Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague to Jewish parents: an authoritarian father who became a prosperous textile merchant, and a tender mother who, unlike his father, grew up among deeply educated people. Franz was the firstborn. He had three sisters and two brothers, who died in infancy. Memories of his childhood, particularly his relationship with his authoritarian and rough father, haunted his life. After high school, following his father's wishes, Kafka initially attended some university courses in German literature but ultimately studied law. At the university, he met various budding German-speaking writers, such as Max Brod, who became his close friend. He then worked for fourteen years, first at an insurance company and later at the Workers Accident Insurance Institute of Bohemia. He devoted his nights to writing, which was his great passion. He knew that his destiny was writing, but he did not manage—nor dare—to make it his profession. Very few of his works were published during his lifetime, such as the famous "The Metamorphosis" (1916), "In the Penal Colony," "A Country Doctor," and "Letter to His Father" (1919). In 1914, he got engaged to Felice Bauer, whom he had met at Brod's house and with whom he corresponded for two years, but he broke off the engagement because he felt incapable of facing marriage. Another attempt to marry Felice ended in failure when, in 1917, it became known that he was suffering from tuberculosis and entered a sanatorium, supported by his sister Ottla. In 1923, during a trip to the Baltic, he met the emancipated Jewish kindergarten teacher Dora Diamant and soon moved to her home in Berlin, trying to escape his family's influence and devote himself to writing. However, he died of tuberculosis on June 3, 1924. Generally, his life was simple, without many relocations or long journeys. Without "great encounters." Shortly before he died, he asked Brod to destroy his works, a request that Brod fortunately ignored. Brod edited his three unfinished novels and published them: "The Trial" (1925), "The Castle" (1926), "America" (1927). Although a voluminous diary of his (3,000 pages) has survived, much about Kafka's life remains unknown. This is particularly due to the political events between 1933 and 1945: In Berlin, at the home of Dora Diamant, his faithful friend in the later years of his life, a bundle of his manuscripts was confiscated by the Gestapo and is considered lost today. In 1935, the publication of his works was banned. Witnesses to his life, his three sisters, friends, and relatives, were killed by the Nazis in concentration camps. The archives were destroyed. His library and many of his letters were lost. His work, initially known only to a small literary circle in Germany, spread after his death to France, thanks to H. Breton, A. Camus, and J. P. Sartre, then to England and America, and finally to Russia. The first translations into Czech were published in 1957 in Prague.