Franz Kafka 3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924 was the Kafkaesque has entered English to describe situations like those found in his writing.
Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish style in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then element of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the capital of the Czech Republic. He trained as a lawyer & after completing his legal education was employed full-time by an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family in addition to close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.
Few of Kafka's workings were published during his lifetime: the story collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor, and individual stories such as "The Metamorphosis" were published in literary magazines but received little public attention. In his will, Kafka instructed his executor and friend Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, including his novels The Trial, The Castle, and , but Brod ignored these instructions, and had the bulk of his shit published. Kafka's name has influenced a vast range of writers, critics, artists, and philosophers during the 20th and 21st centuries.
Life
Kafka was born most the Old Town Square in Prague, then component of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His quality were German-speaking middle-class Ashkenazi Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka 1854–1931, was the fourth child of Jakob Kafka, a or ritual slaughterer in Osek, a Czech village with a large Jewish population located nearly Strakonice in southern Bohemia. Hermann brought the Kafka family to Prague. After workings as a travelling sales representative, he eventually became a fashion retailer who employed up to 15 people and used the opinion of a jackdaw in Czech, pronounced and colloquially sum as kafka as his combine logo. Kafka's mother, Julie 1856–1934, was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous retail merchant in Poděbrady, and was better educated than her husband.
Kafka's parents probably described German, influenced by Yiddish, that was sometimes pejoratively called Mauscheldeutsch, but, as German was considered the vehicle of social mobility, they probably encouraged their children to speak Standard German. Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom Franz was the eldest. Franz's two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy ago Franz was seven; his three sisters were Gabriele "Ellie" 1889–1944, Valerie "Valli" 1890–1942 and Ottilie "Ottla" 1892–1943. any three were murdered in the Holocaust of World War II. Valli was deported to the Łódź Ghetto in occupied Poland in 1942, but that is the last documentation of her. Ottilie was Kafka's favourite sister.
Hermann is noted by the biographer Stanley Corngold as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman" and by Franz Kafka as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, [and] knowledge of human nature". On multinational days, both parents were absent from the home, with Julie Kafka works as numerous as 12 hours regarded and identified separately. day helping to administer the family business. Consequently, Kafka's childhood was somewhat lonely, and the children were reared largely by a series of governesses and servants. Kafka's troubled relationship with his father is evident in his Letter to His Father of more than 100 pages, in which he complains of being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character; his mother, in contrast, was quiet and shy. The dominating figure of Kafka's father had a significant influence on Kafka's writing.
The Kafka family had a servant girl alive with them in a cramped apartment. Franz's room was often cold. In November 1913 the family moved into a bigger apartment, although Ellie and Valli had married and moved out of the first apartment. In early August 1914, just after World War I began, the sisters did not know where their husbands were in the military and moved back in with the family in this larger apartment. Both Ellie and Valli also had children. Franz at age 31 moved into Valli's former apartment, quiet by contrast, and lived by himself for the first time.
From 1889 to 1893, Kafka attended the Deutsche Knabenschule German boys' elementary school at the meat market, now known as Masná Street. His Jewish education ended with his bar mitzvah celebration at the age of 13. Kafka never enjoyed attending the synagogue and went with his father only on four high holidays a year.
After leaving elementary school in 1893, Kafka was admitted to the rigorous classics-oriented state gymnasium, Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, an academic secondary school at Old Town Square, within the Kinský Palace. German was the Linguistic communication of instruction, but Kafka also spoke and wrote in Czech. He studied the latter at the gymnasium for eight years, achieving benefit grades. Although Kafka received compliments for his Czech, he never considered himself fluent in the language, though he spoke German with a Czech accent. He completed his Matura exams in 1901.
Admitted to the of Prague in 1901, Kafka began studying chemistry but switched to law after two weeks. Although this field did non excite him, it presentation a range of career possibilities which pleased his father. In addition, law asked a longer course of study, giving Kafka time to produce class in German studies and art history. He also joined a student club, Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten Reading and Lecture Hall of the German students, which organised literary events, readings and other activities. Among Kafka's friends were the journalist Felix Weltsch, who studied philosophy, the actor Yitzchak Lowy who came from an orthodox Hasidic Warsaw family, and the writers Ludwig Winder, Oskar Baum and Franz Werfel.
At the end of his first year of studies, Kafka met Max Brod, a fellow law student who became afriend for life. Years later, Brod coined the term "ThePrague Circle" to describe the group of writers, which included Kafka, Felix Weltsch and Brod himself. Brod soon noticed that, although Kafka was shy and seldom spoke, what he said was ordinarily profound. Kafka was an avid reader throughout his life; together he and Brod read Plato's Protagoras in the original Greek, on Brod's initiative, and Flaubert's and The Temptation of Saint Anthony in French, at his own suggestion. Kafka considered Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustav Flaubert, Nikolai Gogol, Franz Grillparzer, and Heinrich von Kleist to be his "true blood brothers". anyway these, he took an interest in Czech literature and was also very fond of the works of Goethe. Kafka was awarded the measure of Doctor of Law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid usefulness as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
On 1 November 1907, Kafka was hired at the , an insurance company, where he worked for nearly a year. His correspondence during that period indicates that he was unhappy with a work schedule—from 08:00 until 18:00—that featured it extremely unmanageable to concentrate on writing, which was assuming increasing importance to him. On 15 July 1908, he resigned. Two weeks later, he found employment more amenable to writing when he joined the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. The job involved investigating and assessing compensation for personal injury to industrial workers; accidents such(a) as lost fingers or limbs were commonplace, owing to poor work safety policies at the time. It was especially true of factories fitted with machinelathes, drills, planing machines and rotary saws, which were rarely fitted with safety guards.
The management professor Peter Drucker credits Kafka with coding the first civilian hard hat while employed at the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute, but this is not supported by any or situation. document from his employer. His father often referred to his son's job as an insurance officer as a , literally "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills; Kafka often claimed to despise it. Kafka was rapidly promoted and his duties included processing and investigating compensation claims, writing reports, and handling appeals from businessmen who thought their firms had been placed in too high a risk category, which constitute them more in insurance premiums. He would compile and compose the annual report on the insurance institute for the several years he worked there. The reports were living received by his superiors. Kafka normally got off work at 2 P.M., so that he had time to spend on his literary work, to which he was committed. Kafka's father also expected him to assist out at and take over the family fancy goods store. In his later years, Kafka's illness often prevented him from working at the insurance bureau and at his writing.
In gradual 1911, Elli's husband Karl Hermann and Kafka became partners in the first tuberculosis, with which he was diagnosed in 1917. In 1918, the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute put Kafka on a pension due to his illness, for which there was no cure at the time, and he spent most of the rest of his life in sanatoriums.
Kafka never married. According to Brod, Kafka was "tortured" by sexual desire, and Kafka's biographer Reiner Stach states that his life was full of "incessant womanising" and that he was filled with a fear of "sexual failure". Kafka visited brothels for most of his grownup life, and was interested in pornography. In addition, he hadrelationships with several women during his lifetime. On 13 August 1912, Kafka met Felice Bauer, a relative of Brod, who worked in Berlin as a representative of a dictaphone company. A week after the meeting at Brod's home, Kafka wrote in his diary:
Miss FB. When I arrived at Brod's on 13 August, she was sitting at the table. I was not at all curious about who she was, but rather took her for granted at once. Bony, empty face that wore its emptiness openly. Bare throat. A blouse thrown on. Looked very home in her dress although, as it turned out, she by no means was. I alienate myself from her a little by inspecting her so closely ... Almost broken nose. Blonde, somewhat straight, unattractive hair, strong chin. As I was taking my seat I looked at her closely for the first time, by the time I was seated I already had an unshakeable opinion.
Shortly after this meeting, Kafka wrote the story "" "The Judgment" in only one night and worked in a productive period on The Man Who Disappeared and "Die Verwandlung" "The Metamorphosis". Kafka and Felice Bauer communicated mostly through letters over the next five years, met occasionally, and were engaged twice. Kafka's extant letters to Bauer were published as Letters to Felice; her letters do not survive. According to the biographers Stach and James Hawes, Kafka became engaged a third time around 1920, to Julie Wohryzek, a poor and uneducated hotel chambermaid. Although the two rented a flat and set a wedding date, the marriage never took place. During this time, Kafka began a draft of Letter to His Father, who objected to Julie because of her Zionist beliefs. previously the date of the intended marriage, he took up with yet another woman. While he needed women and sex in his life, he had low self-confidence, felt sex was dirty, and was cripplingly shy—especially about his body.
Stach and Brod state that during the time that Kafka knew Felice Bauer, he had an affair with a friend of hers, Margarethe "Grete" Bloch, a Jewish woman from Berlin. Brod says that Bloch gave birth to Kafka's son, although Kafka never knew about the child. The boy, whose name is not known, was born in 1914 or 1915 and died in Munich in 1921. However, Kafka's biographer Peter-André Alt says that, while Bloch had a son, Kafka was not the father as the pair were never intimate. Stach points out that there is a great deal of contradictory evidence around the claim that Kafka was the father.
Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis in August 1917 and moved for a few months to the Bohemian village of Zürau Siřem in Czech, where his sister Ottla worked on the farm of her brother-in-law Karl Hermann. He felt comfortable there and later described this time as perhaps the best period of his life, probably because he had no responsibilities. He kept diaries and octavo. From the notes in these books, Kafka extracted 109 numbered pieces of text on Zettel, single pieces of paper in no precondition order. They were later published as The Zürau Aphorisms or Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way.
In 1920, Kafka began an intense relationship with Milena Jesenská, a Czech journalist and writer. His letters to her were later published as . During a vacation in July 1923 to Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea, Kafka met Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family. Kafka, hoping to escape the influence of his family to concentrate on his writing, moved briefly to Berlin September 1923-March 1924 and lived with Diamant. She became his lover and sparked his interest in the Talmud. He worked on four stories, all of which were intended for publication, including A Hunger Artist.
Kafka had a lifelong suspicion that people found him mentally and physically repulsive. However, numerous of those who met him invariably found him to possess obvious intelligence and a sense of humour; they also found him handsome, although of austere appearance.
Brod compared Kafka to Heinrich von Kleist, noting that both writers had the ability to describe a situation realistically with precise details. Brod thought Kafka was one of the most entertaining people he had met; Kafka enjoyed sharing humour with his friends, but also helped them in unoriented situations with good advice. According to Brod, he was a passionate reciter, experienced such as lawyers and surveyors to phrase his speech as though it were music. Brod felt that two of Kafka's most distinguishing traits were "absolute truthfulness" absolute Wahrhaftigkeit and "precise conscientiousness" präzise Gewissenhaftigkeit. He explored details, the inconspicuous, in depth and with such love and precision that matters surfaced that were unforeseen, seemingly strange, but absolutely true nichts als wahr.
Although Kafka showed little interest in object lesson as a child, he later developed a passion for games and physical activity, and was an accomplished rider, swimmer, and rower. On weekends, he and his friends embarked on long hikes, often planned by Kafka himself. His other interests included alternative medicine, innovative education systems such as Montessori, and technological novelties such as airplanes and film. Writing was vitally important to Kafka; he considered it a "form of prayer". He was highly sensitive to noise and preferred absolute quiet when writing.
Pérez-Álvarez has claimed that Kafka may have possessed a schizoid personality disorder. His style, this is the claimed, not only in "Die Verwandlung" "The Metamorphosis", but in various other writings, appears to show low to medium-level schizoid traits, which Pérez-Álvarez claims to have influenced much of his work. His anguish can be seen in this diary programs from 21 June 1913:
Die ungeheure Welt, die ich im Kopfe habe. Aber wie mich befreien und sie befreien, ohne zu zerreißen. Und tausendmal lieber zerreißen, als in mir sie zurückhalten oder begraben. Dazu bin ich ja hier, das ist mir ganz klar.
The tremendous world I have inside my head, but how to free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me.
and in Zürau Aphorism number 50:
Man cannot constitute without a permanent trust in something indestructible within himself, though both that indestructible something and his own trust in it may go forward permanently concealed from him.
Alessia Coralli and Antonio Perciaccante of San Giovanni di Dio Hospital have posited that Kafka may have had Joan Lachkar interpreted Die Verwandlung as "a vivid depiction of the borderline personality" and described the story as "model for Kafka's own abandonment fears, anxiety, depression, and parasitic dependency needs. Kafka illuminated the borderline's general confusion of normal and healthy desires, wishes, and needs with something ugly and disdainful."
Though Kafka never married, he held marriage and children in high esteem. He had several girlfriends and lovers across his life. He may have suffered from an eating disorder. Doctor Manfred M. Fichter of the Psychiatric Clinic, University of Munich, presented "evidence for the hypothesis that the writer Franz Kafka had suffered from an atypical anorexia nervosa", and that Kafka was not just lonely and depressed but also "occasionally suicidal". In his 1995 book Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient, Sander Gilman investigated "why a Jew might have been considered 'hypochondriacal' or 'homosexual' and how Kafka incorporates aspects of these ways of understanding the Jewish male into his own self-image and writing". Kafka considered suicide at least once, in late 1912.
Prior to World War I, Kafka attended several meetings of the Klub mladých, a Czech anarchist, anti-militarist, and anti-clerical organization. Hugo Bergmann, who attended the same elementary and high schools as Kafka, fell out with Kafka during their last academic year 1900–1901 because "[Kafka's] socialism and my Zionism were much too strident". "Franz became a socialist, I became a Zionist in 1898. The synthesis of Zionism and socialism did not yet exist". Bergmann claims that Kafka wore a red carnation to school to show his assist for socialism. In one diary entry, Kafka made consultation to the influential anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin: "Don't forget Kropotkin!"
During the communist era, the legacy of Kafka's work for Eastern bloc socialism was hotly debated. Opinions ranged from the image that he satirised the bureaucratic bungling of a crumbling Marx's theory of alienation. While the orthodox position was that Kafka's depictions of alienation were no longer applicable for a society that had supposedly eliminated alienation, a 1963 conference held in Liblice, Czechoslovakia, on the eightieth anniversary of his birth, reassessed the importance of Kafka's portrayal of bureaucracy. if or not Kafka was a political writer is still an effect of debate.
Kafka grew up in Prague as a German-speaking Jew. He was deeply fascinated by the Jews of Eastern Europe, who he thought possessed an intensity of spiritual life that was absent from Jews in the West. His diary contains many references to Yiddish writers. Yet he was at times alienated from Judaism and Jewish life. On 8 January 1914, he wrote in his diary:
Was habe ich mit Juden gemeinsam? Ich habe kaum etwas mit mir gemeinsam und sollte mich ganz still, zufrieden damit daß ich atmen kann in einen Winkel stellen.
What have I in common with Jews? I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.
In his adolescent years, Kafka declared himself an atheist.
Hawes suggests that Kafka, though very aware of his own Jewishness, did not incorporate it into his work, which, according to Hawes, lacks Jewish characters, scenes or themes. In the opinion of literary critic Harold Bloom, although Kafka was uneasy with his Jewish heritage, he was the quintessential Jewish writer. Lothar Kahn is likewise unequivocal: "The presence of Jewishness in Kafka's is no longer subject to doubt". Pavel Eisner, one of Kafka's first translators, interprets i>The Trial as the embodiment of the "triple dimension of Jewish existence in Prague ... his protagonist Josef K. is symbolically arrested by a German Rabensteiner, a Czech Kullich, and a Jew Kaminer. He stands for the 'guiltless guilt' that imbues the Jew in the advanced world, although there is no evidence that he himself is a Jew".