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Franz Kafka
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Franz Kafka
For other
uses of "Kafka", see Kafka
(disambiguation).
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Franz Kafka
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 Franz Kafka in 1906 |
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Born
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3 July 1883
Prague, Austria-Hungary |
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Died
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Citizenship
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Occupation
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novelist, short story writer, insurance officer
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Notable work(s)
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Style
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Parents
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Hermann Kafka
Julie Kafka (née Löwy) |
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Signature
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Franz Kafka[a] (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924)
was a German-language writer of novels and short stories, regarded
by critics as one of the most influential authors of the
20th century. Kafka strongly influenced genres such as existentialism. His works, such as "Die Verwandlung"
("The Metamorphosis"), Der Process (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle), are filled with the
themes and archetypes of alienation, physical and psychological brutality,
parent–child conflict, characters on a terrifying quest, labyrinths of bureaucracy,
and mystical transformations.
Kafka was born into a
middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He trained as a
lawyer and, after completing his legal education, obtained employment with an cover
company. He began to write short stories in his spare time. For the rest of his
life, he complained about the little time he had to allot to what he came to
regard as his calling. He regretted having to devote so much
attention to his Brotberuf ("day
job", literally "bread job"). Kafka preferred to communicate by
letter; he wrote hundreds of letters to family and close female friends,
including his father,
his fiancée Felice Bauer, and his youngest sister Ottla. He had a knotty and troubled
relationship with his father that had a major effect on his writing. He also
suffered conflict over being Jewish, feeling that it had little to do with him,
although critics argue that it influenced his writing.
Only a few of Kafka's works were
published during his lifetime: the story collectionsBetrachtung (Contemplation) and Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor), and individual
stories (such as "Die Verwandlung")
in literary magazines. He prepared the story collection Ein
Hungerkünstler (A
Hunger Artist) for print, but it was not published until after his death.
Kafka's unfinished works, with his novels Der Process, Das Schloss and Amerika(also
known as Der Verschollene, The Man Who Disappeared), were
published posthumously, mostly by his friend Max Brod, who ignored Kafka's wish to have the
manuscripts cracked. Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre are among the writers influenced by Kafka's
work; the term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to depict odd
situation like those in his symbols.
Contents
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1 Life
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2 Works
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3 Legacy
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5 Notes
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Life[edit]
Family[edit]
Birthplace
in Prague
Kafka was born near the Old Town Square in Prague, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family were
middle-class Ashkenazi Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka
(1852–1931), was the fourth child of Jakob Kafka,[5][6] a shochet or ritual slaughterer in Osek,
a Czech village with a large Jewish population located near Strakonice in southern Bohemia.[7] Hermann brought the Kafka family to Prague.
After working as a travelling sales representative, he eventually became a
fancy goods and clothing retailer who employed up to 15 people and used the
image of a jackdaw (kavka in Czech) as his business logo.[8] Kafka's mother, Julie (1856–1934), was the offspring
of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous retail merchant in Poděbrady,[9]and was better educated than her
husband.[5] Kafka's parents probably spoke a variety of
German influenced by Yiddish that was sometimes pejoratively called Mauscheldeutsch, but, as
the German idiom was considered the vehicle of social mobility, they probably
encouraged their children to speak High German.[10] Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom
Franz was the eldest.[11] Franz's two brothers, Georg and Heinrich,
died in infancy before Franz was seven; his three sisters were Gabriele
("Ellie") (1889–1944), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1942) and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943). They all
died through the Holocaust of World War II. Valli was deported to theŁódź Ghetto in Poland in 1942, but that is the last
documentation of her.
Hermann is described by the
biographer Stanley Corngold as a "huge, selfish, overbearing
businessman"[12] and by Franz Kafka as "a true Kafka in
strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction,
worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, [and] knowledge of human
nature".[13] On business days, both parents were absent
from the home, with Julie Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day
helping to manage the family business. Consequently, Kafka's childhood was
somewhat lonely,[14] and the children were largely reared by a
series of governesses and servants. Kafka's troubled relationship with his
father is evident in his Brief an den Vater (Letter to His Father) of more than
100 pages, in which he complain of being profoundly affected by his father's
authoritarian and demanding character;[15] his mother, in contrast, was quiet and shy.[16] The dominating figure of Kafka's father had a
significant influence on Kafka's writing.[17]
The Kafka family had a servant
girl living with them in a cramped apartment. Franz's room was often cold. In
November 1913 the family moved into a bigger apartment, although Ellie and
Vallie had married and moved out of the first apartment. In early August 1914,
just after World War I began, the sisters did not know where their husbands
were in the military and moved back in with the family in this larger
apartment. Both Ellie and Valli also had children. Franz at age 31 moved into
Valli's former apartment, quiet by contrast, and lived by himself for the first
time.[18]
Education[edit]
From 1889 to 1893, Kafka attend
the Deutsche Knabenschule German boys' elementary school at the Masný trh/Fleischmarkt (meat market), now known as Masná Street. His
Jewish education ended with his Bar Mitzvah celebration at the age of 13. Kafka never
enjoyed attending the synagogue and went with his father only on four high
holidays a year.[13][19][20]
Kinsky
Palace where Kafka attended gymnasium and his father owned a shop
After leaving elementary school
in 1893, Kafka was admitted to the rigorous classics-oriented state gymnasium, Altstädter
Deutsches Gymnasium, an academic secondary school at Old Town Square, within the
Kinsky Palace. German was the language of instruction, but Kafka also spine and
wrote in Czech;[21][22] he studied the latter at the gymnasium for eight
years, achieving good grades.[23] Although Kafka received compliments for his
Czech, he never considered himself fluent in Czech and spoke German with a
Czech accent.[1][22] He completed his Matura exams in 1901.[24]
Admitted to the German Karl-Ferdinands-Universität of Prague in 1901, Kafka began studying
chemistry, but switched to law after two weeks.[25] Although this field did not excite him, it
offered a range of career possibilities which pleased his father. In addition,
law required a longer course of study, giving Kafka time to take classes in
German studies and art history.[26] He also joined a student club, Lese-und
Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten(Reading and Lecture Hall of the
German students), which organized literary events, readings and other
activities.[27] Among Kafka's friends were the journalist Felix Weltsch, who studied philosophy, the
actor Yitzchak Lowy who came from an orthodox HasidicWarsaw family, and the writers Oskar Baum and Franz Werfel.[28]
At the end of his first year of
studies, Kafka met Max Brod, a fellow law student who became a
close friend for life.[27] Brod soon noticed that, although Kafka was
shy and seldom spoke, what he said was usually profound.[29] Kafka was an avid reader throughout his life;[30] together he and Brod read Plato's Protagoras in the original Greek, on Brod's initiative, and Flaubert's L'éducation
sentimentale (Sentimental
Education) and La
Tentation de St. Antoine (The Temptation of Saint Anthony) in
French, at his own suggestion.[31] Kafka considered Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
Flaubert, Franz Grillparzer,[32] and Heinrich von Kleist to be his "true blood brothers".[33] Besides these, he took an interest in Czech literature[21][22] and was also very fond of the works of Goethe.[34][35] Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on
18 July 1906[b] and performed an obligatory year of unpaid
service as regulation clerk for the civil and criminal courts.[38]
Employment[edit]
Former
home of the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute.
On 1 November 1907, Kafka was
hired at the Assicurazioni
Generali, an Italian insurance company, where he worked for nearly a year.
His correspondence during that period indicates that he was unhappy with a
working time schedule—from 08:00 until 18:00[39][40]—making it extremely difficult to
concentrate on writing, which was assuming increasing importance to him. On
15 July 1908, he prepared to accept. Two weeks later he found employ more
amenable to writing when he joined the Worker's Accident
Insurance Institute for theKingdom of Bohemia.
The job involved investigating and assessing compensation forpersonal injury to industrial workers; accidents such as lost
fingers or limbs were commonplace at this time. The management professor Peter Drucker credits Kafka with developing the first
civilian hard hat while employed at the Worker's Accident
Insurance establishment, but this is not supported by any document from his
employer.[41][42] His father often referred to his son's job as
an insurance officer as a Brotberuf, literally "bread
job", a job done only to pay the bills; Kafka often claimed to despise it.
Kafka was rapidly promoted and his duties included processing and investigating
compensation claims, writing reports, and handling appeals from businessmen who
thought their firms had been placed in too high a risk category, which cost
them more in insurance premiums.[43] He would compile and compose the annual report on the insurance institute for the several
years he worked there. The reports were received well by his superiors.[44] Kafka usually got off work at 2 p.m., hence,
he had time to spend on his literary work, to which he was committed.[45] Kafka's father also expected him to help out
at and take over the family fancy goods store.[46] In his later years, Kafka's illness often
prevented him from working at the insurance bureau and at his writing. Years
later, Brod coined the term Der enge Prager Kreis ("The Close Prague Circle") to
describe the set of writers which included Kafka, Felix Weltsch and him.[47][48]
In late 1911, Elli's husband Karl
Hermann and Kafka became partners in the first asbestos factory in Prague, known as Prager
Asbestwerke Hermann & Co., having used dowry money from Hermann Kafka.
Kafka showed a positive attitude at first, dedicating much of his free time to
the business, but he later resented how this work encroached on his writing
time.[49] During that period, he also found interest
and entertainment in the performances of Yiddish theatre. After seeing a Yiddish
theater troupe perform in October 1911, for the next six months Kafka
"immersed himself in Yiddish language and in Yiddish literature".[50] This interest also served as a starting point
for his growing exploration of Judaism.[51] It was at about this time that Kafka became a
vegetarian.[52] Around 1915 Kafka received his draft notice
for military service in World War I, but his employers at the insurance
institute arranged for a deferment because his work was considered essential
government service. Later he attempted to join the military but was prevented
from doing so by medical problems associated with tuberculosis,[53] with which he was diagnosed in 1917.[54] In 1918 the Worker's Accident Insurance
Institute put Kafka on a pension due to his illness, for which there was no
cure at the time, and he depleted most of the rest of his life in sanatoriums.[38]
Private
life[edit]
Kafka had an active sex life.
According to Brod, Kafka was "tortured" by sexual desire[55] and Kafka's biographer Reiner Stach states that his life was full of
"incessant womanising" and that he was filled with a fear of
"sexual failure".[56] He visited brothels for most of his adult
life[57][58][59] and was interested in pornography.[55] In addition, he had close relationships with
several women during his life. On 13 August 1912, Kafka met Felice Bauer, a relative of Brod, who worked
in Berlin as a representative of a dictaphone company. A week after the meeting at Brod's
home, Kafka wrote in his diary:
Miss FB. When I arrived at Brod's
on 13 August, she was sitting at the table. I was not at all curious about
who she was, but rather took her for granted at once. Bony, empty face that
wore its emptiness openly. Bare throat. A blouse thrown on. Looked very
domestic in her dress although, as it turned out, she by no means was. (I
alienate myself from her a little by inspecting her so closely ...) Almost
broken nose. Blonde, to some extent straight, unattractive hair, strong chin.
As I was taking my seat I looked at her closely for the first time, by the time
I was seated I already had an unshakeable opinion.[60][61]
Shortly after this, Kafka wrote
the story "Das Urteil" ("The
Judgement") in only one night, and worked in a productive period on Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared) and "Die Verwandlung" ("The
Metamorphosis"). Kafka and Felice Bauer communicated mostly through
letters over the next five years, met occasionally, and were engaged twice.[62] Kafka's extant letters to her were published
as Briefe an Felice (Letters to Felice); her letters do
not survive.[60][63][64] According to biographers Stach and James Hawes,
around 1920 Kafka was engaged a third time, to Julie Wohryzek, a poor and
uneducated hotel chambermaid.[62][65] Although the two rented a flat and set a
wedding date, the marriage never took place. During this time Kafka began a
draft of the Letter to
His Father, who objected to Julie because of her Zionist beliefs. Before the date of the intended
marriage, he took up with yet another woman.[66] While he needed women and sex in his life, he
had low self-confidence, felt sex was dirty, and was shy—especially about his
body.[38]
Stach and Brod state that during
the time that Kafka knew Felice Bauer, he had an affair with a friend of hers,
Margarethe "Grete" Bloch,[67] a Jewish woman from Berlin. Brod says that
Bloch gave birth to Kafka's son, although Kafka never knew about the child. The
boy, whose name is not known, was born in 1914 or 1915 and died in Munich in
1921.[68][69] But, Kafka's biographer Peter-André Alt
claims that, while Bloch had a son, Kafka was not the father as the pair were
never intimate.[70][71] Stach states that Bloch had a son, but there
is not solid proof but contradictory evidence that Kafka was the father.[72]
Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) in August 1917 and moved for a few
months to the Bohemian village of Zürau (Siřem inCzech language), where his sister Ottla worked
on the farm of her brother-in-law Hermann. He felt comfortable there and later
described this time as perhaps the best time in his life, probably because he
had no responsibilities. He kept diaries and Oktavhefte (octavo). From the notes in
these books, Kafka extracted 109 numbered pieces of text on Zettel, single pieces of paper in no
given order. They were later published as Die Zürauer Aphorismen oder Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den
wahren Weg (The
Zürau Aphorisms or Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way).[73]
In 1920 Kafka began an intense
relationship with Milena Jesenská, a Czech journalist and
writer. His letters to her were later published as Letters to Milena (Letters to Milena).[74] During a vacation in July 1923 to Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea, Kafka met Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten
teacher from an orthodox Jewish family. Kafka, hoping to escape the influence
of his family to ponder on his writing, moved briefly to Berlin and lived with
Diamant. She became his lover and caused him to become interested in theTalmud.[75] He worked on four stories, which he equipped
to be published as Ein
Hungerkünstler (A
Hunger Artist).[74]
Personality[edit]
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Franz
Kafka, etching by Jan Hladík, 1978
Kafka feared that people would
find him mentally and physically repulsive. However, those who met him
perceived him to possess a quiet and cool demeanor, obvious intelligence, and a
dry sense of humour; they also found him boyishly handsome, although of austere
appearance.[76][77][78] Brod compared Kafka to Heinrich von Kleist,
noting that both writers had the ability to realistically describe a situation
with precise details.[79] Brod thought Kafka was one of the most
entertaining people he had met; Kafka enjoyed sharing humour with his friends,
but also helped them in difficult situations with good advice.[80] According to Brod, he was a passionate
reciter, who was able to phrase his speaking as if it were music.[81] Brod felt that two of Kafka's most
distinguishing traits were "absolute truthfulness" (absolute Wahrhaftigkeit) and "precise
conscientiousness" (präzise
Gewissenhaftigkeit).[82][83] He explored the detail, the inconspicuous,
profoundly with such love and precision that things surfaced that had been
unforeseen, that seemed strange, but were nothing but true (nichts als wahr).[84]
Although Kafka showed little
interest in exercise as a child, he later showed interest in games and physical
activity,[30] as a good rider, swimmer, and rower.[82] On weekends he and his friends embarked on
long hikes, often planned by Kafka himself.[85] His other benefit includedalternative medicine, modern education systems
such as Montessori,[82] and technical novelties such as airplanes and
film.[86] Writing was important to Kafka; he considered
it a "form of prayer".[87] He was very sensitive to noise and preferred
quiet when writing.[88]
Pérez-Álvarez has claimed that
Kafka may have possessed a schizoid
personality disorder.[89]His style, they claim, not only in
"Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), but in various
other writings, appears to show low to medium-level schizoid characteristics,
which explain much of his surprising work.[90] His anguish can be seen in this diary entry
from 21 June 1913:[91]
The tremendous world I have in my
head. But how to free myself and free them without ripping apart. And a
thousand times rather tear in me they hold back or buried. For this I'm here,
that's quite clear to me.[92]
and in Zürau Aphorism number 50:
Man cannot live without a
permanent trust in something indestructible within himself, though both that
indestructible something and his own trust in it may remain permanently
concealed from him.[93]
Though Kafka never married, he
held marriage and children in high esteem. He had several girlfriends,[94] but some academics have speculated about his
sexuality. Others have suggested he may have suffered from an eating disorder.
Doctor Manfred M. Fichter of the Psychiatric Clinic, University of Munich,
presented "evidence for the hypothesis that the writer Franz Kafka had
suffered from an atypical anorexia nervosa"[95], and that Kafka was not just lonely
and down in the dumps but also "occasionally suicidal".[77] In his 1995 bookFranz Kafka, the Jewish
Patient, Sander Gilman investigated "why a Jew might have been
considered 'hypochondriac' or 'homosexual' and how Kafka incorporates aspects
of these ways of understanding the Jewish male into his own self-image and
writing".[96] Kafka considered committing suicide at least
once, in late 1912.[97]
Political
views[edit]
Prior to World War I,[98] Kafka attended several meetings of the Klub
Mladých, a Czech anarchist, anti-militarist, and anti-clericalorganization.[99] Hugo Bergmann, who attended the same
elementary and high schools as Kafka, fell out with Kafka during their last
academic year (1900–1901) because "[Kafka's] socialism and my Zionism were much too strident".[100][101] "Franz became a communalist, I became a
Zionist in 1898. The synthesis of Zionism and socialism did not yet
exist".[101] Bergmann claims that Kafka wore a red
carnation to school to show his support for socialism.[101] In one diary entry, Kafka made reference to
the influential anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin: "Don't forget
Kropotkin!"[102]
During the communist era, the
legacy of Kafka's work for Eastern bloc socialism was hotly debated. Opinions
ranged from the notion that he satirised the bureaucratic bungling of a
crumbling Austria-Hungarian Empire, to the belief that
he embodied the rise of socialism.[103] A further key point was Marx's theory
of alienation. While the orthodox position was that Kafka's depiction
of alienation were no longer relevant for a society that had supposedly
eliminated alienation, a 1963 conference held in Liblice, Czechoslovakia,
on the eightieth anniversary of his birth, reassessed the importance of Kafka's
portrayal of bureaucracy.[104] Whether or not Kafka was a political writer
is still an issue of debate.[105]
Judaism
and Zionism[edit]
Kafka grew up in Prague as a
German-speaking Jew.[106] He was deeply fascinated by the Jews of
Eastern Europe, who he thought possessed an intensity of spiritual life that
was absent from Jews in the West. His diary is full of references to Yiddish
writers.[107] Yet he was at times alienated from Judaism
and Jewish life: "What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything
in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I
can breathe".[108] In his youth years, Kafka had confirmed
himself an atheist.[109]
Hawes suggests that Kafka, though
very aware of his own Jewishness, did not incorporate it into his
work, which, according to Hawes, lacks Jewish characters, scenes or themes.[110][111][112] In the opinion of literary critic Harold Bloom, although Kafka was uneasy with
his Jewish heritage, he was the quintessential Jewish writer.[113] Lothar Kahn is likewise unequivocal:
"The presence of Jewishness in Kafka's oeuvre is no longer subject to doubt".[114] Pavel Eisner, one of Kafka's first
translators, interprets the classic, Der Process (The
Trial) as the embodiment of the "triple dimension of Jewish existence
in Prague ... his protagonist Josef K. is (symbolically) arrested by a
German (Rabensteiner), a Czech (Kullich) and a Jew (Kaminer). He stands for the
'guiltless guilt' that imbues the Jew in the modern world, although there is no
verification that he himself is a Jew".[115]
In his essay Sadness in Palestine?!, Dan Miron explores Kafka's connection to Zionism:
"It seems that those who claim that there was such a connection and that
Zionism played a central role in his life and literary work, and those who deny
the connection altogether or dismiss its importance, are both wrong. The truth lies
in some very elusive place between these two simplistic poles".[107] Kafka considered moving to Palestine with Felice Bauer, and later with Dora
Diamant. He studied Hebrew while
living in Berlin, hiring a friend of Brod's from Palestine, Pua Bat-Tovim, to
tutor him[107] and attending Rabbi Julius Guttmann's[c] class in the Berlin
Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Berlin College for Judaic Science).[116]
Livia Rothkirchen calls Kafka the
"symbolic figure of his era".[115] His contemporaries included numerous Jewish
writers (Czech, German and national Jews) who were sensitive to German, Czech,
Austrian and Jewish culture. According to Rothkirchen, "This situation
lent their writings a broad cosmopolitan outlook and a quality of exaltation
bordering on transcendental metaphysical contemplation. An illustrious example
is Franz Kafka".[115]
Towards the end of his life Kafka
sent a postcard to his friend Hugo Bergman in Tel Aviv, announcing his
intention to immigrate to Palestine. Bergman refused to host Kafka because he
had young family and was afraid that Kafka would infect them with tuberculosis.[117]
Death[edit]
Kafka's laryngeal tuberculosis worsened and in March 1924 he returned from
Berlin to Prague,[62] where members of his family, principally his
sister Ottla, took care of him. He went to Dr. Hoffmann's sanatorium in Kierling near Vienna for
treatment on 10 April,[74]and died there on 3 June 1924.
His cause of death seemed to be starvation: the condition of Kafka's throat
made eating too painful for him, and since parenteral nutrition had not yet been developed, there was no way
to feed him.[118][119] Kafka was editing "A Hunger Artist"
on his deathbed, a story whose composition he had begun before his throat
closed to the point that he could not take any nourishment.[120] His body was brought back to Prague where he
was buried on 11 June 1924, in the New Jewish
Cemetery in Prague-Žižkov.[58] Kafka was unknown during his own lifetime,
but he did not deem fame important. However, he became famed soon after his loss.[87]
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