This blog post delves deeply into the life and major works of Franz Kafka, who relentlessly explored human existence amidst loneliness and anxiety.
Franz Kafka was born in Prague as the eldest of six siblings to a Jewish merchant father and a mother from a wealthy family. However, he grew up with three sisters (Elsa, Valli, and Otla) after two younger brothers died young. His father, Hermann Kafka, was a self-made merchant who ran a textile wholesale business. All the men on his father’s side were robustly built. Kafka reportedly lived in constant awe, overwhelmed by his father’s imposing stature with broad shoulders. His mother, Julie Löwy, was a gentle, emotional, and intelligent woman. Kafka’s sharp intellect and literary talent can be said to have been inherited from her.
During his childhood, Kafka grew up lonely, raised by a housekeeper and private tutor. This was because his sisters were much older than him, his father was excessively strict, and his mother was too busy raising young children and supporting her husband to care for the young Kafka. He never received the love of his mother, whose disposition was most similar to his own, nor did he experience the warmth of family. From a young age, he lived constantly in loneliness. Moreover, he was born with a weak constitution, suffered from chronic illness, battled tuberculosis from a young age, and was constantly plagued by insomnia.
Franz Kafka’s complex about his father, his Jewish heritage rooted in Prague, his upbringing within a German-speaking Jewish community, and his frail health all deepened his solitary nature, profoundly influencing his thoughts and works.
His father, who desired his son’s social success, sent Kafka to the German-language Royal Humanistic Gymnasium in 1893 (age 10). This was because only about the top 10 percent of Prague’s population used German at the time. While many of his classmates later became prominent figures, he remained close friends with only one person, Oskar Pollak. In 1901 (age 18), he enrolled at Prague University, initially majoring in philosophy before switching to the more promising field of law. However, finding no interest, he attended lectures in art history and German literature, planning to study German literature in earnest at Munich University. But without his father’s support, he had to abandon this plan. In 1904 (age 21), he wrote his first work, ‘Description of a Struggle’.
Contrary to the strange, morbid, defeatist, and victim-obsessed mental state often portrayed in his works or diaries, the young Kafka was, in stark contrast, extremely well-mannered, cautious, and led a wholesome life. He befriended Max Brod (an Austrian-born Israeli writer and critic who authored Kafka’s biography) at a German university reading and lecture circle. Brod would later make a decisive contribution to Kafka’s literary legacy.
In 1906 (age 23), Kafka earned his doctorate in law and completed a one-year internship as a judicial clerk at the court. In October 1907 (age 24), he took an exceptionally unconventional job for a Jew at a general insurance company in Prague. However, the demanding work left him no time for writing, so he transferred to the Workers’ Accident Compensation Office the following year. Here he experienced a ruthless bureaucratic organization and harsh working conditions, which he later used to starkly depict the reality of bureaucracy in his works.
Working at the insurance office while writing at night, Kafka compiled his first book, ‘Contemplation’, containing 17 short pieces, in August 1912 (age 29) and published it in December. That August, Kafka met Felice Bauer, who had come from Berlin, by chance at Max Brod’s house and fell in love at first sight. His love for her greatly influenced his writing; in September, he wrote The Judgment (published in 1916) and began writing Amerika. In December, he completed ‘The Metamorphosis’ (published in 1915), one of the works where Kafka’s literary world is most clearly revealed.
His love with Felice Bauer was not consistently smooth, but their relationship suddenly progressed, leading to their engagement in June 1914 (when he was 31). However, they broke off their engagement in July. Kafka viewed marriage as both his salvation and something horrifyingly terrifying. Despairing, Bauer tried to sever ties with Kafka, but Kafka insisted he couldn’t live without her and sought to continue the relationship. After this, Kafka repeated the cycle of engagement and breakup three times, never marrying for the rest of his life. That year, he completed ‘In the Penal Colony’ (published 1919), began writing ‘The Trial’ (published 1925), and finished the final chapter of ‘Amerika’.
In 1915 (age 32), Kafka reunited with Felice Bauer and began dating her again. While suffering from severe headaches and insomnia, he continued writing The Trial. During this period, he immersed himself in reading the Bible, as well as works by Dostoevsky, Pascal, and Kierkegaard. In 1916 (age 33), he completed the final draft of ‘A Country Doctor’.
In July 1917 (age 34), Kafka became engaged to Felice Bauer again. Diagnosed with tuberculosis in September, he went to the home of his youngest sister Otla, who ran a farm in Zürau, northwest Bohemia, and convalesced there until April of the following year. During his convalescence, he broke off his engagement to Bauer for the second time. Living an idyllic life in tranquil Zürau under his sister’s devoted care, Kafka seemed to show slight improvement, but his condition worsened again.
In November 1918 (age 35), while recuperating in Silesia, he met Julie Borovec, the innkeeper’s daughter. They became engaged the following year, but his father strongly opposed the match due to Julie’s low social standing. Most of the ‘Letter to His Father’, in which he sought to clearly express his thoughts about his father and his will to become independent, was written in Silesia.
In 1920 (age 37), he returned to Prague and resumed work at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute. It was here he met Gustav Janouch, the son of a colleague. Years later, Gustav Janouch published “Conversations with Kafka” (1951), documenting four years of conversations he had with Kafka until the latter’s death. That April, he convalesced in Merano, Tyrol, near the Italian-Austrian border. There he met Milena Jesenská, a passionate and intelligent female critic, who translated his works into Czech. Milena, from a prominent Slavic Czech family, was twelve years younger than Kafka and married, yet the two shared a passionate spiritual love, exchanging letters. The collected letters, published as Letters to Milena (1939), became a crucial resource for Kafka studies alongside Conversations with Kafka. For Kafka, who suffered from tuberculosis, his love for Milena was like a final spark. Their love affair lasted two years but ultimately remained unfulfilled. Yet, in Kafka’s lifetime, Milena was the person who understood him better than anyone else.
As his illness worsened and he agonized over his unattainable love for Milena, he began writing The Castle (published in 1926) in 1922 (at age 39), and also wrote “A Hunger Artist” and “Forschungen eines Hundes.” That March, Kafka read the first part of ‘The Castle’ to Max Brod, who claimed that the character Frida in the novel was modeled after Milena. ‘The Castle’ is Kafka’s most representative novel and remains unfinished.
In the summer of 1923 (age 40), Kafka stayed with his sister Elsa at Müritz on the Baltic coast, where he met Dora Diamant, a nineteen-year-old Jewish woman working as a nanny. Dora became his final companion, staying by his side until his death. Kafka intended to marry Dora, but his father refused to consent. That September, defying all opposition, Kafka left Prague and moved to Berlin. He lived with Dora in Berlin-Steglitz. He had finally achieved complete independence, a long-cherished desire, free from the shadow of his patriarchal and domineering father. In a happiness he had never known before, Kafka continued writing, composing ‘Der Bau’ and ‘Eine Kleine Frau’.
However, Germany, defeated in World War I, suffered severe inflation. Compounded by the winter season, Kafka and Dora struggled with extreme poverty, unable to properly secure food, fuel, and daily necessities. Kafka, trembling with fear of starvation and dreading that his hard-won independence might vanish again, absolutely refused to ask his father for help. Dora strove to make Kafka as comfortable as possible while overcoming their difficult circumstances. However, in March 1924 (at age 41), Kafka’s health deteriorated, forcing him to return to Prague. Though he had so desperately wanted to escape Prague, the entire period he lived independently away from Prague during his lifetime amounted to just these six months.
In April, he entered the Kierling Sanatorium for tuberculosis patients in the suburbs of Vienna, Austria. Dora and his physician, Robert Klopstock, stayed by his side. By this time, the tuberculosis bacteria had spread to his larynx, leaving Kafka unable to speak or eat. Kafka instructed Dora to burn all the works he had written around this time, except for ‘Der Bau,’ in his presence.
Clinging tenaciously to life as his final act of love for Dora, Kafka passed away on June 3rd, exactly one month before his forty-first birthday, with Dora and Robert Klopstock present. His body was buried on June 11th in the Jewish cemetery in Prague’s Strašnice district. His sisters are said to have been taken to concentration camps and killed after the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia.
When naming the greatest writers of 20th-century German literature, Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann come to mind, but if asked to name the most problematic writer, everyone would unhesitatingly point to Kafka. Kafka, like James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner, exerted an immense influence on 20th-century world literature, yet almost nothing is known about his life. After his death, his close friend Max Brod defied Kafka’s final wish to destroy all his manuscripts, instead collecting and publishing them, causing a major upheaval in the global literary world.
A defining characteristic of his work is how he convincingly develops narratives while placing the narrator in situations that are both ordinary and enigmatically bizarre, often pushing them to terrifying extremes. His stylistic hallmark lies in his unparalleled realism in depicting human beings caught in inexplicable circumstances. The compelling fusion of the everyday and the fantastical, the contrast between the inexplicable and the realistically depicted, is precisely the defining feature of Kafka’s literature. Most of Kafka’s works place extremely realistic, ordinary characters in inexplicable situations, symbolically and persuasively revealing the problems of an unestablished self and unstable existence.
Gregor Samsa, an ordinary salesman, wakes up one morning to find his body horribly transformed into that of a giant insect. This shocks not only his family but everyone around him, plunging them into deep fear. The family, who had been living off the money Gregor earned, now faces a threat to their livelihood. Initially treating the insect as a family member and caring for it, the family gradually grows weary of the exhausting situation. They come to see it as nothing more than a useless insect, a burden that brings them harm. Yet Gregor, though transformed physically, retains his human mind and continues to act like a human, making his existence even more wretched. As he grows accustomed to the life of an insect, his sense of human existence gradually fades. Amidst his family’s indifference and coldness, Gregor meets his end in solitude.
At first glance, ‘The Metamorphosis’ seems to symbolically depict Kafka’s own story. Regarding the resemblance between himself and the protagonist Gregor, Kafka stated, “It is not a code. Gregor is not Kafka. ‘The Metamorphosis’ is not a confession, but rather, at first glance, a revelation of secrets.” In other words, while Gregor could be seen as an alter ego, he is not identical to Kafka himself.
Waking up one morning transformed into a bug is the kind of story that belongs in a dream. Kafka himself confessed, “‘The Metamorphosis’ is a terrifying dream and a frightening symbol. The dream strips away the mask of reality, and what remains beneath reality is the symbol.”
‘The Metamorphosis’ is the work where Kafka’s literary world is most clearly revealed. It tells the story of Gregor Samsa, who, oppressed by the daily grind of reality, wakes up transformed into a bug and ultimately dies, reduced to a useless being amidst his family’s indifference and coldness.
When Kafka read ‘The Judgment’ at a reading, his sister Otla reportedly said, “That’s our family story.” ‘The Judgment’ deals with his relationship with his father—specifically, their conflict—and is a work saturated with symbols representing Kafka’s psychology and existential consciousness. In reality, Kafka lived his entire life oppressed by his authoritarian father, a successful businessman with an imposing physique. His father spent his life criticizing his son, who showed no interest whatsoever in the business he had painstakingly built. In ‘The Judgment’, the socially successful Georg rebels against his aging father, denying him and trying to escape his shadow. However, the father condemns his son for his lack of established identity and constant anxiety, awakening a moral and spiritual sense of guilt, and ultimately sentences him to death by drowning. Unable to shake off his latent guilt, Georg throws himself into the river, carrying out his father’s judgment.
“A Country Doctor” unfolds with reality and unreality intricately intertwined. It symbolically portrays the reality of a person, seeking a socially stable life in an unhappy era, who is caught in the impulse to evade social responsibility and pursue desire, wandering aimlessly. This is shown through the story of a country doctor making a house call on a bitterly cold winter night.
Kafka wrote ‘Der Bau’ the year before his death; it was the only work he spared when he burned all his other writings from that period. Kafka’s work ‘Der Bau’ tells the story of an animal striving to make its home a safer space, yet becoming increasingly fixated on the burrow, trembling with worry and anxiety. This work depicts the human fate: yearning for a peaceful, quiet life untouched by any intrusion, yet ultimately having to pay the price of arduous labor to protect it, and being forced to live anxiously, constantly tormented by internal or external threats as a social being.
