FRANZ KAFKA Franz

MUSEUM Kaa
GUIDE Museum

1
2 3
 BIOGRAPHY

The exhibition is divided into two parts:

Kaa in Prague:
Existential Space
Prague in Kaa:
Imaginary topography

Kafka and Felice

Bauer in Budapest
(July 1917)

3 July 1883 Franz Kafka was born in Prague’s Old Town as the oldest
son of Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), a haberdashery wholesaler, and
Julie, née Löwy (1856–1934). The parents’ wedding took place in Sep-
tember 1882 in Prague in Old Town Square house no. 8/929. The writ-
er’s birthplace, the Tower House (Zum Turm), was situated on the cross-
roads of Maiselova and U Radnice streets, known today as Franz Kafka
Square. It later burned down with only the house portal being preserved.
The memorial bust on the house was sculpted by Karel Hladík in 1966..

Franz Kafka had five younger siblings. Brothers Georg (1885–1886) and
Heindrich (1887–1888) died young. Sisters Gabriele (Elli, 1889–1941),
PICTOGRAMS USED
Valerie (Valli, 1890–1942) and Ottilie (Ottla, 1892–1943), the latter being
Kafka’s most beloved sister, were born in the Minute House on the Old
video recording Town Square.
audio recording 1889–1893 Kafka attended the German Primary School for Boys in
Masná Street.
4 5
 1893–1901 Kafka studied at the 1908–1922 Kafka worked for the
German State Grammar School, Workers’ Accident Insurance Insti-
located in the rear wing of the tute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in
Golz-Kinský Palace on the Old Town 7/1075 Na Poříčí Street, first as an
Square. His classmates and friends articled clerk, however, at the time of
included future art historian Oscar his early retirement for medical rea-
Pollak, poet and journalist Rudolf sons in 1922, he held the position of
Illový, philosopher Hugo Bergmann a secretary.
and Ewald Felix Příbram, whose fa-
His ambivalent relationship to his
ther was the director of the Work-
work in the office is obvious from
ers’ Accident Insurance Institute.
his correspondence: “My job is un-
1901–1906 Kafka studied juris- bearable to me because it conflicts
prudence at the German Karl-Ferdi- with my only calling, which is liter-
nand University. He also attended ature.” At the same time, however,
Franz Kafka during the early years lectures in German studies and art he was proud of his work and his Franz Kafka in 1910
of his grammar school studies achievements in the hierarchy of the insurance institute.
history.
1902 Kafka first met Max Brod, who was also a student at the Karl-Fer- 1908 Kafka published his first texts in the Munich-based Hyperion mag-
dinand University, in the German students’ Reading and Rhetorical Club. azine, while eight fragments of his early fiction appeared in Brod’s alma-
Max Brod and Franz Kafka’s friendship lasted until Kafka’s death in 1924. nac Arkadia. He wrote in German, but he could also speak Czech and
French. In his later years, he also learned Hebrew.
1904 Kafka became a member of the “Prague Circle,” an unofficial club
of Prague authors writing in German. Max Brod introduced Kafka to phi- 1909–1912 Kafka traveled with Max Brod around Europe (northern Italy,
losopher and Zionist Felix Weltsch and writer Oskar Baum. Paris and Weimar). It was at this time that he began writing his Diaries.
He would extend his foreign travel by staying in sanatoria focusing on
1904–1905 Kafka wrote his first short story, Description of a Struggle natural healing in Erlenbach (1911), Jungborn (1912) and Riva (1913).
(Beschreibung eines Kampfes), which was published posthumously.
1911 Kafka attended performances by the Jewish theater troupe from
1905–1906 Kafka’s first recreation and recuperation trips to the climatic Lviv, which gave guest performances in Prague in that year. This encoun-
sanatorium in Zuckmantel. During his school years he would also go on ter was crucial for Kafka’s relationship to Judaism and Jewish literature.
health holidays to the Vltava, Berounka and Sázava rivers and to visit his 1912 He immersed in writing his first novel, The Man Who Disappeared
uncle Siegfried in Třešť. (Der Verschollene) and other short stories, including The Judgment (Das
1906 Kafka obtained his doctorate in law. Urteil), The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) and Hullabaloo (Grosser
Lärm). A set of 18 short stories was published in December under the title
1906–1907 One-year mandatory practice in a court in Prague. Meditation (Betrachtung).
1907 At the intercession of his uncle from his mother’s side, Alfred Löwy, August 1912 Kafka met Felice Bauer. Their relationship and corre-
Kafka started to work for Assicurazioni Generali, located on the corner of spondence lasted through 1917 (encompassing more than 500 letters
Wenceslas Square and Jindřišská Street. and postcards). During this relationship lasting over several years, he pro-
posed to Felice twice, but each time broke the engagement. In 1914 he
met his fiancée’s friend, Grete Bloch.
6 77
In the years before World War I, Kafka frequented the science socie-
ty’s lectures organized by Berta Fanta in her house no. 3 on the Old Town
Square, a house marked by the relief of a unicorn on the front façade.
This was the meeting place of leading intellectuals who presented new
concepts in many scientific fields (psychoanalysis, theory of relativity,
transfinite numbers, quantum theory and others). In addition to Kafka,
frequent visitors included physicist Phillip Frank, philosopher Christian
von Ehrenfels, mathematician Gerhard Kowalewski, the founder of an-
throposophy Rudolf Steiner, and even Albert Einstein, who was lecturing
in Prague at the time.
1914 Kafka moved away from his parents for the first time, renting an
apartment in Bílkova Street, where he worked on novels The Trial (Der
Prozess) and The Man Who Disappeared (Der Verschollene), also known
as America, including the first chapter of the book, later published under
the title of The Stoker (Der Heizer) as well as on the short story titled
In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie).
1915 The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) was published for the first
time on its own by the Kurt Wolff Publishing House in Leipzig, which pri-
marily cooperated with illustrator Ottomar Starke (1886–1962).
1916 In a rented room in 22 Golden Lane in Prague Castle, Kafka wrote
short stories which were published under the title of A Country Doctor
(Ein Landarzt). One year later, he published his short story A Report to an
Academy (Ein Bericht für eine Akademie).
March 1917 Kafka rented an apartment in the Schönborn Palace in the
Lesser Town (today’s U.S. Embassy), where he wrote the short story en-
titled The Great Wall of China (Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer), in-
spired by Prague’s monument from Charles IV’s time – the Hunger Wall.
August 1917 First signs of tuberculosis. The disease became one of the
main reasons for the cancellation of the second engagement to Felice
Bauer and the final termination of their relationship. Kafka left for a health
holiday to his sister Ottilie’s in Siřem (Zürau) in northwestern Bohemia,
who lived and worked on a farm with her husband Josef David.
1918–1923 His stays in sanatoria were only interrupted by short periods
of work in the accident insurance institute; 1918 in Pension Stüdl in Želízy
(Schelesen) near Mělník, 1920 in Merano, 1921 in Matliare in the High
Tatras, 1922 in Špindlerův mlýn (Spindelmühle) in the Krkonoše Moun-
tains and in Planá nad Lužnicí.
8 99
1918–1919 Kafka maintained a relation-
ship with Julie Wohryzek, whom he met
in Želízy (north of Prague). He terminated
his engagement with Julia because of his
father’s disagreement with it and soon
broke up with her.
The literary gems of this time include the
famous Letter to His Father (Brief an der
Vater), which Kafka never gave to his father.
1920–1922 Kafka’s relationship with
journalist Milena Jesenská, the first
translator of his fiction into Czech, who
Franz Kafka in 1920
played and important role in his life.
1922 Kafka worked on The Castle (Das Schloss), which was published
posthumously in 1927, and on the short story entitled The Hunger Artist
(Der Hungerkünstler), published posthumously in the summer of 1924.
1922 In this year, Kafka was promoted to the position of the chief sec-
retary at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute. Shortly after, he re-
quested early retirement for medical reasons.
1923 In Müritz, Kafka met Dora Diamant, a Hasidic girl from Galicia, who
was a young Zionist from an orthodox Jewish family. Dora revived in
Kafka his wish to settle in Palestine. Kafka and Dora moved to Berlin in
order to detach him from his family and to focus on writing. Dora strove
to provide a creative environment. Kafka learned Hebrew and his diaries
indicate that he dreamed about living in the Land of Israel. In this year, he
wrote his short story, The Burrow (Der Bau).
1924 Kafka’s health deteriorated. In March, Max Brod and Kafka’s uncle
Siegfried Löwy moved him from Berlin to his parents’ house on the Old
Town Square in Prague. There he worked on his short story, Josephine
the Singer, or the Mouse Folk (Josefine. Die Sängerin oder Das Volk der
Mäuse). In April, Kafka, Dora Diamant and his physician Robert Klopstock
left for the sanatorium in Kierling near Klosterneuburg in Lower Austria.
3 June 1924 Kafka died of laryngeal tuberculosis.
11 June 1924 He was buried in the family vault in the New Jewish
Cemetery in Prague-Strašnice. The tombstone was created by architect
Leopold Ehrmann.
Kaa’s family tree

10 11
11

Prague at the end of the 19th century,
Charles Bridge, a scene from film footage
from the period
Prague filmed at the end
of the 19th century
Bedřich Smetana – Moldau (1874),
Symphonic Poem no. 2 from the
cycle My Country
12
KAFKA IN PRAGUE
Existential Space
Rabínská (Maiselova) Street
with the Jewish Town Hall
and the Old-New Synagogue.
10 October 1911
The first stage of our immersion into Kafka’s world presents the effects
that Prague had on the author’s life; the way the city shaped it, the mark it
left on him and the transformative power it had over him. His Diaries and
voluminous correspondence with family members, friends, lovers and
publishers bear witness to this influence.
We are challenged to capture the main conflicts in Kafka’s life and to be
only guided by the author’s perspective.
13
PRE-REDEVELOPMENT PHOTOGRAPHS
OF PRAGUE

Northern façade of the

Prague’s Jewish Quarter New Synagogue
(Josefovská Street),
Josefov stretched from the edge of the Old ca 1895
Town Square to Charles Bridge, connecting The backyard of a house
both Vltava banks. For centuries, it had been in Cikánská Street in
home to Jewish mystics, philosophers, Prague-Josefov,
24 May 1906
astronomers, astrologers and Kabbalah
scholars. In the course of time, it became a Rabínská Street with the
Great Court Synagogue
squalid quarter of decaying houses, brothels on the right, ca 1900
and junk shops. When Kafka was born, very
Jewish butcher shops in
little remained of this ancient tradition. In Masařská Street, behind
1895, works began on a drastic remodelling the Great Court Syna-
of the district, part of a project which lasted gogue in Prague-Josefov, The house where Franz Kafka was born
13 May 1906 (Prelacy of St. Nicolas’ Church in
over ten years and which is seen by many as Mikulášská Street, now named
the most thorough urban planning alteration Rabínská Street Franz Kafka Square), 1897
(Jewish Town Hall) in
in the history of Prague. The former ghetto Prague-Josefov, ca 1900
lived on in Kafka’s nostalgia, as well as in
V Kolnách Lane in
the narratives of Leo Perutz, Paul Leppin Prague-Josefov,
and Johannes Urzidil, and most notably in 4 May 1905
the phantasmagoric atmosphere of Gustav Maiselova Street, with
Meyrink’s The Golem (1915). part of the Maisel
Synagogue (on the left),
1898
Šmilesova Street in
Prague-Josefov, 1900
The Old-New Synagogue
and the Jewish Town Hall,
ca 1900

The Golden Face House House on the corner

where Hermann Kafka of Hampejzská and
lived (corner of Úzká Břehová streets in
and Jáchymova Prague-Josefov,
streets), ca 1895 18 March 1906

14 15
 Maiselova
Street, 1895

Pinkas
Synagogue,
ca 1900

Josefovská Street
(New Synagogue), ca 1895

Rabínská Street
Červená Street near the
and part of intersection with
the Old-New Cikánská Street
Synagogue in in Prague-Josefov,
Prague-Josefov, 20 May 1905
14 August 1903

16 17
 Interior of the View of Rabínská Street in
Old-New Synagogue the direction of Josefovská
in Prague-Josefov – Street, 14 April 1905
northern nave,
28 July 1908

“e cage went in search

of a bird.”
ird Octavo Notebook G

QUOTE

Kafka‘s blue octavo note-

books contain a mixture
of fiction segments, diary
entries, correspondence and
other texts. An octavo
(A5 format) is one eighth
of an A2 sheet, created by
folding it three times.

Franz Kafka at the age of 5

“I was so unsure of
everything that, in fact,
I possessed only what I
actually had in my hands
or in my mouth.”
Letter to His Father

Cikánská Street in Prague-Josefov, 4 April 1906

QUOTE
18 19
19
DISPLAY 6 1/ Hermann Kafka in
CASE No. 1 5 4 3 2 1 a photograph taken
during the first years
of his marriage.
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
2/ A receipt issued by
Franz Kafka’s father’s firm
to a Czech client, 1910
Facsimile
3/ Franz Kafka, Letter
to His Father, 1919
“You, on the other hand, a
true Kafka in strength, health,
appetite, loudness of voice,
eloquence, self-satisfaction,
worldly dominance, endur-
ance, presence of mind,
knowledge of human nature,
a certain way of doing things
on a grand scale, of course
Hermann Kaa also with all the defects and
weaknesses that go with all
While Prague was for Kafka “a dear little mother these advantages and into
with claws” who never let him go, his father be- which your temperament and
sometimes your hot temper
came the huge, oppressive figure which the writer
drive you.”
used as a recurrent motif in his inner life. Kafka’s fa-
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches
mous Letter to His Father, written in 1919, though Literaturarchiv Marbach
never read by the person it was addressed to, is 4/ The first page of
a biographical and literary document of foremost Kafka’s Letter to His
Father, 1919
importance. Childhood and adolescence, family
“Dearest Father, you asked me
and friendships, profession and vocation, literature
recently why I maintain that I
and marriage, the rejection of a false Judaism and am afraid of you.”
the search for its genuine roots. All of Kafka’s inner Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches
conflicts unfold in this perfect, over-the-top diatribe Literaturarchiv Marbach
against his father. It is generally interpreted as a 5/ Hermann Kafka’s shop
classic example of the Oedipus complex as formu- Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
lated by Freud, as though it were a definitive key to
solving “the Kafka case.” Yet this epistolary narra- 6/ Commercial logo of
Kafka’s father’s shop:
tive goes further, turning Kafka’s dispute with his
a jackdaw (“kavka” in Czech)
father into an endless farewell, a rejection. sitting on an oak branch
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
20
DISPLAY CASE No. 2
4 3 2 1
2/ Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk
(1850–1937)
Tomáš G. Masaryk, a represent-
ative to the Viennese parliament
and the future president of
1 / Leopold Hilsner Czechoslovakia, declared in
Courtesy of the Museum 1918, played a decisive role in
of Czech Literature, the review of the Hilsner case.
Prague Courtesy of the National Library of
the Czech Republic, Prague
e Hilsner Case 3/ Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk
On 1 April 1899, the dead body Anežka Die Nothwendigkeit der Revi-
sion des Polnaer Processes
Hrůzová, a young Christian girl, was found (The Need for a Revision of the
near Polná, on the border between Bohe- Polná Trial)
mia and Moravia. The incident was con- Verlag Die Zeit, Vienna 1899
sidered a ritual murder allegedly commit- Facsimile, courtesy of the National
Library of the Czech Republic, Prague
ed by Lepold Hilsner, a Jewish cobbler,
despite a complete lack of evidence. The 4/ Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk
Die Bedeutung des Polnaer
Hilsner case, subsequently considered to
Verbrechens für den
be the Dreyfus affair of Central Europe, Ritualaberglauben (The
was part of the wave of anti-Semitism Significance of the Polná
Crime for Ritual Superstition)
which swept through the Kingdom of
Verlag H. S. Hermann, Berlin 1900
Bohemia in the late 19th and early 20th
Facsimile, courtesy of the National
centuries. Attacks against Jews did not Library of the Czech Republic, Prague
directly affect the Kafka family, though it
is generally accepted that they did influ-
ence the writer’s childhood and youth,
as they were openly reported in the
Prague press. The persecution, shared
by German and Czech groups, originally
had religious foundations, but gradually
it acquired the racist overtones of theo-
ries promoted, among others, by Georg
Ritter von Schönerer, founder of the Ger-
man National Party, who proposed the
unification of all the ethnic groups of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire under German
rule and maintained that Jews should be
excluded.
21
 5 9
1 2
3 4 6 10
HANGING PANEL
QUOTE ON THE WALL “Nobody wants to introduce as
many reforms as children do.”
“Sometimes I imagine the map of the world spread out flat
Fragments from Notebooks
and you stretched out diagonally across it. And what I feel and Loose Pages
then is that only those territories come into question for my
life that either are not covered by you or are not within your One of the childhood memories that
reach. And, in keeping with the conception that I have of
Franz Kafka describes in detail relates
your magnitude, these are not many and not very comforting to his first walk to school. At that time,
territories, and above all marriage is not among them.” the family lived in the Minute House, in
a medieval building near the Old Town
Letter to His Father Hall. Every morning, he would be accom-
panied by a Czech cook, “short and thin,
sharp-nosed and hollow-cheeked.” First
they would cross the Old Town Square
and enter Týnská Lane, pass through
the vaulted arcades and arrive at Masná
Street and the German school, which the
little Kafka attended. It was a fairly short
walk, yet it seemed never-ending to the
little Franz.
Kafka describes in detail the horror of this
path to school: the dread of the classes,
the cook threatening to tell the teacher
how bad he was when he would cling to
the shop doorways and to the columns
on street corners, unwilling to go on.
The word Ravachol, a French anarchist’s
name, became an enigmatic incantation.
22
7 8 14
11 12 13
1/ Detailed view of a map of
Prague indicating the route
Kafka took to school every
morning, accompanied by
the family cook
From the Minute House, where
he lived, across the Old Town
Square with the Town Hall and
Týn Cathedral, and through the
passageway of Týnská Lane into
Masná Street, where the Ger-
man elementary school for boys
was located. Kafka attended the
school from 1889 to 1893.
2/ The façade of the Minute
House
3/ The Minute House, the
Kafka family’s residence
1889–1892
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
4/ Open electric trolley
carriage passing in front of
the astronomical clock, the
Minute House on the left
23
 8 “When I think about it, I must say that my education has done me
great harm in some respects. is reproach applies to a multitude of
people – that is to say, my parents, several relatives, individual visitors
to our house, various writers, a certain particular cook who took me
to school for a year, a crowd of teachers (whom I must press tightly
together in my memory, otherwise one would drop out here and there
– but since I have pressed them together so, the whole mass crumbles
away bit by bit anyhow), a school inspector, slowly walking passers-by;
in short, this reproach twists through society like a dagger.”
Diaries

QUOTE ON THE PANEL

QUOTE ON THE PANEL
“Does one suspect, perhaps, that
I was educated in some out-of-the-
way place? No, I was educated in the
middle of the city, in the middle of
the city. Not, for example, in a ruin
in the mountains or beside a lake. My
reproach had until now covered my
parents and their retinue and made
them grey; but now they easily push it
aside and smile, because I have drawn
my hands away from them to my fore-
head and am thinking: I should have
been that little dweller in the ruins,
hearkening to the cries of the crows,
soared over by their shadows, cooling
under the moon, burnt by the sun
which would have shone for me from
all sides on my bed of ivy, even though
I might have been a little weak at first
under the pressure of my good quali-
ties, which would have had to grow in
me with the might of weeds.”
Diaries
5/ François Claudius
Koenigstein (Ravachol,
1859–1892)
A French anarchist, known
publicly by his maternal
surname – Ravachol. After his
attacks on the French Govern-
ment, his name was used in
Prague slang to describe any
violent, quarrelsome or rowdy
individual.
6/Close-up view of the
astronomical clock
7/ The second house to
the right is the Unicorn
Pharmacy where Berta
Fanta established her
literary salon
8/ The Old Town Square
with the astronomical
clock on the left and Týn
Cathedral at the back
(photograph from the
period)
An agitated age.
The figure of Ravachol was just one
element in the social and political tur-
bulence which affected Europe and
America at the turn of the century. Al-
bert Camus described this situation in
The Rebel: “The acts of Ravachol, Vail-
lant and de Henry were a prelude to the
assassination of Carnot; in 1892, there
were over a thousand attacks using dy-
namite in Europe and almost five hun-
dred in America. In 1898, the Empress
Elisabeth of Austria was assassinated.
9/ Kafka at the age of 13, ca 1896
10/ Kinský Palace on the Old
Town Square carried a double
meaning for Kafka
The secondary school, which
Kafka attended between
1893–1901, was located on the
top floor of the rear section. From
1912, his father’s haberdashery
shop was situated on the ground
floor on the right.
11/ Close-up view of the pas-
sage in Týnská Lane, through
which Kafka walked every
morning on the way to school
with the family cook
12/ Close-up view of a door
along the way to school
13/ German elementary
school for boys, which
Kafka attended between
1889–1893

24 25
1901 saw the assassination of McKinley,
the US president.
In 1903, Russia, where attempts on the
lives of secondary representatives of the
regime have never stopped, saw the mili-
tant organisation of the Revolutionary So-
cialist Party, bringing together the most
extraordinary figures of Russian terrorism.
The assassination of Plehve by Sasonov
and of Grand Duke Sergei by Kaliaiev in
1905 are the culmination of these thirty
years of bloody crusade.
26
14/ 15-year-old Franz
Kafka in a class photo- LIFE IN A CIRCLE
graph taken in 1898,
with the school director
and head teacher Emil
Gschwinden.
Kafka is the second from the
left in the upper row. Also
pictured are Paul Kisch to
Kafka’s left, with whom he
wanted to study German phi-
lology in Munich; in the lower
row, the second from the left
is Oskar Pollak, a friend until
their university years; in the
third row from top, the first
on the left is Rudolf Illový,
with whom Kafka used to
discuss socialist issues; in the
same row, the third from left
is Hugo Bergmann, a Zionist; “is small circle (…) contains my whole life.”
and at the end on the right is Franz Kaa, quoted in Friedrich ieberger,
Edwald Felix Příbram, an inti-
Memories of Kaa
mate friend and an atheist.
Courtesy of the Museum of
Czech Literature, Prague Franz Kafka was born inside a vortex named Prague. A city in which three
ethnic groups – Czechs, Germans and Jews – had lived together for cen-
turies, yet still separated by differences in language, customs and culture.
Let us imagine a childhood where “I” is a mystery and the community
is entelechy. An environment besieged by the bustle of his sisters’ lives,
governesses and caustic cooks, but also parents’ memories of dead bro-
thers. A world seen through a veil of fear and guilt; where the father figure
expands throughout, leaving the son very little living space. All these fac-
tors acted on Franz Kafka’s hypersensitive temperament.
The epigraph refers to a comment that Kafka made to Thieberger, his
Hebrew teacher, as they looked out over the Old Town Square from a
window in Oppelt House. Kafka pointed out his secondary school in Kin-
ský Palace, what could be made out of the University (Karolinum) where
he had studied jurisprudence, and also indicated, a little further away, the
location of his office. The writer twice drew up a small globe, condensing
his entire existential space into that gesture.
The young artist moved around a labyrinth which fascinated yet suffoca-
ted him. Prague became both cage and refuge. A space which protected
him from the “too heroic” dimensions of the natural world, but which the
writer changed in his dreams.
27
TABLE DISPLAY 5 4
CASE No. 3 6
3 2
7
1
Kaa’s Body
In the environment of the Prague Jewish
bourgeoisie, Kafka was exposed to the con-
tradictions of urban modernity. The conflict
began with visits to his father’s shop, which
the writer described as his first “school.”
The shop provided him with an excellent
overview of how the world of fashion
worked, in terms both of aesthetics, distri-
bution and marketing. His initial fascination
with bourgeois life was met with the gradu-
1
1/ Smartly dressed Kafka
during his university
years (1901–1905)
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
2/ Kafka’s graduation
certificate from his law
studies at the German
University in Prague
(26 October 1905)
Facsimile, courtesy of the
Museum of Czech Literature,
Prague
3/ Franz Kafka, a
fragment of the Letter
to His Father, 1919
“Your opinion was correct,
every other was mad, wild,
meshugge, not normal.”
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches
Literaturarchiv Marbach
al rejection which Kafka had for his own
body.
His Diaries bear witness to his hatred for
his “miserable appearance,” which he
attributed to the “wretched clothes” that
started him on the road to self-contempt:
“I let the awful clothes even affect my
posture, walked around with my back
bowed, my shoulders drooping, my
hands and arms at awkward angles, was
afraid of mirrors (...).”
4/ Der Kunstwart
An Art-Nouveau oriented maga-
zine regularly read by Kafka until
1905. For Kafka it was an alter-
native to the taste and fashion of
his partents’ generation.
Facsimile, courtesy of the National
Library of the Czech Republic, Prague
5/ Kafka during his universi-
ty years, around 1905
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
6/ Registry of the German
Karl-Ferdinand University in
Prague, which lists the philos-
ophy courses that Kafka took in
the spring semester of 1902.
Facsimile, courtesy of Charles
University Archives, Prague
7/ Oskar Bie’s article in
Die neue Rundschau
Bie was one of the first to
elaborate on one of the typical
features of modern Western
culture: the concept of traffic.
His articles influenced Kafka’s
early stories, such as
Description of a Struggle.
Facsimile, courtesy of the National
Library of the Czech Republic, Prague

28 29
TABLE DISPLAY 8
5
CASE No. 4 7
9
6 4
3
e Inner Circle 1 2

Max Brod (1884–1968) was a leading fig- 8/ Max Brod

ure in Czech German-speaking intellectual Heidentum,
circles from the beginning of the 20th centu- Christentum,
Judentum
ry until his exile to Israel in 1939. Despite his
(Paganism,
sizeable output, literary history seems to have Christianity,
reserved him a fate of being remembered Judaism)
chiefly as Kafka’s friend, the executor of his 5/ Max Brod (1884–1968) Munich 1921
estate and his first biographer. The relation- A writer and Kafka’s friend COPA collection,
Prague
ship between the two began in 1912, and Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
deepened over the years. Together they trav- 7/ Oskar Baum (1886–1941)
elled to Italy, Weimar, Paris and Switzerland. Prague writer Oskar Baum wrote short
Towards the end of his life, Kafka – in a truly stories and novellas on the subject of
Kafkaesque style – asked his friend to burn blindness and the relationship of Jews to
German culture. Baum went blind; from
all of his manuscripts, however Brod, albeit birth, he steadily lost sight in one eye, while
with a feeling of guilt, did not accede to the he lost the other in a street fight when he
request. As Borges wrote: “We owe our full was a child. He was introduced to Kafka
by Brod and their first meeting stuck in his
knowledge of the most singular works of our mind: “I was deeply impressed by Kafka’s
century to this case of happy disobedience.” first movement upon entering my room. He
knew he was looking at a blind man. Yet
1/ Franz Kafka 6/ Felix Weltsch he made a silent bow when Brod intro-
Eine kaiserliche Botschaft (An Imperial Message) (1884–1964) duced us. It might be seen as a pointless
in the Selbstwehr magazine, 24 September 1919 formality towards me, as I could not see it.
Philosopher and journalist His smoothed hair brushed my forehead,
Courtesy of the National Library of the Czech Republic, Felix Weltsch (1884–1964)
Prague probably because of the rather vehement
was the editor-in-chief bow I made to him at the same time. I
2/ The title page of the Zionist magazine of the Zionist weekly experienced an emotion which I could not
Selbstwehr (Self-defence) Selbstwehr (Self-defence). explain. He was the first man to consider
Courtesy of the National Library of the Czech Republic,
Weltsch was the last to that my defect was a constraint for me
Prague become a member of the alone.”
“Prague Circle,” a circle of
3/ Max Brod close friends with whom Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
Das gelobte Land (The Promised Land) Kafka travelled and met on
Leipzig 1917 regular basis, which lent his 9/ Article Die Sorge des
Facsimile life a certain regularity for Hausvaters (Worries of the
several years. In his biogra- Father of the Family)
4/ Max Brod phy of Kafka, Brod confirms in the Selbstwehr magazine,
Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott the singular nature of the 19 December 1919
(Tycho Brahe’s Path to God) quartet, which was never Facsimile, courtesy of the National
Leipzig 1916 disturbed by a “false tone.” Library of the Czech Republic,
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Prague
COPA collection, Prague
Berlin
30 31
 6/ Leo Perutz (1884–1957)
TABLE DISPLAY Prague Jewish writer. He was 7 6 5
TABLE DISPLAY CASE No. 6
12 11 10 8
CASE No. 5 5 a leading representative of a
8 7 6 2 4 1/ Berta Fantová (1865–1918)
9 current of fantastic literature. 1
4
Café Arco 1 2 3
7/ Franz Werfel
3 Courtesy of the Museum of Czech
Literature, Prague
Café Arco at house no. 16 in Hybernská Der Weltfreund (The e Philosophy Circle at the 2/ Immanuel Kant
Friend of the World), 1912
Street was the meeting place for young Ger- Facsimile
Fanta House (1724–1804)
man-speaking Prague writers, also known as Kritik der reinen Vernunft
8/ Willy Haas (1891–1973) Berta Fanta was the Madame de Staël of (Critique of Pure Reason), 1913
“the Arconauts.” Perhaps it was Kafka who Prague writer and outstanding Prague. Her house, which stood out for the COPA collection, Prague
most fittingly described their situation when organizer of cultural events. unicorn relief on the façade, was the venue 3/ Philipp Frank,
in his letter to Max Brod he wrote: “They (the He published Kafka’s Letters
to Milena. for intellectual soirées where the reading mat- physicist (1884–1966)
Jewish writers) live beset by three impossi-
ter was Hegel, Fichte and Kant, and where Courtesy of the National Archive,
bilities: the impossibility of not writing, the 9/ Johannes Urzidil Prague
(1896–1970) lectures were given on the new important
impossibility of writing in German and the
Author of works such as themes of the time, such as psychoanalysis, 4/ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
impossibility of writing differently. And we Goethe in Böhmen (Goethe Hegel (1770–1831)
the theory of relativity, transfinite numbers
could add a fourth impossibility: the impos- in Bohemia) and Prager Trip- Phänomenologie des Geistes
tychon (The Prague Triptych).
and quantum theory. In addition to Kafka, Brod (Phenomenology of Spirit)
sibility of writing at all.”
He also wrote about several and Weltsch, other frequent visitors were the Leipzig 1907
1/ Egon Erwin Kisch (1885–1948) Czech and German writers. mathematician Gerhard Kowalewski, the phi- COPA collection, Prague
He knew Brod as well as losopher Christian von Ehrenfels, the physicist
Prague journalist, from 1925 engaged in the 5/ Detailed view of the relief
Kafka, to whom he dedicated
communist movement. He took part in the Philipp Frank, and Albert Einstein, who was of a unicorn on the façade of
a book of essays.
Spanish civil war. the Fanta House
10/ Paul Kornfeld
then teaching in Prague.
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin COPA collection, Prague
(1889–1942)
2/ Franz Werfel (1890–1945) Prague dramaturge, author of
Intellectual leader of the group of writers who expressionist theatre master-
used to meet at Café Arco. Together with the pieces, such as Die Verführung
Leipzig-based publisher Kurt Wolff he looked after (The Seduced) and Himmel
poets of the expressionist generation. und Hölle (Heaven and Hell). He
Courtesy of the Museum of Czech Literature, Prague died in the concentration camp
in the Polish town of Łódź.
3/ Rudolf Fuchs (1890–1942)
Courtesy of the National Library
Prague poet, the author of Karawane of the Czech Republic 6/ Albert Einstein
(The Caravan), published by Kurt Wolff in 1919. (1879–1955) during the time
He was Franz Kafka’s friend. 11/ Hugo Salus he was a professor in Prague
(1866–1929)
Courtesy of the Museum of Czech Literature, Prague Facsimile, courtesy of the National Li-
Lyrical poet and member of brary of the Czech Republic, Prague
4/ Otto Pick (1887–1940) the cultural circle Concordia,
which extolled traditional 7/ Christian von Ehrenfels,
Editor of the Prager Presse newspaper.
German culture. philosopher (1859–1932)
He translated many Czech authors, most
notably Karel Čapek, into German. Courtesy of the Museum of Czech
Courtesy of the Museum of Czech
Literature, Prague
Courtesy of the Museum of Czech Literature, Prague Literature, Prague
8/ Rudolf Steiner
5/ Interior of Café Arco, meeting place of 12/ Johannes Urzidil
(1861–1925)
the “new generation” of Prague German (1896–1970)
Courtesy of Österreichische National-
writers Goethe in Böhmen bibliothek, Bildarchiv, Vienna
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin (Goethe in Bohemia), 1932 The White Unicorn House
COPA collection, Prague (the Fanta House), Old Town Square
32 33
TABLE DISPLAY 6 7
CASE No. 7 8 2
4 1
First Published Works
“e life of society moves in a circle.”
Diaries; a quote from Dostoyevsky‘s
letter to a woman painter
QUOTE ON THE WALL
The story of Kafka’s first publications is rel-
atively complex. The young writer was par-
ticularly reticent about showing his work.
When Max Brod began to publicise his early
writings, Kafka’s reaction was a furious deni-
al of the entire literary machine, which Brod
knew inside out. The mundane aspects of a
writer’s existence seemed to him to be in-
compatible with his idea of what the real life
of an independent man of letters should be,
uncompromised by anything extraneous to
his work.
1/ Franz Kafka, Betrachtung
(Contemplation)
Kafka’s first book, published in November 1912
by the Ernst Rowohlt Publishing House in Leipzig.
Contact with Rowohlt was initiated by Max Brod.
The idea to publish Betrachtung arose from an
unannounced visit from Brod and Kafka to the
German publisher.
Courtesy of Kafka-Forschungsstelle der Universität
Wuppertal
34
5
3
2/ Hyperion
Munich, January–February
1908
This issue had a print run of 950.
It featured Kafka’s first publication,
Betrachtung (Contemplation).
Kafka’s contributions to Hyperion
were made possible thanks Max
Brod’s friendship with Franz Blei,
the magazine’s editor-in-chief.
Blei was a central figure of the
period’s literary life until the
beginning of the expressionist
movement. He discovered Robert
Musil and was the first to defend
the Swiss writer Robert Walser.
COPA collection, Prague
3/ Kurt Wolff (1887–1963)
Ernst Rowohlt’s first partner; Wolff became 8/ Die Aeroplane in Brescia
(The Aeroplanes in Brescia)
Kafka’s most important publisher. There is a
consensus that the author-publisher rela- in the Bohemia newspaper
of 29 September 1909
tionship was very good. Wolff was impartial
when calculating the commercial prospects Kafka’s article was written on
the occasion of the “aviation
of Kafka’s books and the author frequently left
decision-making regarding such matters in the week” in the Italian town of
Brescia in the summer of 1909.
hands of the publisher.
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin Facsimile, courtesy of the National
Museum of the Czech Republic,
4/ Ein Traum (A Dream) Prague
Published in Das jüdische Prag, an anthology
published by Die Selbstwehr magazine in
Prague; edited by Siegmund Kaznelson (alias
Albrecht Hellmann), 1917 (published in 1916)
The cover featured a reproduction of a drawing
of the Old-New Synagogue by Hermann
Struck.
Facsimile, courtesy of the National Library of the
Czech Republic, Prague
5/ Franz Blei and his family
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
6/ Kafka published two stories in the
March–April 1909 issue of Hyperion:
Gespräch mit dem Beter (Conversation with
the Supplicant) and Gespräch mit dem
Betrunkenen (Conversation with the Drunk).
COPA collection Prague
7/ Hans von Weber,
Publisher of Hyperion
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
35
 CIVIL SERVANT AND ARTIST

“I am nothing
but literature
and can be
and want to be
nothing else.”
Diaries

Prague at the end of the 19th

century
The corner of Wenceslas
Square and Na Příkopě Street
“e office? at one day I shall be in a position to leave it is
quite out of the question. But that I shall one day be forced
to leave it, on account of being unfit to carry on, that is by no
means out of the question. In this respect, my feeling of inner
insecurity and anxiety is terrible, and here again the only and
actual reason for it is my writing. (…)
Writing and office cannot be reconciled, since writing has its
centre of gravity in depth, whereas the office is on the surface
of life.
So it goes up and down, and one is bound to be torn asunder in
the process.”
Footage from the period:
Letters to Felice
Prague at the time of Franz
Kafka’s adulthood
First quarter of the 20th century QUOTE ON THE WALL

36 37

TABLE DISPLAY CASE No. 8
Animation based on
Franz Kafka’s drawings
2 Prague
3
7
11 10
1 for a three-month holiday due
6 5
8 4
9
12
There are common existential conflicts in
the lives of all men which feed the back-
ground of unease that marks our culture. “My job is unbearable for me.”
The traditional discrepancy between voca-
From the dra of a letter to the father
tion and profession is one of them. For Franz of his fiancée Felice Bauer
Kafka, this conflict was catastrophic. When Diaries
he chose literature as the only possible ter-
rain for his liberation, he was already a law- A Den of Bureaucrats
yer in the service of Austro-Hungarian bu-
When Kafka joined the Workers’ Accident
reaucracy. The problem lay in the anguish Insurance Institute, he was appointed to the
that this double life caused him, the energy most important division (insurance methods),
that it represented for his body, the tremen- at the orders of the superior inspector, Eugen
dous tension that it involved. Pfohl. First, he was entrusted with statistical
tasks, “important appeals (recourses)” and “hi-
erarchical appeals.” However, it was not long
before his outstanding intelligence led to his
being assigned a function of the highest re-
sponsibility: accident prevention. This brought
him into direct contact with the most negative
aspects of accelerated industrialization: in-
creased bureaucracy, the dehumanization of
work and a spectacular rise in the number of
accidents. Kafka was on good terms with his
superiors, for whom he wrote speeches and an
enormous number of reports. Ultimately, how-
ever, he became disillusioned and tired to the
point of describing his working environment as
a “den of bureaucrats.”
38
1/ Kafka’s letter
to Jindřich Valenta, the deputy
head of the department, justi-
fying his absence from the of-
fice due to ill health. Undated,
possibly 19 January 1919.
Facsimile, courtesy of the
Museum of Czech Literature,
2/ Kafka’s petition
to ill health, dated 12 January
1919, and addressed to the
institution’s Board of Directors.
Facsimile, courtesy of the
Museum of Czech Literature,
Prague
3/ Kafka’s request for a
salary adjustment dated
11 December 1912
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
4/ Ottla Kafková’s letter
to the head of the relevant
institute’s department dated
14 October 1918, in which she
justifies her brother’s absence
from the office due to ill health.
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
5/ An attachment to a
request for sick leave:
a medical certificate of Kafka’s
state of health, dated 11 June
1912.
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
6/ Kafka’s request
dated 17 June 1912, for
a week off due to ill health,
and the affirmative response
from the institution’s Board
of Directors, written on the
back of the request and dated
21 June 1912.
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
39

7/ Kafka’s request for a salary increase,
dated 31 August 1910, and addressed to the
Board of Directors of the Workers’ Accident
Insurance Institution.
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum of Czech
Literature, Prague
8/ Czech version of the application by the
auxiliary civil servant Franz Kafka,
dated 17 August 1909, for a post of articled
clerk, addressed to the Board of Directors of
the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute.
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum of Czech
Literature, Prague
40
9/ German version of the
application by the auxiliary
civil servant Franz Kafka,
dated 17 August 1909,
for a post of articled clerk,
addressed to the Board of
Directors of the Workers’
Accident Insurance Institute.
Facsimile, courtesy of the
Museum of Czech Literature,
Prague
10/ Certificate of the
Commission of the Bar
Association of the King-
dom of Bohemia stating
that Franz Kafka joined
the law firm of Richard
Löwy on 1 April 1906
Facsimile, courtesy of the
Museum of Czech Literature,
Prague
11/ Exam report for
the Course of Labour
Insurance in the Mercan-
tile Academy of Prague,
dated 11 June 1908
Facsimile, courtesy of the
Museum of Czech Literature,
Prague
12/ Abstract of the report
“Preventive Measures
against Accidents
Caused by Mechani-
cal Wood Planers of
Wood-Working Ma-
chines” written by Kafka
in the year 1909 for the
Insurance Institute.
Facsimile, courtesy of Klaus
Wagenbach, Berlin
DESK DISPLAY CASE – THREE DRAWERS
1 2 3
1/ Kafka’s Drawings
During his year at the Assicurazioni Gen-
erali (1907) Franz Kafka felt more like a
sketch artist than a writer. In a letter to Fe-
lice Bauer he wrote “I was, in another time,
a great sketch artist, but I learned to draw
in a scholastic method, under the direction
of a mediocre woman painter, causing
the loss of all of my talent.” Of Kafka’s
drawings, some fifty small sketches and
illustrations have been preserved, showing
a clearly expressionist style. The animation
screened at the Franz Kafka Museum is
based on the reproduced drawings. It is a
tribute to the daily descent of Kafka’s soul
into the abyss of the blank page.
Facsimile, courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
2/ Franz Kafka
Diary entry dated 19 February 1911
“When I wanted to get out of bed this morning
I simply collapsed. This has a very simple
cause, I am completely overworked. Not by
the office, but my other work. The office has
an innocent share in this only to the extent
that, if I did not have to go there, I could live
calmly for my own work and should not have
to waste these six hours a day which have
tormented me to a degree that you cannot im-
agine, especially on Fridays and Saturdays, be-
cause I had lots of my own things to do. After
all, I know, that is just talk, the fault is mine and
the office has a right to make the most definite
and justified demands on me. But for me in
particular it is a horrible double life from which
there is probably no escape but insanity.”
Facsimile, courtesy of The Bodleian Library,
University of Oxford 41
3/ Franz Kafka
Diary entry from 3 January 1912
“When it became clear in my organism
that writing was the most productive
direction for my being to take, everything
rushed in that direction and left empty
all those abilities which were directed
toward the joys of sex, eating, drinking,
philosophical reflection and, above all,
music. I atrophied in all these directions.
This was necessary because the totality
of my strengths was so slight that only
collectively could they even halfway serve
the purpose of my writing. Naturally, I did
not find this purpose independently and
consciously, it found itself, and is now
interfered with only by the office, but that
interferes with it completely.”
A view of an engine room in a textile factory
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
Franz Kafka in 1910
Worsted-spinning mill, property of
Anton Richer’s children in
Raspenau-Mildenau, in 1902
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
WALL WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
Engine room of the Hermann
& Co. asbestos factory in
Prague, of which Kafka, as
a silent partner, was joint
owner with his brother-in-
law, Karl Hermann.
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
Ginzkey’s carpet factory in
1898
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin

Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum of Czech The largest factory in

L. Klinger’s textile factory in Neustadt
Literature, Prague Liberec: Johann Liebieg’s
an der Tafelfichte (Nové Město pod
wool textile factory
Smrkem), c. 1890
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
QUOTE ON THE WALL Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin

“For I’ve got so much to do! In my four districts – apart from

all my other jobs – people fall off the scaffolding as if they were
drunk, or fall into the machines, all the beams topple, all em-
bankments give way, all ladders slide, whatever people carry up
falls down, whatever they hand down they stumble over. And I
have a headache from all these girls in porcelain factories who
incessantly throw themselves down the stairs with mounds of
dishware.”
Letters (1902–1904)
(Letter to Max Brod)

42 43

Dr. Otto Příbram
President of the Workers’ Accidents Insur-
ance Institute. According to Klaus Hermsdorf,
editor of Kafka’s “bureaucratic” works, the
writer was the protégé of Otto Příbram, who
also belonged to the Jewish German-speak-
ing minority. Despite the fall of the Austro-Hun-
garian Empire, at the end of the First World
War, Kafka was able to retain his position as
a civil servant thanks, among other factors, to
his knowledge of the Czech language.
View of the interior of
Liebieg’s textile factory.
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
The Assicurazioni Gener-
ali building, the private in-
surance company where
Kafka worked from early
October 1907 to 15 July
1908. About this period
Kafka wrote: “I have a
job with a tiny salary of
eighty crowns and an
infinite eight to nine hours
of work.”
Courtesy of the Museum of
Czech Literature, Prague
Building of the Workers’ Accident
Insurance Institute of the Kingdom of
Bohemia, where Kafka worked from 1908
until his early retirement in 1922. He was
first hired as an auxiliary civil servant in
the insurance department, before being
appointed, in 1910, articled clerk and
civil servant of the institution and then,
in 1912, Head of the Operations Depart-
ment; in 1913 he was promoted to the po-
sition of secretary, and finally, in 1922, he
became the institution’s Chief Secretary.
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
Alfred Löwy (1852–1923)
Kafka’s uncle from Spain.
Löwy was the head of a rail-
road company that served
Spain on the Madrid-Cáceres
line. The young Kafka asked
his uncle if he could guide
him to a place where at last
he could start afresh and do
something. Although he did
not find his nephew such a
place abroad, his acquaint-
ances at the very least were
instrumental in the procure-
ment of a job for him in the As-
sicurazioni Generali in Prague.
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin

QUOTE ON THE WALL

“e strange, mysterious, perhaps dangerous, perhaps saving

comfort that there is in writing: it is a leap out of murderers’ row;
it is a seeing of what is really taking place. is occurs by a higher
type of observation, a higher, not a keener type, and the higher it
is and the less within reach of the “row,” the more independent
it becomes, the more obedient to its own laws of notion, the more
incalculable, the more joyful, the more ascendant its course.”
Diaries

44 45
45
Franz Kafka, a committed expert in accident insurance,
was in charge of occupational safety. On 30th of June
THE THEATRE OF PURITY
1908, he joined the Workers’ Accident Insurance Insti-
tute for the Kingdom of Bohemia, a new insurance com-
pany, which in addition to providing insurance, also moni-
tored statistical data, analysed the causes of injuries and
occupational diseases, encouraged the implementation
of efficient prevention and provided information on tech- The Gablonzer Zeitung
nological innovations in occupational safety. In 1910, it daily wrote about
Kafka’s work on
began to build a large inspection department with 70 2nd October 1910.
officers who were responsible for accident prevention The article focused on
and occupational safety. accident prevention
while operating wood-
Kafka particularly understood the importance of accident working machinery.
prevention, stressing the cooperation between business- Franz Kafka also provid- “I found equally little means of escape
ed a complex account
men, the insured workers, trade inspectors and accident from you in Judaism.”
of occupational safety
insurance companies as being the best means of preven- in articles published Letter to His Father
tion in occupational safety. At the Second International in the north-Bohemian
Tetschen-Bodenbacher
Congress of the Rescue Sciences and Accident Pre- Zeitung newspaper
vention held in Vienna in September 1913, Franz Kafka (18 September 1911
and his superior, Eugen Pfohl, delivered a paper entitled and 4 November 1911) In a letter to Milena Jesenská the writer defined himself as “the most typ-
under a succinct title,
“Organization of Accident Prevention in Austria.” Franz “Accident Prevention ical example of a Western Jew.” Aware of exaggerating, he added “this
Kafka proposed the introduction of an independent orga- Measures.” means (...) that not one calm second is granted me, nothing is granted me,
nization for occupational safety that would coordinate all everything has to be earned ... the past too – something after all which
activities in this area. His activities in occupational safety perhaps every human being has inherited, this too must be earned, it is
are also evident in the number of suggestions for tech- perhaps the hardest work.”
nological adjustments of machines and devices, which
His friendship with Jizchak Löwy, the head of a Yiddish theatre troupe
were presented and promoted through regulations issu-
from Lviv, led to the emergence of an identity that Kafka desperately
ed by the Vicegerency for the Kingdom of Bohemia.
craved, but which both his city and the form of Judaism he had inherited
QUOTE ON THE WALL
from his father had denied him, while Löwy’s knowledge of Yiddish dra-
ma was to have a massive influence on his work. There was also an effect
“People who are Jews in an especially pure form because they live
which transcends the Jewish question. The kind of purity that Kafka dis-
only in the religion, but live in it without effort, understanding or
covered in that group of marginal actors was something that high culture
distress. ey seem to make a fool of everyone, laugh immediately
usually attributes to itself, but that, in fact, it rarely achieves: the exercise
aer the murder of a noble Jew, sell themselves to an apostate,
of a more authentic freedom, the strange alliance of the passion to create
dance with their hands on their earlocks in delight when the
and a deep humility.
unmasked murdered poisons himself and calls upon God, and yet
all this only because they are as light as a feather.”
Diaries

46 46 47
47
 One of the first brick and mortar theatres playing drama in Yiddish, which
earned international renown, was founded in 1889 in the Polish city of
Lviv. Members of the ensemble gave guest performances in Berlin, Vi-
enna and other European metropoles, even having ties to a prominent
Jewish theatre in Buenos Aires. Most of them spoke Yiddish, up until the
Holocaust, a common language of European Jewry as well as used in
literature.
Some of the members came to Prague in 1911 as the Deutsch-judisches
Theater aus Lemberg. Franz Kafka, then aged 28, was in the audience.
He was particularly impressed by singer Salcia Weinberg (1878–1940),
a member of the troupe. She had performed in Hungary, Serbia and Slo-
vakia, also met with success in Vienna, starring in the silent film Stadt
ohne Juderi (City without Jews).
Franz Kafka saw the performances by this Jewish-German troupe, which
spent a total of four months in Prague, in Café Savoy in Vězeňská Street.
He and the leader of this troupe, Yitzchak Löwy, were to become best
friends.
It was Jewish theatre that sparked Kafka‘s interest in Judaism. “When I
took him there for the first time, Franz absolutely succumbed to the at-
mosphere,” reminisced Max Brod. Kafka was deeply fascinated by the
encounter with the raw culture of East-European Jews, which had re-
mained untouched by western civilization. He began to regularly frequent
the café and recorded his impressions in his diary.

Na Příkopě Streett
at the turn of the
19th century
An original recording
of the song “A brivele
der mamen” sung by
Salcia Weinberg in A scene from the film Stadt ohne Juderi (City without Jews)
Yiddish

48 49
WALL WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BEHIND THE
TABLE DISPLAY CASE
5 1/ Abraham Goldfaden
6 1 2 (1840–1908)
8 3
4 Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
7 2/ Jakob Gordin (1853–1909)
His contact with Jizchak Löwy and his
group marked a turning point in Kafka’s relation-
ship with Jewish tradition as Yiddish theatre had
a deep influence on him. For months, he regular-
ly attended the group’s performances, and he
wrote enthusiastically about them in his diaries
and letters. The links between certain works
of Yiddish theatre and Kafka’s fiction are quite
clear. General opinion holds that the characters
in Abraham Scharkansky’s Der Meschumed
(The Apostate) are a perfect embodiment of the
ridiculous, sinister or pathetic couples featured
in his later narratives. The thematic similarity of
Metamorphosis and Der wilde Mensch (The
Wild Man) is also widely noted, the latter being
a play by Jacob Gordin about an idiot reduced
to pure animality, crawling on all fours around
the room where the family keep him locked up.
Yet if we look beyond any possible connections,
what we see is the general influence of this
experience on the formation of Franz Kafka’s
characteristic “dramatic style,” which was first
reflected in all its overwhelming force in The
Judgement, written in 1912.
50
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
3/ Joseph Lateiner
(1853–1935)
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
4/ Jizchak Löwy (1887–
1942), a Yiddish actor. He
introduced Kafka to Yiddish
literature
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
5/ Press announcement ad-
vertising the presentation of
the Yiddish play Bar Kochba
by Abraham Goldfaden, at
Café Savoy
Courtesy of Kafka-Froschungsstelle
der Universität Wuppertal
6/ Photograph of Café Savoy
(corner of Kozí and Vězeňská
streets), the venue for Yiddish
theatre productions in Prague
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
7/ Press announcement
advertising the presentation
of the Yiddish play The Wild
Man by Jacob Gordin, at
Café Savoy
Courtesy of Kafka-Froschungsstelle
der Universität Wuppertal
8/ Press announcement ad-
vertising the presentation of
the Yiddish play The Apostate
by Abraham Scharkansky, at
Café Savoy
Courtesy of Kafka-Forschungsstelle
der Universität Wuppertal
TABLE DISPLAY
4 3 2 1 CASE No. 9
Kafka understood Löwy’s influence on 1/ Abraham Goldfaden
his discovery of contemporary Yiddish Bar Kochba
literature and went straight on to write his Facsimile
well-known defence of minor literature, 2/ Abraham Scharkansky
including Czech. The text gave rise to Der Meschumed
(The Apostate)
considerable theorising, such as the con-
Erroneously attributed by Kafka
jectures of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guat- to Joseph Lateiner.
tari (Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, Facsimile
1986). In the view of the French authors, 3/ Franz Kafka
Kafka’s article imparted a revolutionary In a diary entry from 9th of No-
role to the literature referred to as “minor.” vember 1911, Kafka describes
Major (or consolidated) literature first con- his dream in which the Old
Town Square became a huge
ceives then declares. Minor literature, on stage, where an imperial cele-
the other hand, has greater difficulties: it bration and a revolution took
begins by declaring and merely seeing, place concurrently.
Facsimile
and it conceives only later. Minor literature
“has to break forms and indicate breaking 4/ Jakob Gordin
points and new directions.” The paradox Der wilde Mensch
(The Wild Man)
is that all great literature starts from the
Facsimile
act of breaking away, from probing in the
shadows, with words which cast up new
light from the “subsoil.” The problem is in
pinpointing at what point great literature
becomes self-complacent and begins to
place the material produced on a ped-
estal. All great literature starts as minor
literature which breaks forms, changes
contents, and heralds material.
QUOTE ON THE WALL
“e sympathy we have for these actors who are so good, who
earn nothing and who do not get nearly enough gratitude and
fame is really only sympathy for the sad fate of so many noble
strivings, above all of our own.” Diaries
51
TABLE DISPLAY CASE No. 10 THE CONSTANTLY POSTPONED MARRIAGES
7 6 5 4 3 2 1

4/ Franz Kafka
Letter to His Father, 1919
1/ Martin Buber “I found equally little means of
Hundert chassidische Geschichten escape from you in Judaism.
(One Hundred Hasidic Tales) Here some measure of escape
Berlin 1933 would have been thinkable in
Facsimile principle, moreover, it would
have been thinkable that we
2/ Heinrich Graetz might both have found each
Volkstümliche Geschichte der Juden other in Judaism or that we
(Popular History of the Jews) even might have begun from
Leipzig 1888 there in harmony.”
COPA collection, Prague Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches
Literaturarchiv Marbach
3/ Meyer Pinès
Histoire de la littérature judéo-allemande 5/ Franz Kafka “Sisyphus was a bachelor.”
(A History German-Jewish Literature), Letter to His Father, 1919 Diaries
1911 “Innocent, childlike people,
One of the books Kafka read in order to gain a such as, for instance, the
deeper knowledge of Yiddish literature when Yiddish actor Löwy, had to pay
preparing for a lecture at the Jewish town hall. for that. Without knowing him
Facsimile you compared him, in some Kafka’s loves did not emerge like his literature. Long-distance loves played
dreadful way that I have now out in a vast epistolary territory where Berlin, Vienna, Merano and Ma-
forgotten, to vermin and, as
was so often the case with rienbad became interchangeable destinations.
people I was fond of, you were His relationships with Felice Bauer, Julie Wohryzek, Milena Jesenská and
automatically ready with the Dora Diamant are all now literature. We can catch a glimpse into one of
proverb of the dog and its
fleas.” the innermost corners of Kafka’s soul. “That tiny stream worthy of being
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches called love, inaccessible to him who seeks it, producing no more than a
Literaturarchiv Marbach fleeting spark.”
6/ Entry in Kafka’s diary
from 5 October 1911
concerning a Yiddish theatre
performance at Café Savoy.
The work staged was Der
Meshumed (The Apostate).
Facsimile, courtesy of the Bodleian
Library, University of Oxford
7/ Kafka’s diary entry Letter to Felice dated 21 June 1913
from 25 December 1911
Letter to Käthe Nettl (Julie Wohryzek’s sister) dated 24 November 1919
Fascimile, courtesy of the Bodleian
Letter to Milena dated 9 August 1920
Library, University of Oxford
Dora Diamant, Kafka’s last girlfriend

52 53
53
Dora Diamant.
FELICE BAUER – 6 1/ Letterhead
DISPLAY CASE No. 11 5 4
1 2 3
Felice. The relationship with Felice Bau-
er (1887–1960) illustrates the impelling
forces, doubts, running back and forth
and hesitations, which were typical of Kaf-
ka’s emotional conflicts. Their relationship
lasted for five years (1912–1917), during
which Kafka twice proposed and twice
broke off the engagement. Felice lived and
worked in Berlin and the distance, though
only six hours on the train, was sufficient
protection for Kafka. A long-distance love
was exactly what the writer needed. He
set out the rules of the game in the very
first letter he wrote to her. Writing became
a go-between and skilfully asserted its
power, using the range of resources it re-
served for one of its favourite sons. Noth-
ing is missing from the ins and outs of this
epistolary love affair, whose consumma-
tion would involve “death by martyrdom.”
It is possible that Kafka truly loved Felice,
but never to the point of sacrificing the in-
terest of his true love – literature.
54
“Without forebears, without marriage, without heirs, with
of the hotel Askanischer Hof in
Berlin, where, on 12 July 1914, a fierce longing for forebears, marriage and heirs. ey all of
in the presence of Grete Bloch them stretch out their hands to me: forebears, marriage, and
and Ernst Weiss, the six-week old heirs, but too far away for me.”
engagement was broken off. The
tense moments were described “ere is an artificial, miserable substitute for everything, for
by Kafka as “a trial in the hotel.” forebears, marriage, and heirs. Feverishly you contrive these
Facsimile, courtesy of Klaus substitutes, and if the fever has not already destroyed you, the
Wagenbach, Berlin
hopelessness of the substitutes will.”
2/ Grete Bloch Diaries
(1892–1944, Auschwitz)
Felice Bauer’s friend, with whom QUOTE ON THE WALL
Kafka maintained an obscure
romantic relationship, which
gave rise to diverse speculations,
including the suggestion that she
was the mother of the writer’s
only son, who died age six,
without Kafka ever knowing of his
existence.
Facsimile, courtesy of Klaus
Wagenbach, Berlin
3/ Kafka and his fiancée
Felice Bauer in a photograph
taken in Budapest in July
1917
Courtesy of the Museum of Czech
Literature, Prague
4/ Letter to Felice Bauer,
dated 20 September 1912
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches
Literaturarchiv Marbach
5/ Ernst Weiss (1884–1940),
writer and Kafka’s friend
Courtesy of the National Archive,
Prague
6/ Anhalt railway station
in Berlin, the destination of
trains from Prague
Among the buildings on the right
side is the hotel Askanischer Hof,
where Kafka stayed during his
visits to Felice Bauer.
Facsimile, courtesy of Klaus
Wagenbach, Berlin
55
JULIE WOHRYZEK – DISPLAY CASE No. 12
2 3
1 DISPLAY CASE No. 13
3 4
1/ Franz Kafka
Letter to His Father, 1919
“I imagine the equality that
would then exist between
us (…) as so beautiful, for the
very reason (…) that I could
be a free, grateful, guiltless,
upright son, and you could be
an untroubled, untyrannical,
sympathetic, contented father.
But to this end everything
Julie. While on holiday for his health in Želízy that ever happened would
have to be undone, that is,
(Schelesen), Kafka met Julie Wohryzek (1891–
we ourselves should have
1944, Auschwitz), a young woman from Prague to be cancelled out. But we
being what we are, marrying
who, like himself, was there to recuperate after
is barred to me because it is
an illness. The following image of the new love your very own domain.”
comes from a letter to Max Brod. “On the Jewish Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches
side there is a girl, only slightly ill I hope. An every- Literaturarchiv Marbach
day figure, but also a surprising one. Non-Jew- 2/ The Stüdl Pension,
ish and not non-Jewish, non-German and not where Kafka and Julie
non-German, a lover of the cinema, of operettas Wohryzek met in the
winter of 1918/19.
and comedies, of cosmetics and veils, with an in- Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
exhaustible, irrepressible slang comprised of the Berlin
boldest expressions; in general, not highly edu- 3/ Julie Wohryzek
cated, gay rather than sad. (...) If you asked me to (on the right) strolling
describe her social background, I would say that with her sister
she comes from the lower administrative class.” Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
In the summer of 1919, Kafka became formal-
4/ Julie Wohryzek’s
ly engaged to her, but it was not long before he rented flat in Prague,
began to doubt his decision, accentuated by his Ve smečkách Street no. 6
father’s opposition to the match, as Julie’s fam- Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
ily came from a lower social class than that of
Franz. Once the engagement was dissolved, the
writer began a new stage of creation.
56
4 MILENA JESENSKÁ –
5 7
1 6 8
2
1/ Milena Jesenská
(1896–1944)
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
2/ Garden of the Ottoburg
Pension in Meran-Unter-
mais, where Kafka stayed
from April to June of 1920
and from where he wrote to
Milena Jesenská
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
Berlin
3/ Second Kafka’s letter to
Milena. The journalist Milena Jesenská Milena Jesenská (undated,
(1896–1944) was the first translator of ca April 1920), in which he
Kafka’s works into Czech, but above all she mentions her translation
and the publisher Kurt
was the love of his life and the only gen-
Wolff
tile Shiksa, or girlfriend. When they met,
Facsimile
Milena was twenty-four, while Kafka thir-
4/ Milena Jesenská
ty-seven. She was the woman who best married Ernst Pollack
understood Kafka’s genius and daily fail- and lived in Vienna.
ings. “Your loveliest letters,” Kafka wrote Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
to her, “are the ones in which you justify Berlin
my anguish, at the same time trying to
convince me that I should not be feeling
it.” Milena was “the fire,” “the day-world”
that the author desperately sought and yet
which so frightened him. It was Kafka who
ended the relationship, which came as a
terrible blow for Milena. She did not cease
to love him until her death in the hell of the
Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944.
“It’s rather gloomy in Prague, no letter has arrived yet, the
heart is a little heavy, it’s actually impossible for a letter to
have arrived, but try and explain that to the heart.”
Letters to Milena
QUOTE ON THE WALL 57
5/ Ernst Pollak (1886–1947)
Milena Jesenská’s husband and one of the DORA DIAMANT –
1 3 4
first promoters of Kafka’s work 2 DISPLAY CASE No. 14
6
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin 5

6/ Postcard send by Kafka to his sister Ottla

from Austrian Gmünd, where he met Milena 1/ Portrait of Dora
Jesenská in 1920 Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
Facsimile, courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
2/ A Gestapo report per-
7/ Letter to Milena Jesenská taining to the confiscation
(undated, early May 1920), in which Kafka of Dora Diamant’s property,
mentions his book Ein Landarzt (Country Doctor) including photographic
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches Literaturarchiv, documentation about Kafka
Marbach Facsimile
8/ Franz Kafka 3/ Building at Heiderstrasse
Letters to Milena 25–26 in Zehlendorf, where
Letter to Milena Jesenská dated 21 June Dora Diamant and Kafka lived
1920, in which Kafka describes the route he used in February and March of
to take as a young boy to school, accompanied by 1924
the cook. “Milena, what follies! And how much I Dora Diamant Facsimile
belong to you with all the cooks and threats and Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach,
this whole monstrous dust which thirty-eight Berlin 4/ The house at Grunewald-
years have kicked up and which has settled in strasse 13 in Berlin, where
my lungs.” Dora Diamant and Kafka lived
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches Literaturarchiv,
from November 1923 until
Marbach January 1924
Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
Dora. Dora Diamant (1904–1952) was 5/ Müritz, on the Baltic coast,
Kafka’s last love and she stayed with him where Kafka, his sister Elli and
until his death in 1924. Dora had fled his nieces spent their holiday
anti-Semitic persecution in Poland. She in July 1923. It was here that
he met Dora Diamant, who
was a Zionist and spoke Hebrew and worked as an assistant in
Yiddish well. She met Kafka in the town the Kinderglück, the holiday
of Müritz on the Baltic coast and lived residence of the Jewish home
from Berlin.
with him for a short time in Berlin. The Courtesy of Klaus Wagenbach, Berlin
writer describes this period as a “reck-
6/ Diary entry, dated
less act,” going so far as to compare 21 January 1922
it with Napoleon’s Russian campaign, “Without forebears, without
though he initially believed that Berlin marriage, without heirs, with
a fierce longing for forebears,
would be his salvation: “a remedy for marriage and heirs.”
Prague.” Dora Diamant provided Kafka Facsimile
with the spiritual support he needed in
Milena the final years of his life and revived in
Jesenská him the desire to settle in Tel Aviv.
58 59
 Weisser Hirsch Sanatorium near Dresden
GOD OF SUFFOCATION

Erlenbach near Zurych

“For each invalid his household god, for

the tubercular the god of suffocation.”
Diaries

One night in August 1917, in his flat in Schönborn Palace, Kafka started
to cough up blood. The haemorrhage lasted for ten eternal minutes. The
subsequent diagnosis confirmed the predictable: tuberculosis. Kafka was
Tatra Villa in Matliare
not surprised. For some time he had been aware that his existential drama
was leading to a “serious illness.” An illness to which the author attributed
a symbolic dimension, seeing it as a climax of the internal struggle which
had never ceased. No, it is not a mere illness, it is a general corruption.
The blood does not come from lungs, but “from a decisive stab delivered
by one of the combatants.” Kafka defined his situation with implacable lu-
cidity. He knew he would never regain his health. He denied tuberculosis
with all his might, yet he almost blessed it. It was the weapon to which he
cleaved while he lived.
QUOTE ON THE WALL

“For secretly, I don’t believe this illness to be tuberculosis, at

least not primarily tuberculosis, but rather a sign of my general
bankruptcy. (…) e blood issues not from the lung, but from a
decisive stab delivered by one of the combatants.”
60 61
61
Letters to Felice
DISPLAY CASE No. 15 DISPLAY CASE No. 17
Medical report regarding Kafka’s state of
Franz Kafka
health from the Tatranské Matliare sanato-
rium, signed by Dr. Strebinger and dated 25 First edition of the story
August 1921 Ein Hungerkünstler
(A Hunger Artist)
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum of Czech Literature,
Prague
Die Schmiede, Berlin 1924
Published shortly after Kafka’s
death
DISPLAY CASE No. 16 COPA collection, Prague

Kafka’s letter, dated 7 June 1922, to the Franz Kafka

Board of Directors of the Workers’ Accident
Insurance Institute applying for temporary
retirement for health reasons
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum of Czech Literature,
Prague
PHOTOGRAPH ON THE STAND
Group photograph taken at the Tatranské
Matliare sanatorium in 1921. Kafka in the
front row, to the left of him, dentist Glauber
and doctor Robert Klopstock
A Hunger Artist. Kafka was working
on proofreading this story when he was
slowly dying of starvation as the larynx
inflammation prevented him from eating.
Robert Klopstock, who witnessed Kafka’s
proofreading, described it as a “macabre
spectacle.” Kafka himself was dying as
he corrected the galleys, which told the
story of a fasting man who is starving to
death in his cage, forgotten by everyone.
The artist is fasting because he has no
choice: he has never found any food that
he liked. Here we should remember that
for many years of his adult life, Kafka was
a committed vegetarian, albeit with an
acute sense of humour; on one occasion
he noted that it was easy for vegetarians
as they eat their own flesh.
First edition of Ein Landarzt
(A Country Doctor)
Kurt Wolff Publishing House,
Leipzig 1919
The book contains stories written
between November 1916
and January 1917 in Kafka’s
“monastic cell” in Golden Lane
in Prague. Kafka abandoned the
“quarto notebooks,” which he
had used, in favour of the “octavo
notebooks.”
Facsimile, courtesy of the Ztichlá klika
used-books store, Prague
PHOTOGRAPH ON THE STAND
Photograph of Dr. Hoff-
mann’s sanatorium in
Kierling, Lower Austria,
where Kafka passed away
on 3 June 1924, attended
by Dora Diamant and Robert
Klopstock, a Hungarian
friend and doctor

62 63
QUOTE ON THE WALL
“All such writing is an assault on the frontiers; if Zionism had
not intervened, it might easily have developed into a new secret
doctrine, a Kabbalah. ere are intimations of this. ough of
course it would require genius of an unimaginable kind to strike
root again in the old centuries, or create the old centuries anew
and not spend itself withal, but only then begin to flower forth.”
Diaries
DISPLAY CASE No. 20
The Last Letter. Kafka knew it was futile to
lament. The great conflict with his father is
mitigated in his memories. The door-keeper
can only watch over himself. The walls of
the cell fall down. It is not a shady wall, it
is life, dear, sweet life pressed into the form
of a wall. Kafka makes out a city in the dis-
tance, but he has arrived too early.

Franz Kafka’s diary entry

DISPLAY CASE No. 18 dated 16 January 1922
In this entry the artist describes PHOTOGRAPH ON THE STAND
his state as a “collapse.” He
assumes “an assault on the Kafka’s grave at the
frontiers” and speculates on his New Jewish Cemetery in
writings’ destiny: Prague-Strašnice
“All such writing (...) might eas-
ily have developed into a new The last letter Kafka wrote
secret doctrine, a Kabbalah.” to his parents is dated
Facsimile, courtesy of the Bodleian 2 June 1924, one day
Library, University of Oxford before his death. Dora
Diamant intended to finish
Medical report on Kafka’s it for the ill writer.
state of health, dated Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
20 November 1918 of Czech Literature, Prague
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague

Last known photograph of Kafka

(1923–1924)
DISPLAY CASE No. 19
Thirst. During the last weeks of his life, Kaf- Kafka’s letter from Berlin,
ka also had to fight thirst. He was unable to dated 20th of December
1923, asking the Board of
speak, and so his communication with the Directors of the Workers’
world was reduced to “conversation cards,” Accident Insurance
on which he expressed his terrific desire Institute for permission
to spend his future retire-
to drink water: “a great mouthful of water,” ment in Berlin-Steglitz,
“good mineral water.” He knew that the dy- Grunewaldstrasse 13 for
ing do not drink, although some, such as lilac, reasons of health
“drinks when dying, still continues to drink.” Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague

64 65
DISPLAY CASE No. 21
“Deeply saddened, we announce the death
of our son, JUDr. Franz Kafka on 3 June.”
Death notices, in Czech
and German, published by
Kafka’s parents in the
Prague Národní listy and
Prager Tagblatt newspa-
pers on 11 June 1924.
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
PHOTOGRAPH ON THE STAND
Photograph of Kafka’s
parents in their old age.
DISPLAY CASE No. 22
Newspaper clipping
with Milena Jesenská’s
obituary. Published in the
Národní listy newspaper
on 6 June 1924.
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
Newspaper clipping with
Max Brod’s obituary.
Published in the Prager
Tagblatt newspaper on
4 June 1924, one day
after Kafka’s death.
Courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
PRAGUE IN KAFKA
Imaginary Topography
The way in which Kafka depicts his city presents one of the most enig-
matic approaches in modern literature. With only occasional exceptions,
Kafka does not name the places he describes in his novels and stories.
We can often observe attempts to prove that Kafka’s fictional works take
place in Prague. It is generally understood that the anonymous cathedral
in The Trial is none other than St. Vitus Cathedral; that the path taken by
Joseph K. in the last chapter of the same book goes from the Old Town,
across Charles Bridge to the outer limits of the Lesser Town. It is also said
that the view from Bendemann’s window in The Judgment features the
embankment, the Vltava River and its opposite bank in the same manner
as it can be seen from the Mikulášská Street (now named Pařížská Street),
where Kafka’s family lived in 1912. Efforts have been made to prove that
Prague’s topography is ever present despite remaining unnamed.
It is, however, not important. Kafka’s surreal architecture strives for other
goals. The method in Kafka’s fiction is much more complex: he transforms
the topography of Prague into the imaginary. The city takes a step back,
and is no longer recognizable by its buildings, bridges and monuments. It
is no longer important to identify a particular office, primary or secondary
school, university, church, prison or castle, as these structures function in
the role of metaphors and allegorical places.

DISPLAY CASE No. 23

On 12 June 1923, Kafka
wrote in his diary: “The
horrible spells lately,
innumerable, almost
without interruption.
(...) walks, nights, days,
incapable of anything but
pain.”
Facsimile, courtesy of the Bodleian
Library, University of Oxford Prague, New World
66 67
The first edition of the Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) was published
in 1915 by Kurt Wolff in Leipzig, who regularly cooperated with illustrator DISPLAY 6 7
1 2 4 5
CASE 3 proposals for the artistic and
Ottomar Starke (1886–1962). This fact worried Kafka as he expressed in
No. 24
his letter to Kurt Wollf. “In your last letter you wrote that Ottomar Starke
would be doing an illustration for the title page of Metamorphosis. Cer-
tainly, in so far as I know “Napoleon,” I have received a slight and probably
very unnecessary fright. It is namely as Starke truly illustrates, he could
possibly want to draw the insect itself. No, please not that! I don’t intend
to restrict him, rather, I only make this plea in view of my, naturally, better
knowledge of the story. The insect itself must not be drawn. It cannot
be depicted at all, not even from a distance. If this was not intended and
my request seems ridiculous, then all the better. I would be grateful for
passing on and emphasizing my message. If I may propose an illustration,
I would choose scenes such as parents and the clerk outside of a closed
door, or better yet, parents and sister in a lit room, with the door to the
dark adjacent room being open.”
Hullabaloo. In the short story Hullaba-
loo, Kafka gives a detailed description of
the noise pollution to which he was sub-
jected at his parents’ house. “I hear all the
doors close, because of their noise, only
the footsteps of those running between
QUOTE ON THE WALL
them are spared me, I even hear the slam-
“Some people came to me ming of the oven door in the kitchen.”
and asked me to build a city In that house everything was noise: from
for them.” his father’s dragging dressing-gown to
the more delicate, but no less hopeless,
Fragments from Notebooks
singing of the canaries.
and Loose Pages
The Judgement. This short story was
written in the course of mere eight hours
through the night of 22–23 September
1912. Kafka described this deed as a
“complete opening out.” It was the first
time that he could work the way he had
dreamed of and The Judgement is gen-
erally considered to be a turning point in
his life and writing. Kafka was, however,
aware that the subject was far from new.
68
1/ Willy Wessel
Two Indian ink drawings as
graphic layout of the cover for
Kafka’s Metamorphosis, 1924.
Facsimile
2/ Franz Kafka
First edition of Die Verwan-
dlung (Metamorphosis) with
Ottomar Starke’s illustrations.
Kurt Wolff Publishing House,
Munich, November 1915
Facsimile
3/ Willy Wessel
Four Indian ink drawings
and a watercolour for Kafka’s
Metamorphosis, 1924
Facsimile
4/ Franz Kafka
Grosser Lärm (Hullabaloo) in
the fourth issue of the Herd-
er-Blätter magazine, dated
October 1912.
Facsimile, courtesy of the National
Library of the Czech Republic, Prague
5/ Franz Kafka
First edition of Das Urteil
(The Judgement)
The title page features Kafka’s
hand-written dedication to his
sister Ottla in black ink: “To my
landlady [from] the rat of Schön-
born Palace, 24/XI 16”
Kurt Wolff Publishing House,
Munich, September 1916
COPA collection, Prague
6/ Franz Kafka: Betrachtung
(Contemplation)
A title page with Franz Kafka’s
dedication to Felice Bauer
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
7/ Franz Kafka: Die Verwan-
dlung (The Metamorphosis)
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
of Czech Literature, Prague
69
 THE ENDLESS OFFICE
QUOTES ON THE WALLS ALONG THE STAIRCASE

“If I merely walk in the direction of the entrance, even

though I may be separated from it by several passages
and rooms, I find myself sensing an atmosphere of great
danger, actually as if my hair were growing thin and in
a moment might fly off and leave me bare and shivering,
exposed to the howls of my enemies.”
e Burrow
“(…) and I am both exasperated and touched when, as
sometimes happens, I lose myself for a moment in my
own maze.”
e Burrow
“Each of these new plans involves, of course, heavy “Everyone is welcome!”
work; I have to make my calculations and then carry my e Man Who Disappeared (America)
stores to their new places. True, I can do that at my lei-
sure and without any hurry, and it is not at all unpleas-
ant to carry such good food in your jaws, to lie down
and rest whenever you like. (…) But it is not so pleasant Franz Kafka is considered to be one of the authors to have best unmasked
when, as sometimes happens, you suddenly fancy, start- the bureaucratic nightmare. His novels can be interpreted as enigmatic
ing up from your sleep, that the present distribution of treatises on a trial that did not necessarily begin or end with industrial
your stores is completely and totally wrong, might lead society. Kafka is usually believed to have analysed Austro-Hungarian bu-
to great dangers, and must be set right at once, no mat- reaucracy, making his heroes the products of a specific historical context.
ter how tired or sleepy you may be.” Such an interpretation is indeed legitimate, but incomplete. The question
e Burrow is how Kafka succeeds in manipulating this mundanity, populated with
reports and civil servants. “The office is not a stupid institution,” claimed
“But the most beautiful thing about my burrow is the
Kafka, “it is rooted more in the fantastic than in the stupid.”
stillness.”
Literature is most potent when it reveals the fictions which govern the
e Burrow
lives of men. A powerful fiction is a discourse that time has turned into an
“Your house is protected and self-sufficient. You live in unquestionable truth and whose sensory nature and fantastic origin have
peace, warm, well-nourished, master, sole master of all been forgotten. Kafka’s fiction reveals the hallucinatory nature of what
your manifold passages and rooms.” we call reality.
e Burrow
Voices in phones: excerpts from The Trial

Endless office

70 71
71
DISPLAY CASE No. 25
America. The publication of the novel titled
The Man Who Disappeared (for a long time
known as America thanks to Brod) coincided
with Kafka’s “soar” as a writer. Chapter one
(“The Stoker”) was written in October and No-
vember 1912 and published separately in May
1913. According to Max Brod, Kafka worked on
it with tremendous eagerness and noted that it
was the most promising and “luminous” of all
his works. Kafka’s unfinished “American novel”
is generally considered to be the most positive
of his three novels. However, when dealing with
Kafka it is always wise to be on guard. It might
merely be a different gateway to the world of
The Trial and The Castle. America conceals its
Kafkaesque substance in its most commented
“inadvertency:” rather than a torch, the Statue
of Liberty described in the opening lines of “The
Stoker” holds aloft a sword.
Franz Kafka
First edition of The Stoker
(Der Heizer)
Kurt Wolff Publishing House,
Munich 1913
COPA collection, Prague
DISPLAY CASE No. 26
The Trial. In this unfinished novel, begun in
1914 and continued with various interrup-
tions over the course of the following year, Franz Kafka
Kafka defined the substance which was to Chapter one of The Trial
make his name a well-known adjective. The (Der Prozess),
published in the Das
Trial was the first major manifestation of the Stachelschwein magazine
Kafkaesque world. As a lawyer, Kafka was before the book publication.
well acquainted with the world he had de- R. Th. Hauser & Co. Verlag,
cided to set out of joint: the courts. Inside this, Frankfurt 1925
COPA collection, Prague
he placed another of his favourite themes:
family life. Taking these elements, he con- Franz Kafka
structed a hyperbole which, for many, antic- First edition of The Trial
ipated the totalitarian regimes of the century (Der Prozess)
Die Schmiede, Berlin 1925
that had just begun, but one which can also
COPA collection, Prague
be seen as a fantastic parable of a millennial
culture constructed on fear, guilt, pain and
death. The Trial is a journey through all the
nuances of lack of information, through the
forms in which truth is couched, through
the never-ending processes and conjectures
caused by its absence.

Franz Kafka
America (Der Verschollene,
The Man Who Disappeared)
Kurt Wolff Publishing House,
Munich 1927
COPA collection, Pragu

First Czech edition of

Franz Kafka, The Stoker
(Der Heizer)
Translated by Milena Jesenská,
Published by František Borový, First page of the manu-
1921 script of chapter one of
COPA collection, Prague
The Trial: “Arrest”
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches
Literaturarchiv Marbach

72 73
DISPLAY CASE No. 27 DISPLAY CASE No. 29
4 2
First page of the manu-
script of chapter four of
1 3
The Trial: “Miss Bürstner’s
Friend”
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches
Literaturarchiv Marbach
First page of the manu-
script of chapter five of 1/ Franz Kafka
The Trial: “The Whip-Man”
Procesen (The Trial)
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches
Literaturarchiv Marbach Wahlström & Widstrand,
Stockholm 1964
First page of the manu- Facsimile
script of chapter six of
The Trial: “In the Cathedral” 2/ Franz Kafka
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches The Trial
Literaturarchiv Marbach Penguin Books, London 1953
First page of the manu- COPA collection, Prague
script of chapter seven 3/ Franz Kafka
of The Trial: “The End” Der Prozess (The Trial)
Facsimile, courtesy of Deutsches S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1954
Literaturarchiv Marbach
COPA collection, Prague
4/ Franz Kafka
El proceso (The Trial)
Losada, Buenos Aires 1957
COPA collection, Prague

DISPLAY 2/ Franz Kafka

CASE No. 28 América
Emecé, Buenos Aires 1943
2 3 COPA collection, Prague

1 4
3/ Franz Kafka
Amerika
Querido’s Uitgeverij,
Amesterdam 1972
1/ Franz Kafka Kafka-Forschungsstelle der
L’Amérique Universität Wuppertal collection
Gallimard, Paris
4/ Franz Kafka
1965
Amerika
Kafka-Forschungsstelle
der Universität Magvetö, Budapest 1967
Wuppertal collection Facsimile

74 75
 THE CASTLE

Since the novel’s publication in 1926, a legion of interpreters and read-

“(…) gazing upward into the
seeming emptiness.”
e Castle
ers have tried to reveal the meaning of this enigmatic novel and what is
hidden inside. Max Brod says that the basic theme is the irreconcilable
nature of the human and the divine. Others speak of the decline of a civ-
ilization, of a torturous description of bureaucratic machinery, of the ob-
sessive account of impossible integration, along with an autobiographical
component.
Psychoanalysts, existentialists, structuralists and poststructuralists have
supplied new interpretations of the complex symbolism of The Castle,
this gigantic mirage, contributing to an expansion of the novel’s semantic
status. Yet we should not forget that the works of literature which each
age hails as being iconic are not just what their official interpreters make
of them, but also what they awake in the most anonymous of their read-
ers.
It is often said that The Castle requires several readings. The novel repre-
sents three basic dilemmas: the temptation of infinite interpretation, the
need for an active reader, and indispensable patience, a virtue, which Kaf-
ka considered the only true foundation for the realization of all dreams.
The search for architectural references in the novel has led to specula-
tions about real castles. Nevertheless, it seems that Kafka did not intend
to provide us with a specific image. This ambiguity, sustained by differing
perspectives and descriptions, enshrouds The Castle in a fog, making it
an obscure and complex symbol.
Little is known about Kafka’s admiration for ancient Chinese art and phi-
losophy, particularly Taoism. Kafka read Lao Tse and Hsüan Tsung trans-
lated by Wilhelm Tsingtau, a German Sinologist, published by Eugen
Diederichs in Jena. Kafka was fascinated by the Taoist masters’ praise of
perfect emptiness. On a postcard to Felice, he wrote: “Deep down I am
Chinese, and I am going home.”

The Castle

76 77
77
DISPLAY
CASE 3 4 2 1
No. 30
Franz Kafka wrote The Castle between Jan-
uary and September of 1922. The novel tells
the story of K., a land surveyor, in a village in
the middle of nowhere, dominated by a mys-
terious castle belonging to Count Westwest.
Upon an invitation from the castle, K. arrives
in the village to take up a position for which
he is no longer needed. Throughout the novel
he attempts to reach the castle in search of
an explanation for this regrettable error. To do
so, he has to face the village inhabitants, who
are opposed to his presence: he has to deal
with the mayor, the schoolteacher, some-
one who appears to be a messenger called
Barnabas, a couple of assistants assigned to
help him in his work. The land surveyor also
meets different women, such as Frieda, the
lover of Klamm, a high-ranking civil servant at
the castle. Despite having been invited by the
Count himself, K. never manages to enter the
enigmatic castle. Kafka never completed the
novel, though he allegedly told Max Brod a
possible ending: The land surveyor does not
give up, but dies of exhaustion. The village
community gathers around his death bed
and a message arrives from the castle stating
that K. has no right to live in the village, how-
ever in the light of certain circumstances, he
is allowed to live and work there.
3/ Franz Kafka
First Czech publication of
The Castle
78
IN THE PENAL COLONY
DISPLAY CASE No. 31 1/ Kafka’s petition, dated
15th of September 1916
1 2 3 4 5 A petition requesting permis-
sion to travel to Germany for
three days to attend a public
reading at the Gallery of Hans
Goltz in Munich. On the back of
the petition and on an attached
page is the positive response
to the request by a Police
Station in Prague sent to the
Police Headquarters in Prague
1/ Franz Kafka on 28 September 1916..
First edition of The Castle Facsimile, courtesy of the National
(Das Schloss) Archive, Prague
Kurt Wolff Publishing House, 2/ Franz Kafka’s petition,
Munich 1926 dated 15th of September
COPA collection, Prague 1916, requesting a postpone-
ment of his trip to Munich due
2/ Galley proofs to the postponement of the
of the Czech translation of The public reading at the Gallery of
Castle, which was to be pub- Mirrors. In a reply to Wolff’s initial re- Hans Goltz, addressed to the
lished by the Prague publishing jection, dated 11 October 1916, Kafka Police Headquarters in Prague.
house Václav Petr, though this
wrote: “By way of explanation, I will Facsimile, courtesy of the National
failed to be realized. Archive, Prague
Facsimile, courtesy of the National merely add that it is not only my latest
Museum, Prague narrative which is distressing; our time in 3/ Franz Kafka’s petition,
dated 3rd October 1916,
4/ Franz Kafka general and mine in particular have been requesting permission to travel
The Great Wall of China and still are distressing, and mine has to Munich in November 1916
(Beim Bau der chinesischen even been so for longer than our time in due to the postponement
Mauer) of the public reading at the
general.” At the time, Kafka was writing
Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, 1931 Gallery of Hans Gotz in Munich.
of the First World War (1914–1918), that Attached is a signed
COPA collection, Prague
is, the 20th century’s first mass manifes- photograph of Kafka.
tation of self-destructive dementia. The Facsimile, courtesy of the National
Archive, Prague
war led to a toughening of penal law and
4/ Franz Kafka’s passport
3// F
3 Franz
ranz
ranz Kafka
Kafka
afka
afka the abolition of citizens’ basic rights. July
with a photograph from
1914 saw the suppression of the free- 1920
dom of assembly and the imposition of Facsimile, courtesy of the National
martial law in Bohemia. Fear of denun- Archive, Prague
ciation, arbitrary arrest and torture be-
came part of everyday life.
79
“Guilt is never to be doubted.”
In the Penal Colony

5/ Franz Kafka
Original of the first edition of In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie)
Kurt Wolff Publishing House, Leipzig 1919
COPA collection, Prague

Punishment. On the evening of 10 November 1916, in a gallery in Mu-

In this space we are confronted with a cold and detailed description of an
nich, Kafka gave his only public reading outside Prague. The chosen text
ominous torture instrument, situated in an unspecified tropical place, far
was In the Penal Colony, a rather indigestible short story for the time.
from civilization. Kafka’s narrative places us at the outset of a certain en-
The intellectuals present were left perplexed and three ladies fainted. The
lightenment. The machine is frowned upon by the colony authorities, and
reviews spoke of an atmosphere laden with an “excess of nervous ten-
would seem to be defended only by an officer belonging to the old regime.
sion.” One of them labels Kafka a “dilettante of terror.” The writer himself
The spectacle of death in public, which in other times attracted crowds of
described the evening as “a truly spectacular failure.” The short story,
hundreds, hungry for every facet of an execution, has become an almost
written in October 1914, was written at a time when Kafka suffered from
secret ceremony. Following Michel Foucault, we might say that it was the
nightmares about a sinister piece of machinery which subjected his body
beginning of modern justice; the moment when the punishment becomes
to interminable torment. It also coincided with the resumption of his en-
the darkest part of the penal process. The celebration of punishment dies
gagement to Felice Bauer.
out, becoming instead a new procedural or administrative act.
Kafka intended to publish In the Penal Colony together with The Judge-
Kafka’s narrative heralds a paradoxical expansion and naturalization of the
ment and Metamorphosis into a single volume under the title of Punish-
proceeding. Justice protects itself from the punishment it imposes by sit-
ments. The publisher Kurt Wolff first rejected the work as being “too repul-
uating the execution of the sentence in an autonomous sphere, but at the
sive.” Finally, however, despite his reservations about the “terrible intensity
same time the prison-model spreads throughout the social body, estab-
of the sinister subject,” he published it in a collector’s edition in 1919.
lishing mechanisms of surveillance and control which go to the very heart
of the modern city. David Černý
Machine, 1998
Penal Colony A photograph of a model for a film based on In the Penal Colony, which was never made.

80 81
QUOTE ON THE WALL
“In front of the law there is a doorkeeper. A man from the countryside comes “e Messiah will only arrive when we no
up to the door and asks for entry. But the doorkeeper says he can’t let him in
longer need him.”
to the law right now. e man thinks about this, and then he asks if he’ll be
able to go in later on. ‘It’s possible,’ says the doorkeeper, ‘but not now.’ e Octavo Notebook G (Notes from Siřem)
gateway to the law is open as it always is, and the doorkeeper has stepped
to one side, so the man bends over to try and see in. When the doorkeeper
notices this he laughs and says, ‘If you’re tempted give it a try, try and go in “As he looked round, he saw the top floor of the building next to the quar-
even though I say you can’t. Careful though: I’m powerful. And I’m only the ry. He saw how a light flicked on and the two halves of a window opened
lowliest of all the doormen. But there’s a doorkeeper for each of the rooms out, somebody, made weak and thin by the height and the distance, leant
and each of them is more powerful than the last. It’s more than I can stand suddenly far out from it and stretched his arms out even further. Who
just to look at the third one.’ e man from the country had not expected was that? A friend? A good person? Somebody who was taking part?
difficulties like this, the law was supposed to be accessible to anyone at any Somebody who wanted to help? Was he alone? Was it everyone? Would
time, he thinks, but now he looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his fur anyone help? Were there objections that had been forgotten? ere must
coat, sees his big hooked nose, his long thin tartar-beard, and he decides it’s have been some. Logic cannot be refuted, but someone who wants to live
better to wait until he has permission to enter. e doorkeeper gives him will not resist it. Where was the judge he’d never seen? Where was the
a stool and lets him sit down to one side of the gate. He sits there for days high court he had never reached? He raised both hands and spread out
and years. He tries to be allowed in time and again and tires the doorkeeper all his fingers.”
e Trial
with his requests. e doorkeeper oen questions him, asking about where
he’s from and many other things, but these are disinterested questions such
as great men ask, and he always ends up telling him he still can’t let him
in. e man had come well equipped for his journey, and uses everything,
however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. He accepts everything, but as he
does so he says, ‘I’ll only accept this so that you don’t think there’s anything
you’ve failed to do’. Over many years, the man watches the doorkeeper al-
most without a break. He forgets about the other doormen, and begins to
think this one is the only thing stopping him from gaining access to the law.
Over the first few years he curses his unhappy condition out loud, but later,
as he becomes old, he just grumbles to himself. He becomes senile, and as he
has come to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper’s fur collar over the years
that he has been studying him he even asks them to help him and change
the doorkeeper’s mind. Finally his eyes grow dim, and he no longer knows
whether it’s really getting darker or just his eyes that are deceiving him. But
he seems now to see an inextinguishable light begin to shine from the dark-
ness behind the door. He doesn’t have long to live now. Just before he dies,
he brings together all his experience from all this time into one question
which he has still never put to the doorkeeper. He beckons to him, as he’s Close-up of a photograph featuring a house on the corner of Hampejzská
no longer able to raise his stiff body. e doorkeeper has to bend over deeply and Břehová streets in Prague-Josefov
as the difference in their sizes has changed very much to the disadvantage
of the man. ‘What is it you want to know now?’ asks the doorkeeper, ‘You’re
insatiable.’ ‘Everyone wants access to the law,’ says the man, ‘how come,
over all these years, no-one but me has asked to be let in?’ e doorkeeper
can see the man has come to his end, his hearing has faded, and so, so that
he can be heard, he shouts to him: ‘Nobody else could have got in this way, as Toby Dunham – I Will Never Forget (2018)
this
82 entrance was meant only for you. Now I’ll go and close it’.” 83
83
e Trial
 1/ Franz Kafka – Proměna
DISPLAY CASE No. 32 (The Metamorphosis)
Illustrations by Otto Coester
The Catholic publisher Josef Florian was Josef Florian Publishing House,
one of the first people responsible for Kaf- Stará Říše 1929
ka’s work being accepted in the Czech lands COPA collection, Prague
in the years following the author’s death. In 2/ Franz Kafka
protest against the anti-clerical policy of the Zpráva pro akademii
(Report to an Academy)
young Czechoslovak Republic, Florian gave
Illustrations by Albert Schamoni
up teaching and set up a publishing compa- Josef Portman Publishing
ny in the small Moravian town of Stará Říše. House, Litomyšl 1929
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
The Czech publication of Kafka’s Complete of Czech Literature, Prague
Works, under the auspices of Max Brod, by
3/ Franz Kafka
the Prague publisher Václav Petr was pre-
Pozorování (Meditation)
cluded by the coup of 1948. The commu- A. Chvála Publishing House,
nist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia brought Prague 1946
Facsimile, courtesy of the Museum
about bans and political censorship of Kaf-
of Czech Literature, Prague
ka’s work and everything written about it.
4/ Hugo Siebenschein,
Edwin Muir, Emil Utitz,
Petr Demetz
Franz Kafka a Praha
(Franz Kafka and Prague)
Memoires, reflections,
documents
Vladimír Žikeš Publishing
House, Prague 1947
COPA collection, Prague
5/ Franz Kafka
Proces (The Trial)
Translation and epilogue by
Pavel Eisner
Pavel Eisner, a bilingual Czech-German jour- Československý spisovatel,
nalist, played a leading role in popularizing Prague 1958
Kafka’s work in the Czech lands before the COPA collection, Prague
Second World War. He was also one of the 6/ Franz Kafka
people behind the gradual international Liblice Conference 1963
A collection of papers from a
recognition of his body of work. In the late conference on Franz Kafka’s
1920s, Eisner urged that Kafka, “a giant for work, held 27–28 May 1963
whom ten Nobel prizes would have been in Liblice
too little,” was studied at the German De- Czechoslovak Academy of
Sciences, Prague 1963
partment of Prague University.
COPA collection, Prague
84
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
The Kafka conference in Liblice in 1963 saw 7/Pavel Eisner’s expert
opinion on America
the start of a gradual movement towards
He defended it before the commu-
the acceptance of Kafka’s work, which had nist authorities by claiming it to be
hitherto been ideologically mutilated. The anti-American.
Facsimile, courtesy of the National
Odeon publishing house undertook the pub-
Museum, Prague
lication of the Complete Works, while other
publishers edited single texts. Kafka started 8/ Franz Kafka – Proměna
(The Metamorphosis)
to be read, commented upon, adapted and Epilogue by Josef Čermák,
staged, to become, quite paradoxically, one
illustrations by Otto Coester
of the spiritual fathers of the Prague Spring SNKLU, Prague 1963
of 1968. Nevertheless, in the subsequent COPA collection, Prague
two decades, he once again became a 10/ Franz Kafka
politically undesirable figure, his work was Povídky (Short Stories)
banned and Czech Kafka scholars were per- Epilogue by Eduard Goldstücker
SNKLU, Prague 1964
secuted by the police.
COPA collection, Prague
12/ Franz Kafka
9/ Franz Kafka Dopisy Mileně (Letters to Milena)
Zámek (The Academia, Prague 1968
Castle) COPA collection, Prague
Mladá fronta,
Prague 1964 13/ Franz Kafka
COPA collection, Popis jednoho zápasu
Prague (Description of a Struggle)
Odeon, Prague 1968
COPA collection, Prague
14/ Franz Kafka
Aforismy (Aphorisms)
Československý spisovatel,
Prague 1968
COPA collection, Prague
15/ Franz Kafka
11/ Franz Kafka Zámek (The Castle)
Proces Odeon, Prague 1969
(The Trial) COPA collection, Prague
Epilogue by Pavel
Eisner
SNKLU, Prague
1965
COPA collection,
Prague
85
The Velvet Revolution in 1989 saw Kaf- 16/ Franz Kafka “We were created in order to live in Paradise, and Paradise was
ka reunited with Czech culture. The writer Povídky (Short Stories) ordained to serve us.
could not have imagined how right he was Odeon, Prague 1983 What was ordained for us has been changed; it is not said that
Permitted by authorities
in his prophesies about the future of his city, solely on the occasion of
this has also happened with what was ordained for Paradise.”
or the tribute that leading twentieth-century the hundredth anniversary
writers would ultimately pay him. The cen- of Kafka’s birth Reflections on Sin, Pain, Hope and the True Way
tre of Prague may have been the setting for COPA collection, Prague

an extraordinary spectacle in some of his

dreams, yet he could never have dreamt
that he himself would become one of his
city’s major tourist attractions.

17/ Franz Kafka

Dopisy rodičům z let
1922–1924 (Letters to
His Parents written in
1922–1924)
Odeon, Prague 1990
COPA collection, Prague

“Kaaesque” is an adjective used

internationally as a synonym for bizarre,
illogical, absurd situations, typical of Kaa`s
fiction, featuring protagonists who are
Julie and Hermann Kafka,
1912 experiencing anxiety and helplessness.

86 87
 Franz
Kaa
Museum

© Muchovo museum, s. r. o.
Texts and images
Franz Kafka Museum 2020

Cihelná 2b English translations of texts by

Franz Kafka © Schocken Books
118 00 Prague 1 – Malá Strana
Text of guide translated by Petra Key.

tel. +420 257 535 373 Thanks are due to all who
participated on the making of the
www.kafkamuseum.cz guide and to all our coleagues
office@kafkamuseum.cz in the Franz Kafka museum.

88