Dichter dran franz kafka biography

Bohemian writer (1883–1924)

"Kafka" redirects here. Tight spot other uses, see Kafka (disambiguation).

Franz Kafka^[b] (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was an Austrian-Czech^[4] novelist and novelist from Prague. He is widely presumed as a major figure of 20th-century literature; he wrote in German. work fuses elements of realism boss the fantastic.^[5] It typically features unfrequented protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes go with alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity.^[6] His best known works include character novella The Metamorphosis and the novels The Trial and The Castle. High-mindedness term Kafkaesque has entered English lend your energies to describe absurd situations like those portrayed in his writing.

Kafka was born bump into a middle-class German- and Yiddish-speaking Slavic Jewish family in Prague, the crown of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which belonged to the Austrian part detailed the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today the top of the Czech Republic, also lay as Czechia).^[8][9] He trained as excellent lawyer, and after completing his acceptable education was employed full-time, for clever year handling cases for the penniless in the city's Provincial and Terrible Courts by an insurance company, thence working for nine months for tone down Italian insurance company, and finally, ingenious in 1908, spending 14 years be equal with the Austrian Imperial and Royal Workmen's Accident Institute for the Kingdom business Bohemia and its successor under glory Czechoslovak Republic, rising to the point of chief legal secretary.^[10]

Being employed full-time forced Kafka to relegate writing sort out his spare time. Over the flight path of his life, Kafka wrote make a point of letters to family and cessation friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and restrained relationship. He became engaged to various women but never married. He correctly relatively unknown in 1924 of t.b., at the age of 40.

Kafka was a prolific writer, spending ascendant of his free time writing, much late into the night. He hardened an estimated 90 percent of surmount total work due to his unabated struggles with self-doubt. Much of description remaining 10 percent is lost downfall otherwise unpublished. Few of Kafka's writings actions were published during his lifetime; even supposing the story collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor, and individual stories, much as his novella The Metamorphosis, were published in literary magazines, they customary little attention.

In his will, Author instructed his close friend and legendary executorMax Brod to destroy his unsanded works, including his novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika, but Brod ignored these instructions and had overmuch of his work published. Kafka's pamphlets became famous in German-speaking countries tail end World War II, influencing German learning, and its influence spread elsewhere knock over the world in the 1960s. Transfer has also influenced artists, composers, dowel philosophers.

Life

Early life

Kafka was born near decency Old Town Square in Prague, expand part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Climax family were German-speaking middle-class Ashkenazi Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka (1854–1931), was the fourth child of Jakob Writer, a shochet or ritual slaughterer feature Osek, a Czech village with graceful large Jewish population located near Strakonice in southern Bohemia. Hermann brought interpretation Kafka family to Prague. After manner as a travelling sales representative, recognized eventually became a fashion retailer who employed up to 15 people extort used the image of a daw (kavka in Czech, pronounced and conversationally written as kafka) as his sharp logo. Kafka's mother, Julie (1856–1934), was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, dialect trig prosperous retail merchant in Poděbrady, crucial was better educated than her husband.

Kafka's parents, from traditional Jewish society, radius German replete with influences from their native Yiddish; their children, raised encompass an acculturated environment, spoke Standard Teutonic. Hermann and Julie had six family unit, of whom Franz was the firstborn. Franz's two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy before Franz was seven; his three sisters were Gabriele ("Elli") (1889–1942), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1942) ground Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943). All three were murdered in the Holocaust of Pretend War II. Valli was deported figure out the Łódź Ghetto in occupied Polska in 1942, but that is description last documentation of her; it assignment assumed she did not survive glory war. Ottilie was Kafka's favourite sister.^[18]

Hermann is described by Kafka scholar prep added to translator Stanley Corngold as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman" and by Franz Kafka as "a true Kafka take strength, health, appetite, loudness of demand for payment, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, vicinity of mind, knowledge of human collection, a certain way of doing personal property on a grand scale, of means with all the defects and weaknesses that go with all these poor and into which your temperament gleam sometimes your hot temper drive you". On business days, both parents were absent from the home, with Julie Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day helping to manage probity family business. Consequently, Kafka's childhood was somewhat lonely, and the children were reared largely by a series as a result of governesses and servants. Kafka's troubled affair with his father is evident mission his Brief an den Vater (Letter to His Father) of more outweigh 100 pages, in which he complains funding being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character; his keep somebody from talking, in contrast, was quiet and withdrawn. The dominating figure of Kafka's daddy had a significant influence on Kafka's writing.

The Kafka family had a maidservant girl living with them in clean cramped apartment. Franz's room was commonly cold. In November 1913, the next of kin moved into a bigger apartment, allowing Ellie and Valli had married settle down moved out of the first room. In early August 1914, just back end World War I began, the sisters did not know where their husbands were in the military and sham back in with the family wrench this larger apartment. Both Ellie promote Valli also had children. Franz draw off age 31 moved into Valli's foregoing apartment, quiet by contrast, and ephemeral by himself for the first time.

Education

From 1889 to 1893, Kafka attended honesty German boys' elementary school at picture Masný trh/Fleischmarkt (meat market), now known as Masná Street. His Jewish instruction ended with his bar mitzvah anniversary at the age of 13. Author never enjoyed attending the synagogue pivotal went with his father only irritant four high holidays each year.

After goodbye elementary school in 1893, Kafka was admitted to the rigorous classics-oriented disclose gymnasium, Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, an erudite secondary school at Old Town Territory, located within Kinský Palace. German was the language of instruction, but Writer also spoke and wrote in Czechoslovakian. He studied the latter at probity gymnasium for eight years, achieving good thing grades. Although Kafka received compliments mean his Czech, he never considered ourselves fluent in the language, though flair spoke German with a Czech intonation. He completed his Matura exams populate 1901.

Kafka was admitted to the Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität of Prague in 1901. Why not? was originally admitted for philosophy, favour he had additionally signed up lend a hand chemistry. Kafka began studying chemistry nevertheless switched to law after two weeks. Although this field did not work up him, it offered a range capture career possibilities, which pleased his papa. In addition, law required a thirster course of study, giving Kafka hang on to take classes in German studies and art history. He also united a student club, Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten (Reading and Talk Hall of the German students), which organised literary events, readings and attention activities. Among Kafka's friends were greatness journalist Felix Weltsch, who studied idea, the actor Yitzchak Lowy who came from an orthodox Hasidic Warsaw cover, and the writers Ludwig Winder, Oskar Baum and Franz Werfel.

At the come to a decision of his first year of studies, Kafka met Max Brod, a match law student who became a brisk friend for life. Years later, Brod coined the term Der enge Prager Kreis ("The Close Prague Circle") stop at describe the group of writers, which included Kafka, Felix Weltsch and Brod himself. Brod soon noticed that, conj albeit Kafka was shy and seldom beam, what he said was usually pronounced. Kafka was an avid reader all through his life; together he and Brod read Plato's Protagoras in the latest Greek, on Brod's initiative, and Flaubert's L'éducation sentimentale and La Tentation come forward St. Antoine (The Temptation of Archangel Anthony) in French, at his up and down suggestion. Kafka considered Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Nikolai Gogol, Franz Grillparzer, pole Heinrich von Kleist to be crown "true blood brothers". Besides these, forbidden took an interest in Czech letters and was also very fond disseminate the works of Goethe. Kafka was awarded the degree of Doctor behoove Law on 18 June 1906^[c] shaft performed an obligatory year of outstanding service as a law clerk fend for the civil and criminal courts.

Employment

On 1 November 1907, Kafka was employed go rotten the Assicurazioni Generali, an insurance knot, where he worked for nearly top-notch year. His correspondence during that day indicates that he was unhappy stay alive a work schedule—from 08:00 until 18:00—that made it extremely difficult to alter on writing, which was assuming accretionary importance to him. On 15 July 1908, he resigned. Two weeks next, he found employment more amenable strengthen writing when he joined the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the State of Bohemia (Úrazová pojišťovna dělnická old-timer Čechy v Praze). The job concerned investigating and assessing compensation for out-of-the-way injury to industrial workers; accidents specified as lost fingers or limbs were commonplace, owing to poor work protection policies at the time. It was especially true of factories fitted elegant machine lathes, drills, planing machines captain rotary saws, which were rarely fit with safety guards.

His father often referred to his son's job as come to an end insurance officer as a Brotberuf, just "bread job", a job done single to pay the bills; Kafka frequently claimed to despise it. Kafka was rapidly promoted and his duties be part of the cause processing and investigating compensation claims, prose reports, and handling appeals from profession who thought their firms had back number placed in too high a imperil category, which cost them more inferior insurance premiums. He would compile post compose the annual report on probity insurance institute for the several mature he worked there. The reports were well received by his superiors. Writer usually got off work at 2 p.m., so that he had day to spend on his literary research paper, to which he was committed. Kafka's father also expected him to breath out at and take over position family fancy goods store. In reward later years, Kafka's illness often prevented him from working at the precaution bureau and at his writing.

In late 1911, Elli's husband Karl Hermann and Kafka became partners in depiction first asbestos factory in Prague, accustomed as Prager Asbestwerke Hermann & Co., having used dowry money from Hermann Kafka. Kafka showed a positive notion at first, dedicating much of authority free time to the business, on the contrary he later resented the encroachment chief this work on his writing previous. During that period, he also figure interest and entertainment in the acta b events of Yiddish theatre. After seeing unadorned Yiddish theatre troupe perform in Oct 1911, for the next six months Kafka "immersed himself in Yiddish voice and in Yiddish literature". This society also served as a starting holder for his growing exploration of Faith. It was at about this sicken that Kafka became a vegetarian. Den 1915, Kafka received his draft neglect for military service in World War I, but his employers at the warranty institute arranged for a deferment owing to his work was considered essential authority service. He later attempted to come together the military but was prevented raid doing so by medical problems corresponding with tuberculosis, with which he was diagnosed in 1917. In 1918, high-mindedness Worker's Accident Insurance Institute put Author on a pension due to fillet illness, for which there was ham-fisted cure at the time, and recognized spent most of the rest representative his life in sanatoriums.

Private life

Kafka in no way married. According to Brod, Kafka was "tortured" by sexual desire, and Kafka's biographer Reiner Stach states that diadem life was full of "incessant womanising" and that he was filled liking a fear of "sexual failure". Author visited brothels for most of crown adult life and was interested top pornography. In addition, he had bottom relationships with several women during rule lifetime. On 13 August 1912, Writer met Felice Bauer, a relative slap Brod's, who worked in Berlin orang-utan a representative of a dictaphone gang. A week after the meeting afterwards Brod's home, Kafka wrote in government diary:

Miss FB. When I alighted at Brod's on 13 August, she was sitting at the table. Funny was not at all curious recognize the value of who she was, but rather took her for granted at once. Angular, empty face that wore its filter openly. Bare throat. A blouse tangled on. Looked very domestic in have time out dress although, as it turned work out, she by no means was. (I alienate myself from her a approximately by inspecting her so closely ...) Seemingly broken nose. Blonde, somewhat straight, not sought out hair, strong chin. As I was taking my seat I looked give in her closely for the first every time, by the time I was seat I already had an unshakeable opinion.

Shortly after this meeting, Kafka wrote honesty story "Das Urteil" ("The Judgment") counter only one night and in trig productive period worked on Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared) and Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis). Kafka and Felice Bauer communicated mostly through letters fulfil the next five years, met on occasion, and were engaged twice. Kafka's surviving letters to Bauer were published by reason of Briefe an Felice (Letters to Felice); her letters did not survive. Stern he had written to Bauer's cleric asking to marry her, Kafka wrote in his diary:

My job disintegration unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and selfconscious only calling, which is literature.... Beside oneself am nothing but literature and throne and want to be nothing on the other hand ... Nervous states of the poorest sort control me without pause ... A marriage could not change bleed dry, just as my job cannot interchange me.

According to the biographers Stach service James Hawes, Kafka became engaged clean third time around 1920, to Julie Wohryzek, a poor and uneducated new zealand pub chambermaid. Kafka's father objected to Julie because of her Zionist beliefs. Even though Kafka and Julie rented a unbroken and set a wedding date, honourableness marriage never took place. During that time, Kafka began a draft stencil Letter to His Father. Before nobleness date of the intended marriage, explicit took up with yet another dame. While he needed women and gender in his life, he had perceive self-confidence, felt sex was dirty, queue was cripplingly shy—especially about his body.

Stach and Brod state that during primacy time that Kafka knew Felice Bauer, he had an affair with spruce up friend of hers, Margarethe "Grete" Composer, a Jewish woman from Berlin. Brod says that Bloch gave birth thesis Kafka's son, although Kafka never knew about the child. The boy, whose name is not known, was local in 1914 or 1915 and boring in Munich in 1921. However, Kafka's biographer Peter-André Alt says that, greatest extent Bloch had a son, Kafka was not the father, as the twins were never intimate. Stach points agitation that there is a great dole out of contradictory evidence around the champion 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 preserve Ottla worked on the farm reduce speed her brother-in-law Karl Hermann. He change comfortable there and later described that time as perhaps the best term of his life, probably because blooper had no responsibilities. He kept record archive and made notes in exercise books (Oktavhefte). From those notes, Kafka extracted 109 numbered pieces of text shame single pieces of paper (Zettel); these were later published as Die Zürauer Aphorismen oder Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den wahren Weg (The Zürau Aphorisms or Reflections on Immorality, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way).

In 1920, Kafka began an intense communications with Milena Jesenská, a Czech correspondent and writer who was non-Jewish captivated who was married, but when she met Kafka, her marriage was calligraphic "sham". His letters to her were later published as Briefe an Milena. During a vacation in July 1923 to Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Main, Kafka met Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Human family. Kafka, hoping to escape glory influence of his family to meet on his writing, moved briefly know about Berlin (September 1923-March 1924) and quick with Diamant. She became his floozy and sparked his interest in goodness Talmud. He worked on four mythos, including Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist), which were published shortly after realm death.

Siblings

Kafka's parents had six children; Franz was the eldest. His brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died speedy infancy; his three sisters, Gabriele ("Elli") (September 22, 1889 – fall past its best 1942), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1942) and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943), are believed to possess been murdered in the Holocaust frequent the Second World War. Ottilie was Kafka's favourite sister.^[89]

Gabriele was Kafka's firstborn sister. She was known as Elli or Ellie; her married name attempt variously rendered as Hermann or Hermannová. She attended a German girls' primary in Prague's Řeznická Street and after a private girls' secondary school.^[90] She married Karl Hermann (1883–1939), a retailer, in 1910. The couple had capital son, Felix (1911–1940), and two posterity, Gertrude (Gerti) Kaufmann (1912–1972), and Hanna Seidner (1920–1941).^[90][91] After her marriage survive Hermann, she became closer to junk brother, whose letters showed an investigative interest in the upbringing and tending of her children. He accompanied relax on a 1915 trip to Magyarorszag to visit Hermann, who was stationed there, and spent a summer staunch her and her children in Müritz the year before he died.^[90][92]

With nobleness outbreak of the Great Depression heavens 1929, the Hermann family business immature financial difficulties and eventually went bankrupt.^[90] Karl Hermann died February 27, 1939, and Elli was supported financially by means of her sisters.^[90][92] On October 21, 1941, she was deported together with squash up daughter Hanna to the Łódź Ghetto, where she lived temporarily with stress sister Valli and Valli's husband close in the spring of 1942. She was probably killed in the Kulmhof bloodshed camp in the fall of 1942.^{[90][93][94][92][95]} Of Elli's three children, only dip daughter Gerti survived the Second Terra War.^{[citation needed]} A memorial plaque commemorates the three sisters at the race grave in the New Jewish Burial ground in Prague.^[92]

Personality

Kafka had a lifelong dubiety that people found him mentally illustrious physically repulsive. However, many of those who met him found him slam possess obvious intelligence and a common sense of humour; they also found him handsome, although of austere appearance. Author was thought to be "very self-analytic".^[99] Brod compared Kafka to Heinrich von Kleist, noting that both writers locked away the ability to describe a site realistically with precise details. Brod meditating Kafka was one of the domineering entertaining people he had met; Writer enjoyed sharing his humour with surmount friends but also helped them essential difficult situations with good advice. According to Brod, he was a ardent reciter, able to phrase his words as though it were music. Brod felt that two of Kafka's cap distinguishing traits were "absolute truthfulness" (absolute Wahrhaftigkeit) and "precise conscientiousness" (präzise Gewissenhaftigkeit). He explored inconspicuous details in slightest and with such precision and affection that unforeseen things surfaced that seemed strange but absolutely true (nichts sheep wahr).

Kafka's letters and unexpurgated diaries in sequence repressed homoerotic desires, including an earnestness with novelist Franz Werfel and tendency with the work of Hans Blüher on male bonding. Saul Friedländer argues that this mental struggle may be endowed with informed the themes of alienation dowel psychological brutality in his writing.

Although Author showed little interest in exercise gorilla a child, he later developed exceptional passion for games and physical curiosity and was an accomplished rider, natator, and rower. On weekends, he settle down his friends embarked on long hikes, often planned by Kafka himself. Her highness other interests included alternative medicine, new education systems such as Montessori, gain technological novelties such as airplanes keep from film. Writing was vitally important peak Kafka; he considered it a "form of prayer". He was highly discerning to noise and preferred absolute withdrawn when writing. Kafka was also capital vegetarian and did not drink alcohol.^[111]

Pérez-Álvarez has claimed that Kafka had symptomatology consistent with schizoid personality disorder. Sovereign style, it is claimed, not lone in Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) nevertheless in other writings, appears to agricultural show low- to medium-level schizoid traits, which Pérez-Álvarez claims to have influenced unnecessary of his work. His anguish peep at be seen in this diary door from 21 June 1913:

and in Zürau Aphorism handful 50:

Italian medical researchers Alessia Coralli and Antonio Perciaccante have posited pulsate a 2016 article that Kafka can have had borderline personality disorder able co-occurring psychophysiological insomnia.^[118]Joan Lachkar interpreted Die Verwandlung as "a vivid depiction earthly the borderline personality" and described rank story as "model for Kafka's beg to be excused abandonment fears, anxiety, depression, and leechlike dependency needs. Kafka illuminated the borderline's general confusion of normal and confused desires, wishes, and needs with question ugly and disdainful".

Though Kafka never joined, he held marriage and children remodel high esteem. He had several girlfriends and lovers during his life. Lighten up may have suffered from an bereavement disorder. Doctor Manfred M. Fichter set in motion the Psychiatric Clinic, University of Muenchen, presented "evidence for the hypothesis rove the writer Franz Kafka had appreciated from an atypical anorexia nervosa", tube that Kafka was not just lone and depressed but also "occasionally suicidal". In his 1995 book Franz Author, the Jewish Patient, Sander Gilman investigated "why a Jew might have antique considered 'hypochondriacal' or 'homosexual' and fair Kafka incorporates aspects of these shipway of understanding the Jewish male record his own self-image and writing". Writer considered suicide at least once, pin down late 1912.

Political views

Before World War I, Author attended several meetings of the Klub mladých, a Czech anarchist, anti-militarist, streak anti-clerical organization.Hugo Bergmann, who attended significance same elementary and high schools slightly Kafka, fell out with Kafka cloth their last academic year (1900–1901) in that "[Kafka's] socialism and my Zionism were much too strident". Bergmann said: "Franz became a socialist, I became simple Zionist in 1898. The synthesis loosen Zionism and socialism did not hitherto exist." Bergmann claims that Kafka wore a red carnation to school check show his support for socialism. Follow one diary entry, Kafka made remark to the influential anarchist philosopher Shaft Kropotkin: "Don't forget Kropotkin!"

During the collectivist era, the legacy of Kafka's office for Eastern Bloc socialism was persistently debated. Opinions ranged from the ideas that he satirised the bureaucratic hamfisted of a crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire, be acquainted with the belief that he embodied representation rise of socialism. A further plane point was Marx's theory of disaffection. While the orthodox position was defer Kafka's depictions of alienation were cack-handed longer relevant for a society lose concentration had supposedly eliminated alienation, a 1963 conference held in Liblice, Czechoslovakia, hang on to the eightieth anniversary of his onset, reassessed the importance of Kafka's exercise of bureaucracy. Whether Kafka was shipshape and bristol fashion political writer is still an interrogate of debate.

Judaism and Zionism

Further information: Franz Kafka and Judaism

Kafka grew up tier Prague as a German-speaking Jew. Proceed was deeply fascinated by the Jews of Eastern Europe, who he threatening possessed an intensity of spiritual the social order that was absent from Jews expect the West. His diary contains various references to Yiddish writers. Yet loosen up was at times alienated from Hebraism and Jewish life. On 8 Jan 1914, he wrote in his diary:

In his adolescent years, Kafka professed himself an atheist.

Hawes suggests that Writer, though very aware of his diminish Jewishness, did not incorporate it inspiration his work, which, according to Hawes, lacks Jewish characters, scenes or themes. In the opinion of literary judge Harold Bloom, although Kafka was ill at ease with his Jewish heritage, he was the quintessential Jewish writer. Lothar Designer is likewise unequivocal: "The presence time off Jewishness in Kafka's oeuvre is inept longer subject to doubt".Pavel Eisner, work on of Kafka's first translators, interprets Der Process (The Trial) as the concretization of the "triple dimension of Human existence in Prague ... his protagonist Josef K. is (symbolically) arrested by fine German (Rabensteiner), a Czech (Kullich), lecture a Jew (Kaminer). He stands be the 'guiltless guilt' that imbues prestige Jew in the modern world, though there is no evidence that unwind himself is a Jew".

In his layout Sadness in Palestine?!, Dan Miron explores Kafka's connection to Zionism: "It seems that those who claim that relating to was such a connection and renounce Zionism played a central role just right his life and literary work, slab those who deny the connection totally or dismiss its importance, are both wrong. The truth lies in wearisome very elusive place between these several simplistic poles." Kafka considered moving give an inkling of Palestine with Felice Bauer, and afterward with Dora Diamant. He studied Canaanitic while living in Berlin, hiring nifty friend of Brod's from Palestine, Pua Bat-Tovim, to tutor him and assembly Rabbi Julius Grünthal^[144] and Rabbi Julius Guttmann's classes in the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College for the Study of Judaism), hoop he also studied Talmud.^[146]

Livia Rothkirchen calls Kafka the "symbolic figure of coronate era". His contemporaries included numerous Individual, Czech, and German writers who were sensitive to Jewish, Czech, and Teutonic culture. According to Rothkirchen, "This caught unawares lent their writings a broad civilized outlook and a quality of rapture bordering on transcendental metaphysical contemplation. Contain illustrious example is Franz Kafka".

Towards character end of his life Kafka warp a postcard to his friend Playwright Bergmann in Tel Aviv, announcing consummate intention to emigrate to Palestine. Bergmann refused to host Kafka because be active had young children and was lily-livered that Kafka would infect them gangster tuberculosis.

Death

Kafka's laryngealtuberculosis worsened and in Pace 1924 he returned from Berlin relating to Prague, where members of his lineage, principally his sister Ottla and Dora Diamant, took care of him. Blooper went to Hugo Hoffmann's sanatorium refurbish Kierling just outside Vienna for maltreatment on 10 April, and died at hand on 3 June 1924. The prod of death seemed to be starvation: the condition of Kafka's throat appreciative eating too painful for him, take since parenteral nutrition had not until now been developed, there was no put on the right track to feed him. Kafka was writing "A Hunger Artist" on his splitting, a story whose composition he challenging begun before his throat closed erect the point that he could sound take any nourishment. His body was brought back to Prague where forbidden was buried on 11 June 1924, in the New Jewish Cemetery take Prague-Žižkov. Kafka was virtually unknown about his own lifetime, but he outspoken not consider fame important. He cardinal to fame rapidly after his stain, particularly after World War II. Leadership Kafka tombstone was designed by master builder Leopold Ehrmann.^[151]

Works

Further information: Franz Kafka bibliography

All of Kafka's published works were impossible to get into in German. What little was publicised during his lifetime attracted scant general attention.^{[citation needed]}

Kafka finished none of cap full-length novels and burned around 90 percent of his work,^[152] much conclusion it during the period he fleeting in Berlin with Diamant, who helped him burn the drafts. In ruler early years as a writer operate was influenced by von Kleist, whose work he described in a comment to Bauer as frightening and whom he considered closer than his come down family.

Kafka drew and sketched extensively. Unsettled May 2021, only about 40 have fun his drawings were known.^[156][157] In 2022, Yale University Press published Franz Kafka: The Drawings.^[158]

Stories

Kafka's earliest published works were eight stories that appeared in 1908 in the first issue of class literary journal Hyperion under the phone up Betrachtung (Contemplation). He wrote the gag "Beschreibung eines Kampfes" ("Description of a-ok Struggle")^[d] in 1904; in 1905 unquestionable showed it to Brod, who hark to him to continue writing and assured him to submit it to Hyperion. Kafka published a fragment in 1908 and two sections in the stretch of 1909, all in Munich.

In systematic creative outburst on the night a variety of 22 September 1912, Kafka wrote description story "Das Urteil" ("The Judgment", literally: "The Verdict") and dedicated it fully Felice Bauer. Brod noted the sameness in names of the main room and his fictional fiancée, Georg Bendemann and Frieda Brandenfeld, to Franz Writer and Felice Bauer. The story anticipation often considered Kafka's breakthrough work. Give it some thought deals with the troubled relationship spend a son and his dominant curate, facing a new situation after decency son's engagement. Kafka later described verbal skill it as "a complete opening disparage body and soul", a story make certain "evolved as a true birth, subterranean clandestin with filth and slime". The draw was first published in Leipzig blackhead 1912 and dedicated "to Miss Felice Bauer", and in subsequent editions "for F."

In 1912, Kafka wrote Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, or The Transformation), obtainable in 1915 in Leipzig. The be included begins with a travelling salesman stir to find himself transformed into break off ungeheures Ungeziefer, a monstrous vermin, Ungeziefer being a general term for friendless and unclean pests, especially insects. Critics regard the work as one execute the seminal works of fiction nigh on the 20th century. The story "