Franz Kafka, the embodiment of anxiety and solitude. His life was filled with the anguish of family, love, work, and creation. We follow the life of this existentialist literary giant.
Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, Czech Republic, as the third son of Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), a merchant, and Julie Löwy (1856–1934), in a Jewish middle-class family. In Czech, “Kavka” means crow. Because his two older brothers died young, Franz Kafka lived his entire life conscious of his role as the eldest son. Among his parents and three younger sisters, Eli, Valli, and Otla, he was closest to the youngest, Otla. Franz Kafka’s entire family met a tragic end in Nazi concentration camps in 1942.
Prague, where Franz Kafka was born, oppressed him in multiple ways at the time. Until the age of thirty-five, he was a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; thereafter, he became a Czech national. Yet he was Jewish, and though Czech, he was educated in German—the language of the dominant power—at his father’s insistence. German-speaking residents of Prague constituted only 7.5 percent of the population, yet they controlled universities, technical colleges, concert halls, five high schools, four vocational high schools, and a powerful press. However, due to the geographical limitation of not being in Germany, Franz Kafka’s German vocabulary was not rich, and his sentences lacked vitality. Moreover, the oppression from his family and the era surrounding him drove him deep into his inner world. Franz Kafka was rejected by the Germans who dominated Prague’s upper echelons because he was Jewish, and by his fellow Jews because he opposed Zionism. This environment caused Franz Kafka to despise society’s oppressive structures and dream of an ideal society free from oppression. He drafted a manifesto advocating for the rights of the working class, read the works of Kropotkin, a pioneer of anarchism, and began participating in socialist circles.
His father was born into poverty in the small village of Wossek in southern Bohemia. After Jews gained freedom of residence, he moved to Prague, starting as a peddler of sundries before becoming a self-made textile wholesaler. Though he called himself an “assimilated Jew,” he only reluctantly observed the Jewish community’s worship and rituals, so Franz Kafka was German in language and culture. While Franz Kafka felt intimidated by his imposing father throughout his life, he felt a strong kinship with his mother’s lineage—spiritual, intellectual, full of eccentrics, and of a delicate temperament. His mother was a quiet, gentle woman with a sensitive nature and a sharp mind, a truly wise woman. Yet, like her husband, she scarcely understood her son’s obsession with writing, an activity that brought him no profit and might even harm his health. Amidst his parents’ lack of understanding, Franz Kafka recorded his dreamlike inner life. He was introverted and frail by nature. Consequently, he was a boy with a weak constitution, cast in a shadow of guilt, yet he was drawn to wholesome things, revered the grandeur of nature, and did not have a tendency toward the bizarre or pathological.
When Franz completed four years of elementary school, his father, seeing no merchant’s aptitude in him, sent him to a German-language humanities secondary school. It was here that Franz Kafka met several important friends who would remain with him throughout his life. They were Rudolf Illowý, who imparted socialist knowledge to Franz Kafka; the Zionist Hugo Bergmann; Ewald Felix Přibram, the son of an insurance company president who later recommended Franz Kafka to the Workers’ Accident Insurance Company; and Oskar Pollak.
Particularly the highly precocious Oskar Pollak exerted a profound influence on Franz Kafka’s art and philosophy, serving as a bridge between the isolated Franz Kafka and the wider world. At university, Franz Kafka initially focused on literature and art history lectures but ultimately chose law as his major. He could not defy the expectations of his parents and family. He had already set his heart on literature and writing since high school. The works he wrote then, along with his diaries, disappeared—presumably destroyed by him.
He was a model student both at the German elementary school and at the strict German Gymnasium, which cultivated scholarly elites. However, Franz Kafka was deeply interested in the Czech language and possessed profound knowledge of Czech literature. While his teachers held him in high regard and liked him, internally he rebelled against this authoritarian system, the mechanical rote learning, and the curriculum that dehumanized the humanities by emphasizing classical languages.
The image of his father cast a dark shadow not only over Franz Kafka’s existence but also over his work, indeed emerging as the most striking character type in his literary world. His father, a coarse, pragmatic, and arrogant shopkeeper and patriarch who worshipped nothing but material success and social advancement, appeared in Franz Kafka’s imagination as a member of a race of giants—a terrifying, awe-inspiring yet repulsive tyrant. His Oedipus complex toward his father can be glimpsed in the “Letter to His Father,” written in 1919, though he never actually sent this letter to his father. Here, Franz Kafka confesses that, thanks to his overbearing father who instilled in him the belief that he was incapable, he failed at the ordinary life of marriage and fatherhood, escaping instead into literature. He felt his father had crushed his will to live, and the work “The Judgment” directly reflects this conflict with his father. Franz Kafka’s novels, written in concise prose, depict this desperate struggle against an overwhelming force. This unknown power, like in The Trial, maliciously torments and interrogates its victims, or, like in The Castle, renders futile the protagonist’s efforts to have his existence acknowledged.
Franz Kafka ultimately enrolled at Charles Ferdinand University in Prague in 1901, majoring in law, as his father wished. However, this was merely a choice made to fulfill his father’s desire; he had not the slightest intention of becoming a judge or lawyer. During his university years, Franz Kafka was deeply moved by the works of Hesse and Flaubert, and fascinated by Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kröger. He read Mann’s works published in the literary journal Neue Rundschau with keen interest. He also enjoyed the works of Carossa, Hebel, Fontane, and Stifter. Later, he admired Balzac, resonated with the tragic writer Kleist, and in his final years, avidly read the works of the philosopher Kierkegaard.
In his youth, Franz Kafka declared himself a socialist or atheist and expressed clear hostility toward established society. Even as an adult, he consistently showed sympathy for socialists, albeit limited, attended Czech anarchist gatherings before World War I, and in his later years showed distinct interest and sympathy for socialist Zionism. However, he was essentially passive and maintained a politically detached stance. As a Jew, he was isolated within Prague’s German society, and as a modern intellectual, he was also alienated from his Jewish heritage. He sympathized with Czech political and cultural aspirations, but because he was assimilated into German culture, this sympathy remained suppressed and unspoken.
Thus socially isolated and deprived of a foundation for life, Franz Kafka lived a personally unhappy existence throughout his life. Compared to his Prague peers, he was a lonely writer recognized only by a few friends, neither particularly successful nor well-known. Like Kleist, he was not properly recognized by literary critics of his time and did not attempt to adapt to the prevailing trends of the era. Nevertheless, he maintained steady friendships with some German-Jewish intellectuals and literary figures in Prague. Max Brod, whom he met in 1902 during his university years, became his closest friend and the one who cared most deeply for him. Brod is recognized as a pioneer of Neo-Realism and Expressionism in Berlin’s literary circles from 1906 to 1915, leading new styles and revitalizing the Berlin literary scene. He not only published his own early poems, essays, and short stories in the magazine Die Aktion but also introduced Prague writers like Oskar Baum, O. Pick, Franz Kafka, and Franz Werfel to Berlin’s literary circles. Franz Kafka often read his work to him. Ultimately, Max Brod, who encouraged, rescued, and interpreted Franz Kafka’s writings, later emerged as his most influential biographer.
After barely earning his doctorate in law in 1906, Franz Kafka completed six-month judicial internships in both civil and criminal courts. However, he abandoned plans to become a judge or lawyer and joined a general insurance company in 1907. Yet, the work there was so grueling he could scarcely find time to write fiction. He left this company and in 1908 took a position as a legal advisor at the quasi-state-owned Workers’ Accident Insurance Company of the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague. He remained there until 1917, when he had to take sick leave due to tuberculosis. After retiring, he received a pension for two years but ultimately passed away. Franz Kafka’s primary duties here included drafting rebuttals to corporate objections, creating promotional materials for the Workers’ Accident Insurance Company, appearing in court as a lawyer to defend the insurance company, and conducting supervisory visits to factories in the northern industrial district of Reichenberg. The reason Franz Kafka worked at this insurance company for so long was that he found it rewarding to protect workers’ rights and the working conditions were favorable, including finishing work at 2 PM. He threw himself into his work with dedication at this job, which was difficult for a Jew to obtain at the time. Contrary to the dark imagery in his works, Franz Kafka was a sincere, intellectual, and humorous person. His boss recognized his abilities, and his colleagues liked him.
Franz Kafka lived a strictly disciplined life to carve out time for writing. He worked at the company from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., then returned home and slept from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. He would then take a one-hour walk, either with friends or alone, and have dinner with his family. He would then begin writing around 11 PM, continuing until 2 or 3 AM, or even later. At this time, working conditions in Europe were extremely harsh. Through his business trips, Franz Kafka directly experienced the ruthlessness of bureaucratic institutions, the harsh treatment of workers, and their miserable lives, gaining a deep insight into the inner workings of the capitalist world. Drawing on these experiences, he savagely satirized the true nature of bureaucratic organizations in The Castle and the essence of judicial systems in The Trial. Moreover, he participated in protest movements and attended gatherings of social revolutionaries. Klaus Wagenbach noted that Franz Kafka was the only writer of his time who stood on the side of the common people.
In August 1912, Franz Kafka began a relationship with Felice Bauer and fell in love with her, which profoundly influenced his creative work. He completed “The Judgment” during the night of September 22nd to the early morning of the 23rd of that same year. In October, he read aloud to Brot the story “The Stoker,” which corresponds to Chapter 1 of *Amerika*. In November, he completed “Der Onkel,” corresponding to Chapter 2 of Amerika, and “Die Verwandlung.” He proposed to Bauer in August 1913 and formally became engaged to her in Berlin in early summer 1914, but broke off the engagement in July. Marriage was a dilemma for him, both a salvation and a terrifyingly impossible ordeal. His love, as Canetti noted, was “another lawsuit,” a process of hesitation and delay, a trial for justification. Around this time, Franz Kafka was nearly finished writing The Trial and completing Amerika. Suffering from headaches and insomnia, he immersed himself in the Bible, works by Strindberg, Dostoevsky, Kropotkin, and Kierkegaard. After breaking off his engagement to Bauer, Franz Kafka began a relationship in early November 1913 with her friend, the sexually alluring Grete Bloch, who bore him a son the following year. However, the child died in 1921 at the age of seven, and Bloch was later arrested by the Nazis, meeting a tragic end in a concentration camp.
On August 9, 1917, Franz Kafka coughed up blood. He initially refused medical examination, attributing it to psychological causes. He was eventually advised to enter a tuberculosis sanatorium but rejected this, instead going to recuperate in Zürau, where his youngest sister Otla lived. The coughing up of blood was a sign of Franz Kafka’s inner fragmentation. His illness provided him with another opportunity to justify his own mental division and hesitation. The situation in the village and the appearance of the peasants in The Castle draw inspiration from the climate and geographical environment of Zürau, where he stayed. As a result of this extended convalescence, his health improved. He became engaged to Bauer just before he began coughing up blood again in 1917, but broke off the engagement once more around Christmas that same year. Franz Kafka remained in Zürau until the summer of 1918, then returned to Prague to organize the manuscript of “A Country Doctor,” publishing it the following year as a book alongside “In the Penal Colony.”
After breaking off the engagement with Bauer, Franz Kafka stayed in Schelesen, north of Prague, in November 1918, and became engaged to Julie Wohryzek in June 1919. However, Franz Kafka’s father opposed the marriage because her father was a shoemaker, leading to another broken engagement. She later died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Prague. In September 1919, Franz Kafka wrote “Letter to His Father” to assert his independent stance toward his father.
In 1920, Franz Kafka’s health deteriorated again. He obtained leave from work and traveled in April to Meran in the Tyrol region for a convalescent stay. It was here that he met Milena Jesenská, who had translated his works into Czech. Married to a banker and descended from a prominent Slavic-Czech family, she was the object of Franz Kafka’s ardent love for two years. He even proposed, but was flatly rejected. While Franz Kafka idealized her like the Greek Helen, she viewed him realistically, objectively, and rationally. When Nazi troops entered Prague in 1939, she deliberately wore the Jewish badge on her chest and was taken to a concentration camp, where she died of illness just before liberation.
Meanwhile, around March 1920, Franz Kafka met Gustav Janouch, who later became famous for his work Gespräch mit Kafka. Their relationship has been compared to that of Goethe and Eckermann, and this collection of conversations has become a valuable resource for understanding Franz Kafka’s literature and thought.
In the summer of 1923, while staying with his sister Ellie at Müritz on the Baltic coast, he met Dora Dymant (also spelled Diamant), a Jewish Polish woman. He lived under her care until his death. Recognizing and nurturing her considerable theatrical talent, their relationship grew rapidly close. She saw Franz Kafka as a man possessing a Western spirit and a Jewish heart. She admired him, though he was twice her age, and cared for him with passion and devotion. After Franz Kafka’s death and the Nazi occupation, she miraculously survived. In 1949, she used royalties from Franz Kafka’s publications to fund her journey and emigrated to Palestrina. She later died in London, England, in 1952. Franz Kafka left Prague with her in July 1923 and lived in Steglitz, a suburb of Berlin. Though his body was extremely frail and his health was in a terrible state, he finally tasted a happiness in life he had never known before. He also partially continued his creative work, publishing “The Burrow” and “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk.”
However, in March 1924, his condition deteriorated severely. Franz Kafka returned to Prague but could not remain at home. He was transferred via a sanatorium in Vienna to the Kierling Sanatorium near Klosterneuburg. Even when laryngeal tuberculosis left him barely able to speak, Dora’s devoted love helped him cling to life, and he diligently followed his doctors’ orders. Yet, on June 3, 1924, he ultimately ended his short life at the age of 41.
Although literary critics like Walter Benjamin and Kurt Tucholsky had already shown great interest in Franz Kafka during the 1920s, by the time of his death, the literary figures he associated with were few. Franz Kafka bequeathed to Brod that all unpublished manuscripts be destroyed and that reprints of already published works be halted. However, Brod did not comply, leading to Franz Kafka’s name and works gaining worldwide renown posthumously. His fame spread particularly widely in France and English-speaking countries during the Hitler occupation, championed by the existentialist writers Sartre and Camus. His rediscovery in Germany and Austria, where he began exerting a profound influence on German literature, occurred after 1945. His value was also reevaluated in the communist bloc, but in his homeland of Czechoslovakia, he was long branded a decadent bourgeois writer and banned, only regaining freedom after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Notably, Czech-born Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, pays homage to Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka by naming his protagonists Thomas and Franz. Simultaneously, the novel’s structure and themes extensively incorporate elements from Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and other works.
