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. Twoyears 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 Young Franz was quiet and withdrawn.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. This biographical sketch was written by - Leni's Franz Kafka Page

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.

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.

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..."

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).

"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.

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."

"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   "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"

"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.

"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 ).

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"

"...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"

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

"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.

"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.

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.

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"

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."

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.

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."

"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

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.

"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.

"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

"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.     "If it had been possible to build 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     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.     Max Brod, Kafka's lifelong friend.     Brod in his last years.       Kafka's paternal grandparents, Jakob Kafka (1814-1899),  a butcher in Wossek, and his wife, Franziska (1816-1880/90) "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"

"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

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".

"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."

"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

"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."

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)

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.

Franz with Ottla his favorite sister.   "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,"

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 . 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).

"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.

"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"

Franz Kafka on the web:   Franz Kafka - Biography and Works Franz Kafka. Biography of Franz Kafka and a searchable collection of works. Franz Kafka For further reading: Franz Kafka and Prague by P. Eisner (1959); Franz Kafka: A Biography by M. Brod (1960) Die Kafka-Literature by Harry Järv (1961); ... Kafka - Biography