This month we’re celebrating the birthday of Franz Kafka. Kafka was a German-language novelist and writer from Prague. He is regarded as one of the major figures of twentieth century literature. His best-known works are the novella, The Metamorphosis and the novels, The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika.
He was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, Czechia. He died of complications from tuberculosis on June 3, 1924, in Kierling, Klosterneuburg, Austria exactly one month before his 41st birthday.
Kafka was the eldest of six children. His family were middle-class German speaking Ashkenazi Jews. Kafka’s two brothers died in infancy and his sisters, Gabriele (Elli), Valerie (Valli), and Ottilie (Ottla) were killed during the Holocaust.
His father Hermann was a fashion retailer and his mother Julia worked long hours at the store helping her husband, Kafka had a lonely childhood. He and his sisters were mostly raised by a series of governesses and servants. Kafka and his father had a difficult relationship. Hemann was a large, selfish, loud, and overbearing businessman with little time for others including his family. As a result, Kafka struggled with feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt his entire life. Brief an den Vater (A Letter to My Father) is a 100 page missive confronting his father’s behavior and it’s impact on him and his writing.
Kafka was an excellent student who was fluent in German and Czech. When he went to university, he studied chemistry. The difficulty of the course work left him little time to write. Kafka switched to law. It offered more career opportunities which pleased his father. At the end of his first year of studies, Kafka met Max Brod, a fellow law student who became his best friend for life. Though Kafka was quiet and shy, Brod and his other friends enjoyed his quick wit and valued his advice.
When Kafka graduated he did his required year of unpaid service as a law clerk for the criminal and civil courts. After his service was completed, he went to work for an insurance company. The hours were long and left him little time to write, so he switched companies after a year. Hermann referred to Kafka’s job as a Brotberuf, bread job – a job done only to pay the bills. He expected Kafka to help out at the store instead of writing during his free time because Hermann fully expected his son to take over the family business someday.
In 1911, Kafka became partners with his sister Eli’s husband in Prague’s first asbestos factory.
In 1915, He received his draft notice for World War I, but the insurance company he worked for filed for a deferment on the grounds that his job was considered essential government service. He tried to enlist, but was turned down because his health was declining because he was in the early stages of tuberculosis. He was officially diagnosed in 1917. In 1918, he received a pension from the insurance company he worked for and spent most of the remainer of his life in sanitoriums.
Though Kafka never married he had many affairs. One of these women claimed he was the father of her child, but her claims were never substantiated.
Kafka was a prolific writer, but he received little recognition during his lifetime. He instructed his friend Max Brod to burn, all his published and unpublished writings without reading them after his death. Brod refused. He published most of Kafka’s works between 1925 and 1935.
Kafka’s last lover, Dora Diament also ignored his wishes and kept 20 notebooks and 35 letters. The Gestapo confiscated them from Diament in 1933. Scholars continue to look for these works in hopes that they were not destroyed.
Kafka’s work began to attract a larger audience and he received critical acclaim after his death. One of the challenges Brod faced in editing his friend’s work was that Kafka often didn’t write in order. He wrote as the ideas came to him and arranged them later. Brod also deleted risqué passages of Kafka’s diaries to shield his friend’s reputation.
After Brod’s death, he left Kafka’s unpublished works to his secretary, Esther Hoffe. She released or sold some of the works, but left the Bulk of Kafka’s papers to her daughters who refused to publish them.
Many literary critics and scholars have tried to analyze Kafka’s life and his works. Some believe his work is political others insist it is a reflection of his legal career and his opinions about the legal system. Still others contend his work reflects his conflict with his father and authority. I recommend you read his work and enjoy it without trying to label it.