Information about Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Photograph of Franz Kafka taken in 1906
Born:	July 3 1883(1883--) Prague, Austria-Hungary
Died:	May 3 1924 (aged 42) Kierling near Vienna, Austria
Occupation:	insurance officer, factory manager, novelist, short story writer
Nationality:	Ashkenazi Jewish-Bohemian (Austria-Hungary)
Genres:	novel, short story
Literary movement:	modernism, existentialism, Surrealism, precursor to magical realism
Influences:	Arthur Schopenhauer, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, Friedrich Nietzsche
Influenced:	Albert Camus, Federico Fellini, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Salman Rushdie, Haruki Murakami, Günter Grass, Chanwook Park, Jhonen Vasquez
Signature:

Franz Kafka (IPA: [ˈfʀanʦ ˈkafka]) (July 3, 1883 – June 3, 1924) was one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century. Born to a middle-class Jewish family based in Prague, his unique body of writing — many incomplete and most published posthumously — has become amongst the most influential in Western literature.^[1]

His stories, such as The Metamorphosis (1915), and novels, including The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world.

Family

Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of Bohemia. His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman" (Corngold 1973) and by Kafka himself 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 ..."^[2]. Kafka struggled to come to terms with his domineering father. Hermann was the fourth child of Jacob Kafka, a shochet, and came to Prague from Osek, a Czech-speaking Jewish village near Písek in southern Bohemia. After working as a traveling sales representative, he established himself as an independent retailer of men's and women's fancy goods and accessories, employing up to 15 people and using a jackdaw (kavka in Czech) as his business logo. Kafka's mother, Julie (1856—1934), was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous brewer in Poděbrady, and was better educated than her husband.^[3]

Kafka was the eldest of six children.^[4] He had two younger brothers, Georg and Heinrich, who died at the ages of fifteen months and six months, respectively, before Kafka was seven, and three younger sisters, Gabriele ("Elli") (1889–1941), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1942), and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1891–1943). On business days, both parents were absent from the home. His mother helped to manage her husband's business and worked in it as much as 12 hours a day. The children were largely reared by a series of governesses and servants.

Kafka's sisters were sent with their families to the Łódź ghetto and died there or in concentration camps. Ottla was sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt and then on October 7, 1943 to the death camp at Auschwitz, where 1267 children and 51 guardians, including Ottla, were gassed to death at their arrival. ^[5]

Education

Kafka learned German as his first language, but he was also fluent in Czech. Later, Kafka also acquired some knowledge of French language and culture; one of his favorite authors was Flaubert. From 1889 to 1893, he attended the Deutsche Knabenschule, the boys' elementary school at the Masnı trh/Fleischmarkt (meat market), the street now known as Masná street. His Jewish education was limited to his Bar Mitzvah celebration at 13 and going to the synagogue four times a year with his father.^[6] After elementary school, he was admitted to the rigorous classics-oriented state gymnasium, Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, an academic secondary school with eight grade levels, where German was also the language of instruction, at Old Town Square, within the Kinsky Palace. He completed his Maturita exams in 1901.

Admitted to the German Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague, Kafka first studied chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law. This offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, who would become a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on June 18, 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.^[1]

Work

On November 1, 1907, he was hired at the Assicurazioni Generali, a huge Italian insurance company, where he worked for nearly a year. His correspondence, during that period, witnesses that he was unhappy with his working time schedule - from 8 p.m (20:00) until 6 a.m (06:00) - as it made it extremely difficult for him to concentrate on his writing. On July 15, 1908, he resigned, and two weeks later found more congenial employment with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. He often referred to his job as insurance officer as a "Brotberuf", literally "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills. However, he did not show any signs of indifference towards his job, as the several promotions that he received during his career prove that he was a hardworking employee. A little-known fact about this period, reported by Peter Drucker in Managing in the Next Society, is that Kafka invented the safety helmet. He received a medal for this invention in 1912 because it reduced Bohemian steel mill deaths to fewer than 25 per thousand employees. He was also given the task of compiling and composing the annual report and was reportedly quite proud of the results, sending copies to friends and family. In parallel, Kafka was also committed to his literary work. Together with his close friends Max Brod and Felix Weltsch these three were called "Der enge Prager Kreis", the close Prague circle.

In 1911, Karl Hermann, spouse of his sister Elli, proposed Kafka collaborate in the operation of an asbestos factory known as Prager Asbestwerke Hermann and Co. Kafka showed a positive attitude at first, dedicating much of his free time to the business. During that period, he also found interest and entertainment in the performances of Yiddish theatre, despite the misgivings of even close friends such as Max Brod, who usually supported him in everything else. Those performances also served as a starting point for his growing relationship with Judaism.

Later years

In 1912, at the home of his lifelong friend Max Brod, Kafka met Felice Bauer, who lived in Berlin and worked as a representative for a dictaphone company. Over the next five years they corresponded a great deal, met occasionally, and twice were engaged to be married. Their relationship finally ended in 1917.

In 1917, Kafka began to suffer from tuberculosis, which would require frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, most notably his sister Ottla. Despite his fear of being perceived as both physically and mentally repulsive, he impressed others with his boyish, neat, and austere good looks, a quiet and cool demeanor, obvious intelligence and dry sense of humor.^[7]

In the early 1920s he developed an intense relationship with Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenská. In 1923, he briefly moved to Berlin in the hope of distancing himself from his family's influence to concentrate on his writing. In Berlin, he lived with Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family, who was independent enough to have escaped her past in the ghetto. Dora became his lover, and influenced Kafka's interest in the Talmud.^[8]

It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered from clinical depression and social anxiety throughout his entire life . He also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains. He attempted to counteract all of this by a regimen of naturopathic treatments, such as a vegetarian diet and the consumption of large quantities of unpasteurized milk. However, Kafka's tuberculosis worsened; he returned to Prague, then went to Dr. Hoffmann sanatorium in Kierling near Vienna for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924, apparently from starvation. The condition of Kafka's throat made eating too painful for him, and since intravenous therapy had not been developed, there was no way to feed him (a fate resembling that of Gregor in the Metamorphosis and the main character of A Hunger Artist). His body was ultimately brought back to Prague where he was interred on June 11, 1924, in the New Jewish Cemetery (sector 21, row 14, plot 33) in Prague-Žižkov.

Personal views

Kafka maintained his indifference to formal religion throughout most of his life. Yet, while never depicting the characters in his stories as Jewish, he never tried to obfuscate his Jewish roots. Intellectually, Hasidism held a strong appeal for him, especially because of the value it places in transcendent, mystical experience. During the last ten years of his life, Kafka even professed an interest in moving to Palestine. The ethical and procedural dilemmas presented in "The Judgment," "The Stoker," "A Hunger Artist," and "A Country Doctor" all bear distinct traces of Kafka's interest in rabbinical teachings as they pertain to law and justice. In addition, many of Kafka's short stories bear striking similarities to Jewish folk tales and parables (Before the Law, for example) The humorously meticulous style of the argumentative narrator in "Josephine the Singer," on the other hand, shadows the rhetorical conventions of rabbinical discourse.^[9]

Literary work

Kafka published only a few short stories during his lifetime, a small part of his work, and never finished any of his novels (with the possible exception of The Metamorphosis, which some consider to be a short novel). His writing attracted little attention until after his death. Prior to his death, he instructed his friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy all of his manuscripts. His lover, Dora Diamant, partially executed his wishes, secretly keeping up to 20 notebooks and 35 letters until they were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933. An ongoing international search is being conducted for these missing Kafka papers. Brod overrode Kafka's instructions and instead oversaw the publication of most of his work in his possession, which soon began to attract attention and high critical regard.

All of Kafka's published works, except several letters he wrote in Czech to Milena Jesenská, were written in German.

Style of writing

Kafka often made extensive use of a trait special to the German language allowing for long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences then deliver an unexpected impact just before the period—that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of certain sentences in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence.^[10] Such constructions are not duplicable in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text.^[11] One such instance of a Kafka translator's quandary is demonstrated in the first sentence of The Metamorphosis.

Another virtually insurmountable problem facing the translator is how to deal with the author's intentional use of ambiguous terms or of words that have several meanings. An example is Kafka's use of the German noun in the final sentence of The Judgment. The sentence can be translated as: "At that moment an unending stream of traffic crossed over the bridge."^[12] What gives added weight to the obvious double meaning of Verkehr is Kafka's confession to his friend and biographer Max Brod that when he wrote that final line, he was thinking of "a violent ejaculation." In the English translation, of course, what can Verkehr be but "traffic"?^[13]

Critical interpretation

Many critics have tried to make sense of Kafka's works by interpreting them through certain schools of literary criticism such as modernism, magical realism, and so on.^[14] The apparent hopelessness and the absurdity that seem to permeate his works are considered emblematic of existentialism. Others have tried to locate a Marxist influence in his satirization of bureaucracy in pieces such as In the Penal Colony, The Trial, and The Castle,^[14] whereas others point to anarchism as an inspiration for Kafka's anti-bureaucratic viewpoint. Still others have interpreted his works through the lens of Judaism (Borges made a few perceptive remarks in this regard), through Freudianism^[14] (because of his familial struggles), or as allegories of a metaphysical quest for God (Thomas Mann was a proponent of this theory).

Themes of alienation and persecution are repeatedly emphasized, and the emphasis on this quality, notably in the work of Marthe Robert, partly inspired the counter-criticism of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who argued that there was much more to Kafka than the stereotype of a lonely figure writing out of anguish, and that his work was more deliberate, subversive, and more "joyful" than it appears to be.

Furthermore, an isolated reading of Kafka's work — focusing on the futility of his characters' struggling without the influence of any studies on Kafka's life was worthless — reveals the humor of Kafka. Kafka's work, in this sense, is not a written reflection of any of his own struggles, but a reflection of how people invent struggles.

Biographers have said that it was common for Kafka to read chapters of the books he was working on to his closest friends, and that those readings usually concentrated on the humorous side of his prose. Milan Kundera refers to the essentially surrealist humour of Kafka as a main predecessor of later artists such as Federico Fellini, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes and Salman Rushdie. For Márquez it was as he said the reading of Kafka's The Metamorphosis that showed him "that it was possible to write in a different way".

Publications and dates

Readers of Kafka should pay particular attention to the dates of the publications (whether German or translated) of his writing when choosing an edition to read.

Kafka died before preparing (in some cases even finishing) some of his writings for publication. Therefore, the novels The Castle (which stopped mid-sentence and had ambiguity on content), The Trial (chapters were unnumbered and some were incomplete) and Amerika (Kafka's original title was The Man who Disappeared) were all prepared for publishing by Max Brod. It appears Brod took a few liberties with the manuscript (moving chapters, changing the German and cleaning up the punctuation) and hence the original German text, that was not published, was altered. The editions by Brod are generally referred to as the Definitive Editions.

According to the publisher's note^[15] for The Castle (Schocken Books, 1998), Malcolm Pasley was able to get most of the Kafka's original handwritten work into the Oxford Bodleian Library in 1961. The text for The Trial was later acquired through auction and is stored at the German literary archives^[16] at Marbach, Germany (publisher's note, The Trial, Schocken Books, 1998).

Subsequently, Pasley headed a team (including Gerhard Neumann, Jost Schillemeit, and Jürgen Born) in reconstructing the German novels and S. Fischer Verlag republished them.^[17] Pasley was the editor for Das Schloß (The Castle), published in 1982, and Der Proceß (The Trial), published in 1990. Jost Schillemeit was the editor of Der Verschollene (Amerika) published in 1983. These are all called the 'Critical Editions' or the 'Fischer Editions'. The German critical text of these, and Kafka's other works, may be found online at The Kafka Project.^[18]

There is another Kafka Project based at San Diego State University, which began in 1998 as the official international search for Kafka's last writings. Consisting of 20 notebooks and 35 letters to Kafka's last companion, Dora Diamant (later, Dymant-Lask), this missing literary treasure was confiscated from her by the Gestapo in Berlin 1933. The Kafka Project's four-month search of government archives in Berlin in 1998 uncovered the confiscation order and other significant documents. In 2003, the Kafka Project discovered three original Kafka letters, written in 1923. Building on the search conducted by Max Brod and Klaus Wagenbach in the mid-1950s, the Kafka Project at SDSU has an advisory committee of international scholars and researchers, and is calling for volunteers who want to help solve a literary mystery.^[19]

Translations

There are two primary sources for the translations based on the two German editions. The earliest English translations were by Edwin and Willa Muir and published by Alfred A. Knopf. These editions were widely published and spurred the late-1940's surge in Kafka's popularity in the United States. Later editions (notably the 1954 editions) had the addition of the deleted text translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. These are known 'Definitive Editions'. They translated both The Trial, Definitive and The Castle, Definitive among other writings. Definitive Editions are generally accepted to have a number of biases and to be dated in interpretation.

After Pasley and Schillemeit completed their recompilation of the German text, the new translations were completed and published -- The Castle, Critical by Mark Harman (Schocken Books, 1998), The Trial, Critical by Breon Mitchell (Schocken Books, 1998) and Amerika: The Man Who Disappeared by Michael Hoffman (New Directions Publishing, 2004). These editions are often noted as being based on the restored text.

Legacy

• Franz Kafka has a museum dedicated to his work in Prague, Czech Republic.
• The term "Kafkaesque" is widely used and misused to describe concepts, situations, and ideas which are reminiscent of Kafka's works, particularly The Trial and "The Metamorphosis".
• In Mexico, the phrase "Si Franz Kafka fuera mexicano, sería costumbrista" (If Franz Kafka were Mexican, he would be a Costumbrista writer) is commonly used in newspapers, blogs, and online forums to tell how hopeless and absurd the situation in the country is.^[20]

Kafka in Literature

• Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote a short story called "A Friend of Kafka," which was about a Yiddish actor called Jacques Kohn who said he knew Franz Kafka. In this story, according to Jacques Kohn, Kafka believed in the Golem, a legendary creature from Jewish folklore.^[21]
• Kafka Americana by Jonathan Lethem and Carter Scholz is a collection of stories based on Kafka's life and works.

Graphic Novels

• Give It Up! And Other Short Stories by Franz Kafka - A selection of nine short stories by Kafka illustrated by Peter Kuper. ComicsLit, 2005 ISBN 1-5616-3449-2
• The Metamorphosis - Also illustrated by Peter Kuper. Three Rivers Press, 2004. ISBN 1-4000-5299-8
• Introducing Kafka - Written by David Zane Mairowitz and illustrated by Robert Crumb. An illustrated biography which includes comic adaptations of some of Kafka's most famous works including The Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist, In The Penal Colony, The Judgment and brief sketches of the three novels. New York: Totem Books, 1993. (Part of the "Introducing ..." series by Totem Books. ISBN 1-8404-6122-5 Republished as R. Crumb's Kafka by ibooks graphic novels, 2005. ISBN 1-5968-7812-6 and as Kafka by Fantagraphics Books, 2007 ISBN 1-5609-7806-6).
• Il Processo di Franz Kafka an Italian adaptation of The Trial made by Guido Crepax for Edizioni Piemme.

Kafka in Film

For a full list of films The IMDb filmography

Kafka's Life

• Kafka (1991) Jeremy Irons stars as the eponymous author. Written by Lem Dobbs and directed by Steven Soderbergh, the movie mixes his life and fiction providing a semi-biographical presentation of Kafka's life and works. The story concerns Kafka investigating the disappearance of one of his work colleagues. The plot takes Kafka through many of the writer's own works, most notably The Castle and The Trial.
• : an animated film by Piotr Dumała

Novels

• The Trial (1962) Orson Welles, wrote and directed this adaptation of the novel starring Anthony Perkins. In a 1962 BBC Interview with Huw Wheldon, Orson Welles noted, "Say what you like, but The Trial is the best film I have ever made".
• Klassenverhältnisse Class Relations (1984) Directed by the experimental filmmaking duo of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet based on Kafka's novel Amerika
• The Trial (1993) Starring Kyle MacLachlan as Joseph K. with Anthony Hopkins in a cameo role as the priest as a strictly faithful adaptation with a screenplay by playwright Harold Pinter.
• by Michael Haneke

Metamorphosis

• : an animated short by Caroline Leaf
• Franz Kafka's 'It's a Wonderful Life' (1993) is a short Oscar winning film written and directed by Peter Capaldi and starring Richard E. Grant as Kafka. The film blends "Metamorphosis" with Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.
• The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka (1993) by Carlos Atanes, at YouTube.
• Video "Human Cockroach" (2007) - A comical look at a man who insists he's undergone The Metamorphosis .

Short Stories

• Zoetrope : an experimental avant-garde short film by Charlie Deaux, . Adaptation of "In the Penal Colony".
• : an animated feature by Tom Gibbons
• ^[22] Adaptation of "A Country Doctor".

Kafka in Theatre

• Milan Richter, Kafka's Hell-Paradise, 2006 (translated from Slovak by E. Osers, 2007), a play based on Kafka's aphorisms, dreams, and his engagements and disengagements.
• Milan Richter, Kafka's Second Life, 2007 (translated from Slovak by E. Osers, 2007), a play depicting a Kafkaesque prolongation of Kafka's life until he becomes 78, his work being destroyed by Max Brod.
• Alan Bennett, Kafka's Dick, 1986, a darkly comic play in which the ghosts of Kafka, his father Hermann, and Max Brod arrive at the home of an English insurance clerk (and Kafka afficianado) and his wife.

Bibliography

for a full list see Bibliography of Franz Kafka

Short stories

• Description of a Struggle (Beschreibung eines Kampfes, 1904-1905)
• Wedding Preparations in the Country (Hochzeitsvorbereitungen auf dem Lande, 1907-1908)
• Contemplation (Betrachtung, 1904-1912)
• The Judgment (Das Urteil - September 22-23, 1912)
• The Stoker
• In the Penal Colony (In der Strafkolonie, October 1914)
• The Village Schoolmaster (The Giant Mole) (Der Dorfschullehrer or Der Riesenmaulwurf, 1914-1915)
• Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor (Blumfeld, ein älterer Junggeselle, 1915)
• The Warden of the Tomb (Der Gruftwächter, 1916-1917), the only play Kafka wrote
• The Hunter Gracchus (Der Jäger Gracchus, 1917)
• The Great Wall of China (Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer, 1917)
• A Report to an Academy (Ein Bericht für eine Akademie, 1917)
• A Country Doctor (Ein Landarzt, 1919)
• A Message from the Emperor (Eine kaiserliche Botschaft, 1919)
• An Old Leaf (Ein altes Blatt, 1919)
• The Refusal (Die Abweisung, 1920)
• A Hunger Artist (Ein Hungerkünstler, 1924)
• Investigations of a Dog (Forschungen eines Hundes, 1922)
• A Little Woman (Eine kleine Frau, 1923)
• First Sorrow
• The Burrow (Der Bau, 1923-1924)
• Josephine the Singer, or The Mouse Folk (Josephine, die Sängerin, oder Das Volk der Mäuse, 1924)

Many collections of the stories have been published, and they include:

• . New York: Schocken Books, 1948.
• The Complete Stories, (ed. Nahum N. Glatzer). New York: Schocken Books, 1971.
• The Basic Kafka. New York: Pocket Books, 1979.
• The Sons. New York: Schocken Books, 1989.
• The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories. New York: Schocken Books, 1995.
• Contemplation. Twisted Spoon Press, 1998.
• Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Penguin Classics, 2007

Novellas

• The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung - November-December 1915)

Novels

• The Trial (Der Prozeß - 1925) (includes short story Before the Law)
• The Castle (Das Schloß - 1926)
• Amerika (Amerika or Der Verschollene - 1927)

Diaries and notebooks

• Diaries 1910-1923 http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vermeer/287/diary1910.htm#
• The Blue Octavo Notebooks

Letters

• Letter to His Father
• Letters to Felice
• Letters to Ottla
• Letters to Milena
• Letters to Family, Friends, and Editors

Works about Kafka

• Brod, Max. Franz Kafka: A Biography. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995. ISBN 0-306-80670-3
• Brod, Max. The biography of Franz Kafka, tr. from the German by G. Humphreys Roberts. London: Secker & Warburg, 1947. OCLC 2771397
• Calasso, Roberto. K. Knopf, 2005. ISBN: 1-4000-4189-9
• Citati, Pietro, Kafka, 1987. ISBN 0-7859-2173-7
• Coots, Steve. Franz Kafka (Beginner's Guide). Headway, 2002, ISBN 0-340-84648-8
• Deleuze, Gilles & Félix Guattari. Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (Theory and History of Literature, Vol 30). Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1986. ISBN 0-8166-1515-2
• Greenberg, Martin, The Terror of Art: Kafka and Modern Literature. New York, Basic Books, 1968. ISBN 0-465-08415-X
• Hayman, Ronald. K, a Biography of Kafka. London: Phoenix Press, 2001.ISBN 1-84212-415-3
• Janouch, Gustav. Conversations with Kafka. New York: New Directions Books, second edition 1971. (Translated by Goronwy Rees.)ISBN 0-8112-0071-X
• Murray, Nicholas. Kafka. New Haven: Yale, 2004.
• Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. New York : Vintage Books, 1985. ISBN 0-374-52335-5
• Thiher, Allen (ed.). Franz Kafka: A Study of the Short Fiction (Twayne's Studies in Short Fiction, No. 12). ISBN 0-8057-8323-7
• Video "Human Cockroach" (2007) - A comical look at a man who insists he's undergone The Metamorphosis .

Trivia

• In a letter to his friend and publisher Kurt Wolff, Kafka wrote that he wished to include "The Judgment," "The Stoker", and "The Metamorphosis" in one volume under the title The Sons. This letter is dated April 4, 1913—well before he had written either "The Stoker" or "The Metamorphosis."^[23]
• Kafka played an important role in the development of the civilian hard hat or safety helmet, as a young bureaucrat and insurer.
• David Lynch and Robin Williams have cited Kafka as an influence upon their work.
• In the animated show Home Movies, Duane and his band write and perform a rock opera based on Franz Kafka's life and his work Metamorphosis.

See also

• Asteroid 3412 Kafka, named after the author.
• Max Brod
• Felix Weltsch
• List of famous Austrians
• List of Austrian writers
• Kafka on the Shore
• Franz Kafka Prize

Notes

1. ^ (Spanish)Contijoch, Francesc Miralles (2000) "Franz Kafka". Oceano Grupo Editorial, S.A. Barcelona. ISBN 84-494-1811-9.
2. ^ Franz Kafka's Letter to his father www.kafka-franz.com
3. ^ Gilman, Sander L. (2005) "Franz Kafka". Reaktion Books Ltd. London, UK. p.20-21. ISBN 1-88187-264-5.
4. ^ Hamalian ([1975], 3).
5. ^ Danuta Czech: Kalendarz wydarzeń w KL Auschwitz, Oświęcim 1992, p. 534. In the archives of the camp a list with the names of the guardians was preserved.
6. ^ Franz Kafka Biography www.kafka-franz.com
7. ^ Ryan McKittrick speaks with director Dominique Serrand and Gideon Lester about Amerika www.amrep.org
8. ^ Lothar Hempel www.atlegerhardsen.com
9. ^ Kafka (1996, xiv–xv).
10. ^ The Awful German Language. An Essay by Mark Twain. Accessed Feb-21-2007. Mark Twain demonstrates how the verb in German can be transposed to the end of a sentence, leaving the reader unaware of what activity is actually going on until the final word, through his translation of the German sentence "Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehüllten jetzt sehr ungenirt nach der neusten Mode gekleideten Regierungsräthin begegnet" into "But when he, upon the street, the (in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed) government counselor's wife met."
11. ^ Kafka (1996, xi).
12. ^ Kafka (1996, 75).
13. ^ Kafka (1996, xii).
14. ^ Franz Kafka 1883 – 1924 www.coskunfineart.com
15. ^ A Kafka For The 21st Century by Arthur Samuelson, publisher, Schocken Books www.jhom.com
16. ^ (German) Herzlich Willkommen www.dla-marbach.de
17. ^ Stepping into Kafka’s head, Jeremy Adler, Times Literary Supplement, Oct. 13, 1995 ([1]
18. ^ The Kafka Project - Kafka's Works in German According to the Manuscript www.kafka.org
19. ^ Sources: Kafka, by Nicolas Murray, pages 367, 374; Kafka's Last Love, by Kathi Diamant; "Summary of the Results of the Kafka Project Berlin Research June 1-September 1998" published in December 1998 Kafka Katern, quarterly of the Kafka Circle of the Netherlands. More information is available at [2]
20. ^ Aquella, Daniel (2006-11-22). México kafkiano y costumbrista. Daquella manera:Paseo personal por inquietudes culturales, sociales y lo que tengamos a bien obrar.. Retrieved on 2007-2-16.
21. ^ Bashevis Singer, Isaac (1970). A Friend of Kafka, and Other Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 311. ISBN 0-37415-880-0. 
22. ^ (German) Menschenkörper movie website www.menschenkoerper.de
23. ^ Kafka (1996, 218).

References

• Corngold, Stanley (1972). Introduction to The Metamorphosis, reissue edition. Bantam Classics. ISBN 0-553-21369-5.
• Hamalian, Leo (Ed.). [1974]. Franz Kafka: A Collection of Criticism. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-025702-7.
• Kafka, Franz (1996). The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, trans. Donna Freed. New York: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 1-56619-969-7.
• Paul Heller: Franz Kafka. Wissenschaft und Wissenschaftskritik. Tuebingen: Stauffenburg 1989. ISBN 3-923-72140-4.

Online texts

• Works by Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
• The Kafka Project Project initiated in 1998 with the purpose of publishing online all Kafka texts in German, in the form of the manuscripts

External links

• kafka-franz.com Biography with photos
• Das Schloss The Modern Word's Kafka site, with an in-depth biography and various links to reviews, articles, and other Kafka info
• The Kafka Project
• The Trials of Franz Kafka by Kelly Grovier in The Observer
• Kafka Project The SDSU Kafka Project in California-the ongoing search for Kafka's missing writings stolen by the Gestapo in 1933.
• The Kafka Society Of America
• Franz Kafka Online - The Works and Life of Franz Kafka
• Essay on Kafka from Kenyon Review
• Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
• Kafka Critics
• Kafka at the Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database including brief, insightful summaries and essays of several of his stories
• Vladimir Nabokov's lecture on "The Metamorphosis"
• Kafka in Film Internet Movie Database listing of Soderbergh's film, Kafka.
• Franz Kafka's Album, Franz Kafka receives a tribute in this album of "recomposed photographs".
• Franz Kafka and Libertarian Socialism A look at Kafka and anarchism.
• The Diaries of Franz Kafka serialised as a weblog
• Franz Kafka at the Internet Movie Database
• Kafka bibliography, with dates and details of original publications. (German)
• Kafka's works: text, concordances and frequency list
• 1991 ReadAudio interview with Federick Karl, author of Franz Kafka: Representative Man by Don Swaim
• Kafka 'Bookweb' on literary website The Ledge, with suggestions for further reading.
• Laughing with Kafka by David Foster Wallace

•  • [ e] The works of Franz Kafka
Novels	The Trial • The Castle • Amerika
Short stories, 1904-1912	Description of a Struggle • Wedding Preparations in the Country • The Judgment • Contemplation • The Stoker • The Metamorphosis
Short stories, 1914-1917	In the Penal Colony • The Village Schoolmaster (The Giant Mole) • Before the Law • Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor • The Warden of the Tomb • A Country Doctor • The Hunter Gracchus • The Great Wall of China • A Message from the Emperor • A Report to an Academy • A Dream • Up in the Gallery • A Fratricide • The Next Village • A Visit to a Mine • Jackals and Arabs • The Bridge • The Bucket Rider • The New Advocate • An Old Manuscript • The Knock at the Manor Gate • Eleven Sons • My Neighbor • A Crossbreed (A Sport) • The Cares of a Family Man
Short stories, 1917-1923	The Refusal • A Hunger Artist • Investigations of a Dog • A Little Woman • The Burrow • Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk • A Common Confusion • The Truth about Sancho Panza • The Silence of the Sirens • Prometheus • The City Coat of Arms • Poseidon • Fellowship • At Night • The Problem of Our Laws • The Conscription of Troops • The Test • The Vulture • The Helmsman • The Top • A Little Fable • Home-Coming • First Sorrow • The Departure • Advocates • The Married Couple • Give it Up! • On Parables
Diaries and notebooks	The Diaries 1910-1923 • The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Letters	Letter to His Father • Letters to Felice • Letters to Ottla • Letters to Milena • Letters to Family, Friends, and Editors
Collections	The Complete Stories • The Sons • • Parables and Paradoxes • The Great Wall of China • Dearest Father

•  • [ e] Adaptations of works by Franz Kafka
Feature films	The Trial (USA, 1962) • Class Relations (adaptation of Amerika, Germany, 1984) • Kafka (USA, 1991) • The Trial (USA, 1993) • The Castle (Germany, 1997)
Short films	Metamorphosis (Germany, 1975) • Metamorphosis (Sweden, 1976) • The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (Canada, 1977) • Metamorphosis (UK, 1987) • Franz Kafka (Poland, 1992) • Description of a Struggle (USA, 1993) • Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life (UK, 1993) • Zoetrope (adaptation of "In the Penal Colony", USA, 1999) • The Hunger Artist (USA, 2002) • Metamorphosis (Russia, 2002) • Human Body (adaptation of "A Country Doctor", Germany, 2004)
Literature	Kafka Americana
Graphic novels and comics	Give It Up! • The Metamorphosis • Introducing Kafka • Il Processo di Franz Kafka

Persondata
NAME	Kafka, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	German Czech novelist
DATE OF BIRTH	July 3 1883(1883--)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Prague, Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH	May 3 1924
PLACE OF DEATH	Vienna, Austria

Kafka may refer to:

• Kafka (film), a 1991 film written by Lem Dobbs and directed by Steven Soderbergh
• 3412 Kafka, an asteroid
• Kafk (Kafka) Sunbeam, a fictional character in the manga and anime series Zatch Bell!

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July 3 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

• 324 - Battle of Adrianople Constantine I defeats Licinius, who flees to Byzantium.

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18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1850s  1860s  1870s  - 1880s -  1890s  1900s  1910s
1880 1881 1882 - 1883 - 1884 1885 1886

:
Subjects:     Archaeology - Architecture -
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MottoPraga Caput Rei publicae |- class="mergedrow" title="Nickname(s)" | colspan="2" style="text-align: center;" | NicknameCity of a Hundred Spires |- class="mergedrow"

Country  Czech Republic
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Ancient times
Hallstatt culture
Noricum
March of Austria
Babenberger
Privilegium Minus
Habsburg era
House of Habsburg
Holy Roman Empire
Archduchy of Austria
Habsburg Monarchy
Austrian Empire
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May 3 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

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20th century - 21st century
1890s  1900s  1910s  - 1920s -  1930s  1940s  1950s
1921 1922 1923 - 1924 - 1925 1926 1927

Year 1924 (MCMXXIV
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Vienna (German: Wien [viːn], see also ) is the capital of Austria, and also one of the nine States of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primate city; with a population of about 1.
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Anthem
Land der Berge, Land am Strome   (German)
Land of Mountains, Land on the River
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Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as: "A person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, where the employer has
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Nationality is a relationship between a person and their state of origin, culture, association, affiliation and/or loyalty. Nationality affords the state jurisdiction over the person, and affords the person the protection of the state.
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Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim (Standard Hebrew: sing. אַשְׁכֲּנָזִי, pl.
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There was a large and thriving community of Jews, both religious and secular, in Czechoslovakia before World War II. Many perished after the Holocaust. Today, nearly all of the survivors inter-married and assimilated into the Czech and Slovak society.
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Bohemia (Czech: Čechy^[1]; German: (help info )
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Ancient times
Hallstatt culture
Noricum
March of Austria
Babenberger
Privilegium Minus
Habsburg era
House of Habsburg
Holy Roman Empire
Archduchy of Austria
Habsburg Monarchy
Austrian Empire
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A literary genre is a genre of literature, that is "a loose set of criteria for a category of literary composition", depending on literary technique, tone, or content.

The most general genres in literature are (in chronological order) epic, tragedy,^[1]
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novel (from, Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for "new", "news", or "short story of something new") is today a long prose narrative set out in writing.
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The short story is a literary genre. It is usually fictional narrative prose and tends to be more concise and to the point than longer works of fiction, such as novellas (in the modern sense of this term) and novels.
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This is a list of modern literary movements: that is, movements after the Renaissance. These terms, helpful for curricula or anthologies, evolved over time to group writers who are often loosely related.
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Modernism describes a series of reforming cultural movements in art and architecture, music, literature and the applied arts which emerged in the three decades before 1914.
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Existentialism is a philosophical movement which claims that individual human beings create the meanings and essence of their own lives.

It is a reaction against more traditional philosophies, such as rationalism and empiricism, which sought to discover an ultimate order in
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Surrealism
Surrealism and film
Surrealism and music
Surrealist Manifesto
Surrealist techniques
Surrealist games
Surrealist humor
Surrealism^[1]
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Magic realism (or magical realism) is an artistic genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise realistic setting.

As used today the term is broadly descriptive rather than critically rigorous.
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Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher who believed that the will to live is the fundamental reality and that this will, being a constant striving, is insatiable and ultimately yields only suffering.
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Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (IPA: [ˈsɶːɐn ˈkʰiɐ̯g̊əˌg̊ɒːˀ], but usually Anglicized as
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Fyodor Dostoevsky

Born: November 11 1821(1821--)
Moscow, Russian Empire
Died: January 9 1881 (aged 61)
Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Occupation: Novelist
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Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens is acclaimed as one of history's greatest novelists
Born: 7 January 1812(1812--)
Portsmouth, England

Died: 9 May 1870 (aged 58)
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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15, 1844 – August 25, 1900) (IPA: [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvilhelm ˈniːtʃə]) was a nineteenth-century German philosopher.
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Albert Camus (IPA: [al'bɛʁ ka'my]) (November 7, 1913 – January 4, 1960) was a French author and philosopher who won the Nobel prize in 1957.
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Federico Fellini

Born January 20 1920(1920--)
Rimini, Italy
Died September 31 1993 (aged 73)
Rome, Italy

Spouse(s) Giulietta Masina (1921-1994)

Awards
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