Mitzvah when he reaches his thirteenth birthday, The
literal meaning of Bar Mitzvah is "commandment
age" or age of maturity. Historically Bar Mitzvah is
the ceremonial occasion that marks the time when a young
person is recognized as an adult in the Jewish community and
is responsible for performing Mitzvot (commandments). For
example before children are Bar Mitzvah, they do not need to
fast on
Yom
Kippur. However after bar mitzvah, they are required to
fulfill this mitzvah. At bar mitzvah they are also counted
in the minyan, a quorum of ten required to conduct a
service.
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"If
I write not what I speak, I speak not what I think, I think not
what I ought to so my writing comes from
the deepest
darkness."
"...the
innocent and the guilty, both
executed without distinction in the
end.... "
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Franz
Kafka at age Thirteen,
Bar mitzvah age.
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Kafka's Last
Love:.,
The Metamorphosis, The Trial,
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"I
need solitude for my writing;
not like a hermit - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man."
"Ours
is a lost generation, it may be,
but it is more blameless
than those earlier generations".
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Franz
at age 18. In school he was a very good student; nevertheless
he was always terrified of failing. "I remained convinced
that I would not pass my final examinations that year, and
if I did, I would not get on in the next class, and if by some
swindle I could avoid even that, then I would certainly
fail decisively in my graduation examination.
The truth was, however, that he didn't
even come close to flunking out.
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This
was probably Kafka's first writing table when he was
a
student. It was found among the family's possessions.
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"The
clocks are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demonic or in any case inhuman pace, the
outer one limps along at its usual speed. What else can happen
but that the worlds split apart, and they do split apart, or at
least clash in a fearful manner"
"A cage went in search of a bird" |
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"I
was sitting once on the slope of the Hradschin. I was
mulling over what I wanted my life to be. My most important, or most enthralling, desire, it seemed,
was to achieve a view of life in which it would both retain its own normal, ponderous fall
and rise, but at the same time be perceived as a nothingness, a
dream, a hovering in the air"
Franz
Kafka about 30 years old.
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"K.
felt a little forlorn as he advanced, a solitary figure between
the rows of empty seats, perhaps with the priest's eyes
following him; and the size of the Cathedral struck him as
bordering on the limit of what human beings could bear...when he
heard the priest lifting up his voice. A resonant, well-trained
voice. How it rolled through the expectant Cathedral! But it was
no congregation the priest was addressing, the words were
unambiguous and inescapable, he was calling out: 'Joseph
K.!'...'You are Joseph K...You are an accused man...You are held
to be guilty.'"
"Life's
splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all
its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible,
far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not
reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word,
by its right name, it will come.
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As
1924 began, Franz's health got worse and worse. He was
forced to go to a couple of sanatoriums, and his weight
plummeted. In April he went to a sanitarium in Kierling,
Austria, near Vienna. He agreed to the publication of
"A Hunger Artist," with some other stories, and began
proofing the galleys. He asked Dora's rabbi father for
permission to marry her, even though he was almost totally
wasted away, and was turned down. But he seemed happy enough
with Dora at his bedside. He died on June 3, 1924. Dora
was inconsolable. "My love, my love, my good
one!" she went around crying .
The
funeral was held on June 10th at the Jewish Cemetery in Prague.
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"I
can prove at any time that my education tried to
make
another person out of me than the one I became. It is
for the harm, therefore, that my
educators could have done
me in accordance with
their intentions that I reproach
them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and
since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the
world beyond."
"I
think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound
and stab us...We need the books that affect us like a
disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death
of someone we
loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests
far from everyone,
like a suicide.
"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside
us."
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"Who
is to confirm for me the truth
or probability of this, that
it is only because of my literary mission that
I am
uninterested in all other things and therefore
heartless."
"My doubts stand in a circle around
every word"
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In
September 1909 Kafka, Max Brod, and Max brother Otto vacationed in Riva on Lake
Garda. Kafka (right) and Otto in a snapshot taken by Max
Brod.
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"I
have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious
locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp.... And how
I would write! From what depths I would drag it up!
Without effort! For extreme concentration known no effort. The trouble is that I might not be able to keep it up for long, and at the first failure... would be bound to end in a grandiose fit of madness."
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Kafka
in front of the Oppelt House,
the apartment building where
his
family lived. Prague, the Altstadter Ring (Old Town Square), around the time that Kafka was working on The Castle 1922
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.Franz
in 1906, just after receiving his doctorate in law from Charles
University. He said he chose law so that it would not interfere
with his mental life. Nevertheless, he never actually practiced law;
instead he worked at the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute from 1908 to 1922, being put on "temporary retirement" because
of his rapidly declining health..
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Passport photographs 1911-1912
taken at the time
Kafka began
working for the Workers Accident Insurance Company.
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"Evil does not exist; once you have crossed the threshold,
all is good. Once in another world, you must hold
your tongue."
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My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted. |
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"My
talent for portraying my dreamlike
inner life has thrust all other matters
into the background; my life has
dwindled dreadfully, nor will it
cease to dwindle."
."There
is a goal, but no way; what we call
a way is hesitation."
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Kafka
with bowler hat.
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"You
can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the
world, that is something you are free to do and it
accords with your nature,
but perhaps this very holding back
is the one suffering you could avoid".
"From
a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.
That is the point that must be reached."
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Drawings
by Kafka
According to Max Brod, Kafka was already drawing sketches as a
university student, doodling in the margins of his scripts
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"I represent the negative elements."
My
peers, lately, have found companionship through means of
intoxication--it makes them sociable.
I, however, cannot force myself to
use drugs to cheat on my loneliness--it is all that I have--and
when the drugs and alcohol dissipate,
will be all that my peers have as well.
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Sketch
by Friedrich Feigl of Kafka reading the "The Bucker
Rider" at a private gathering in Prague. This is the
single artistic representation of Kafka made during his
life.
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The
first lines of the 1904 manuscript, Description
of a Struggle.
"And the people in their finery
Walk unsteadily over the gravel
Under the enormous sky Which,
from hills in the distance,
Arches over to distant hills".
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Class
photograph 1898,with school director Frank (left) and
head master Emil Gschwind (right). Kafka is second from left in
the top row. His friends: Paul Kisch (on his right), with whom
he later planned to pursue German studies: Oskar Pollak
(second row from top, second from left), his closest friend
until he entered the university: Rudolf Illowy (third
row from top, far left), with whom he discussed socialism:
Hugo Bergmann (third row from top, third left), a Zionist: Ewald Felix Pribram (third row from top, far
right), an atheist, also a very close friend
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"All
human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue"
"The
life of society moves in a circle.
Only those burdened with a common
affliction understand each other"
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A
Isaac (Yichzak) Löwy (pronounced Levy), Kafka's Jewish
Yiddish actor friend, whom he met in 1911 when a Yiddish acting troupe
came to Prague, and he became very interested in the plays, going to see
them whenever there was a performance on. The Twobecame close friends and
Löwy would tell Kafka about his Eastern Jewish upbringing in Poland,
which Kafka found very interesting. |
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Anyone who
cannot come to terms
with his life while he is alive needs
one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other
hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins".
"The
experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of
itself in matter and as matter, in mind and
as mind, in emotion, as
emotion, etc."
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Kafka's
mother and Kafka's
Sister Valli in Franzensbad |
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Franz
Kafka lived in this building, called the House at the
Minute, near Old Town Square, from 1889 to 1896.
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Franz Kafka lived at one time in a house
behind the
Church of Our Lady of Tyn.
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On the left, House at the Stone Madonna, also
called the Storch house, has painting of St. Wenceslas on horseback.
On the right, House of the Stone Ram is where
Albert Einstein played his violin for Franz Kafka when
he was a professor at Prague German University
1911 - 1912
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Plaque marks spot where Franz Kafka was born
on
July 3, 1883 above the Batalion Schnapps bar at the
corner of
Maiselova and Kaprova streets. The original
building has long since been torn down.
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Window in the Old Jewish
Town Hall.
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"If
one has the strength to look at things unceasingly, so to speak without blinking, one sees a great deal; but if one falters only once
and shuts one's eyes, everything slips away into darkness"
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The
Jewish cemetery in the far left
background, the grave of Kafka's
grandfather Jakob.
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"Writing is a
deeper sleep than death.
Just as one
wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave,
I can't be
dragged from my desk at night.
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.Kafka's
grave in the Jewish Straschnitz Cemetery
in Prague. Kafka's parents were buried in the same plot,
the Father in 1931,
the Mother in
1934.
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-Kafka's Death notice in Czech and
German-
In deepest sorrow we announce that our son, Doctor of Law Franz
Kafka died on June 3 1924, in the Kierlin Sanatorium
near Vienna. The burial will take place on Wednesday afternoon, June 11, at 3:45,
at the Jewish Cemetery in Straschnitz.
Prague, June 10, 1924. Hermann and Julia Kafka, in the name of the bereaved family. We request that
there be no
visits of condolence.
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