#Kafka writer trial#
#Kafka writer series#

In November 1913 the family moved into a bigger apartment, although Ellie and Valli had married and moved out of the first apartment. The Kafka family had a servant girl living with them in a cramped apartment. The dominating figure of Kafka's father had a significant influence on Kafka's writing. Kafka's troubled relationship with his father is evident in his Brief an den Vater ( Letter to His Father) of more than 100 pages, in which he complains of being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character his mother, in contrast, was quiet and shy.

#Kafka writer series#

Consequently, Kafka's childhood was somewhat lonely, and the children were reared largely by a series of governesses and servants. On business days, both parents were absent from the home, with Julie Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day helping to manage the family business. Hermann is described by the biographer Stanley Corngold as a 'huge, selfish, overbearing businessman' and by Franz Kafka as 'a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature'. Valli was deported to the Łódź Ghetto in occupied Poland in 1942, but that is the last documentation of her. All three were murdered in the Holocaust of World War II. Franz's two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy before Franz was seven his three sisters were Gabriele ('Ellie') (1889–1944), Valerie ('Valli') (1890–1942) and Ottilie ('Ottla') (1892–1943).

Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom Franz was the eldest. Kafka's parents probably spoke German, influenced by Yiddish, that was sometimes pejoratively called Mauscheldeutsch, but, as German was considered the vehicle of social mobility, they probably encouraged their children to speak Standard German. Kafka's mother, Julie (1856–1934), was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous retail merchant in Poděbrady, and was better educated than her husband. After working as a travelling sales representative, he eventually became a fashion retailer who employed up to 15 people and used the image of a jackdaw ( kavka in Czech, pronounced and colloquially written as kafka) as his business logo. Hermann brought the Kafka family to Prague. His father, Hermann Kafka (1854–1931), was the fourth child of Jakob Kafka, a shochet or ritual slaughterer in Osek, a Czech village with a large Jewish population located near Strakonice in southern Bohemia. His family were German-speaking middle-class Ashkenazi Jews. Kafka was born near the Old Town Square in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kafka's work has influenced a vast range of writers, critics, artists, and philosophers during the 20th and 21st centuries.įranz Kafka's sisters, from the left Valli, Elli, Ottla In his will, Kafka instructed his executor and friend Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, including his novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika, but Brod ignored these instructions, and had the bulk of his work published. He died in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.įew of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime: the story collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor, and individual stories (such as 'The Metamorphosis') were published in literary magazines but received little public attention. He became engaged to several women but never married. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship.

He trained as a lawyer and after completing his legal education was employed full-time by an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, today the capital of the Czech Republic. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe situations like those found in his writing.

#Kafka writer trial#

His best known works include the short story ' The Metamorphosis' and novels The Trial and The Castle. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio- bureaucratic powers. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic.

Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature.