Franz Kafka

What fascinates us so much about Franz Kafka? If his name evokes the stereotypical image of a pale, lonely young man against the gloomy backdrop of old Prague, think again! Kafka was so much more interesting than that. He was a modern man of his time - an avid cinemagoer and a radical advocate of a healthy lifestyle, including vegetarianism, sports, and winter outdoor swimming. He was also a man open to the world around him. In addition to the German-language culture of bourgeois Prague at the turn of the 20th century, he studied with interest the traditional eastern Jewish Hasidic culture and the modern Zionist movement, to which many of his friends subscribed. He spoke Czech almost as well as a native speaker. Contrary to popular belief, he travelled regularly and enthusiastically.

But it is primarily Kafka’s writings that evoke our enduring fascination. Kafka wrote the way others breathe: “I have no literary interests. I am made of literature. I am nothing else and cannot be anything else.” During his short life, he wrote thousands of pages of diaries and letters, which we still read eagerly after a hundred years and with amazement at how precisely, unconventionally and wittily their writer formulates them. Kafka’s writings rank among the greatest works of modern literature, in the same category as Joyce’s Ulysses, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, or The Good Soldier Švejk by Kafka’s compatriot and contemporary Jaroslav Hašek.

Kafka captured the fears and uncertainties but also the depths of modern man, like no one else. Just as humanity and freedom face constant threats in his work - just think of the novel The Trial or the novella Metamorphosis - he also finds their new, unexpected value: Gregor Samsa, inexplicably transformed into a “kind of monstrous insect”, is even in this form far more in touch with his humanity than as an exploited travelling salesman.

During the tourist season, groups of tourists regularly stop on the small square where four Old Town streets converge, called Franz Kafka Square since 2000. They leaf through guidebooks, look at their mobile phones, and emotionally lift their gazes to the memorial plaque on one of the corner houses commemorating the birthplace of one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, known to the whole world without exaggeration, on July 3, 1883.

At first, however, there was no indication of this. Franz Kafka was born the eldest of six children in a now-long-demolished house on the corner of Maiselova and U Radnice Streets, and he was the only son to survive to adulthood - his brothers Georg and Heinrich died as toddlers. His father, Hermann Kafka, was a merchant who didn’t consider his daughters to be successors to his haberdashery wholesale business and, therefore, heaped all his hopes on Franz.

He then raised his son with this goal in mind, which we perceive from Franz’s memories as a hard and vigorous upbringing but was, in fact, only firm and matter-of-fact. It was also pragmatic - Hermann Kafka, himself bilingual, decided that all his children, and Franz even more so, would have a German education. He saw this as a guarantee of a successful professional life.

Franz first attended the German Boys’ School at Masná Street No. 16 and then the State Gymnasium with German language classes on the Old Town Square. He lived close to both schools - in 1889, the family moved from the outskirts of the Jewish Town to the house U Minuty, just next to the Old Town Hall. The haberdasher Kafka and his family moved more than ten times to different addresses in Prague, but always within a relatively small radius.

After finishing secondary school, Franz began studying law at the German part of Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. He naturally considered German his mother tongue; it was, after all, the language of his mother, who came from a German-Jewish family. However, he spoke Czech very well thanks to his upbringing in Prague, and officially, he was a Czech who belonged to Prague. “I have never lived among the German people,” he wrote in a letter to one of his girlfriends. “German is my mother tongue and therefore natural to me, but Czech is close to my heart.”

Finally, he also saw Judaism as part of his identity, even if his religious practice was only formal. A week after his birth, he was circumcised, had the Jewish name of Amshel, attended Jewish religion classes, and took part in his bar mitzvah ceremony. However, he visited the synagogue - the now-defunct Cigan, later Pinkas, Synagogue, only at his father’s express wish four times a year. It was only much later that he became interested in his Jewish roots: as an adult, he began to learn Hebrew, studied Hasidism, became acquainted with the ideas of Zionism, and, towards the end of his life, even considered moving to Palestine.

After completing his studies, Franz received his doctorate in law in 1906. In 1907, he joined the Assicurazioni Generali insurance company on Wenceslas Square (we can certainly imagine Hermann Kafka’s disappointment), but it was a short-lived appointment. A year later, he found a job at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Company for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Na Poříčí Street, with which he was connected his entire professional life. He worked here until 1922, when he was forced into early retirement.

As much as Franz liked his job at the insurance company and his superiors considered him a reliable clerk, he constantly complained that his work distracted him from his writing. Literature became a basic need and the highest value for him, even though he published only just over 15 short stories during his lifetime (the most famous of which is undoubtedly Metamorphosis). However, his publication rate revealed nothing about how prolific the author was - most of the works that made him famous were published only posthumously.

Another factor Franz perceived as a threat to his creative literary activity was women. Except for one - his beloved sister Ottla. He liked her best of all his relatives and often found refuge and peace for his writing with her, whether in the house on the Golden Lane, which she rented or on the farm in Siřem, where she worked for her brother-in-law. The other four women with whom he had serious relationships eventually lost the battle with literature.

Franz sent a dizzying number of letters to his first serious acquaintance, Felice Bauer, most of them about how he dreaded a marriage that would keep him from writing. They got engaged twice, but twice he broke off the engagement. His second fiancée was Julie Wohryzková, the daughter of the administrator of the Vinohrady synagogue. Kafka also applied the engagement-cancellation model to her. In addition to the concern for time for writing, the fact that Czech journalist Milena Jesenská was a married woman played a role in their separation, although their relationship was, except for two personal meetings, conducted exclusively through letters. Arguably the greatest love of Kafka’s life, Dora Diamant, 20 years his junior, might have overcome literature. But she was unable to defeat tuberculosis, from which Franz died in her arms on June 3, 1924, after a year of acquaintance.

When Franz was dying, he asked his mistress to burn all the manuscripts she had - and the devastated Dora did so. We can only speculate what world-class works of literature were lost as a result. He demanded the same of the executor of his will, the German Jewish writer Max Brod. Brod, however, was aware of Kafka’s exceptional talent, and instead of burning the manuscripts, he edited and published them, ensuring Kafka’s worldwide fame. For example, the novel The Trial was ranked third in Le Monde’s 1999 poll of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.

Today, Franz Kafka is a legend. He is the most important representative of Prague German literature, one of the most famous Prague Jews, and probably the most famous writer born in Prague. Many places in Prague commemorate Kafka’s legacy - the Franz Kafka Museum in Mala Strana; Café Louvre and Café Arco, which he frequented; the Jewish Museum, where his monument stands; or the moving Kafka head at the Národní třída metro station. Following an old Jewish custom, a stone can be placed on his grave at the New Jewish Cemetery in Žižkov.