Trial (Kafka)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 3, 1888
• Where—Prague, Austria-Hungary
• Death—3 June, 1924
• Where—Kierling (near Vienna), Austria
• Education—Doctorate of Law, Charles-
   Ferdinand University of Prague


Franz Kafka was an influential German-language author of novels and short stories. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century. The term "Kafkaesque" has become part of the English language.

Most of Kafka's writing, including the large body of his unfinished work, was published posthumously.

Background
Franz Kafka was born into a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Prague (now the Czech Republic). His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman" 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." Hermann was the fourth child of Jacob Kafka, a shochet or ritual slaughterer, 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 Lowy, a prosperous brewer in Podebrady, and was better educated than her husband.

Franz was the eldest of six children. He had two younger brothers: Georg and Heinrich, who died at the ages of fifteen months and seven months, respectively, before Franz was seven; and three younger sisters, Gabriele ("Ellie") (1889–1944), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1944) and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943). On business days, both parents were absent from the home. Franz's mother helped to manage her husband's business and worked in it as many as 12 hours a day. The children were largely reared by a series of governesses and servants. Kafka's relationship with his father was troubled, as described in the "Letter to His Father" in which he complained of being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character.

Education
Admitted to the 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, 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 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the Civil and criminal courts.

Employment
On 1 November 1907, he was hired at the Assicurazioni Generali, an 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 a.m. (8:00) until 6 p.m. (18:00)—as it made it extremely difficult for him to concentrate on his writing.

On 15 July 1908, he resigned, and two weeks later found more congenial employment with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. The job involved investigating personal injury to industrial workers, such as lost fingers or limbs, and assessing compensation. Industrial accidents of this kind were commonplace at this time. Management professor Peter Drucker credits Kafka with developing the first civilian hard hat while he was employed at the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute, but this is not supported by any document from his employer.

His father often referred to his son's job as insurance officer as a "Brotberuf," literally "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills. While Kafka often claimed that he despised the job, he was a diligent and capable employee. 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.

During this time, 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-knit Prague circle, which was part of a broader Prague Circle, a loosely knit group of German-Jewish writers who contributed to the culturally fertile soil of Prague from the 1880s till after World War I.

Later years
In 1912, at Max Brod's home, 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 were engaged twice. Their relationship finally ended in 1917.

That same year, Kafka began to suffer from tuberculosis, which required 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.

From 1920 Kafka developed an intense relationship with Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenska. In July 1923, throughout a vacation to Graal-Muritz on the Baltic Sea, he met Dora Diamant and 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 Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family, who was independent enough to have escaped her past in the ghetto. She became his lover, and influenced Kafka's interest in the Talmud.

Kafka's tuberculosis worsened and he returned to Prague. He went to Dr. Hoffmann's sanatorium in Kierling near Vienna for treatment, where he died on 3 June 1924, apparently from starvation. The condition of Kafka's throat made eating too painful for him, and since parenteral nutrition had not yet been developed, there was no way to feed him. He was one month shy of his 41st birthday.

(Kafka's sisters perished during During World War II. The Nazi Germans deported them with their families to the Lodz Ghetto where they died. Ottla, the oldest, was sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. On 7 October 1943 she was transferred to the death camp at Auschwitz.)

Literary career
Kafka's writing attracted little attention until after his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories. He finished the novella "The Metamorphosis," but never finished any of his full length novels. Kafka left his published and unpublished work to his friend and literary executor Max Brod with explicit instructions that it should be destroyed on his (Kafka's) death; Kafka wrote: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread."

Brod decided to ignore this request and went on to publish the novels and collected works between 1925 and 1935. The remaining papers were consigned to suitcases which he carried with him when he fled to Palestine in 1939. (Kafka's lover, Dora Diamant, also ignored 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, in fact, would oversee the publication of most of Kafka's work in his possession, which soon began to attract attention and high critical regard.

Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling Kafka's notebooks into any chronological order as Kafka was known to start writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last page towards the first, etc.

All of Kafka's published works, except several letters he wrote in Czech to Milena Jesenska, were written in German. (Adapted from Wikipedia.)