Kafka project

Last updated

The Kafka Project is a non-profit literary research initiative founded in 1998 at San Diego State University. Working on behalf of the Kafka estate in London, England, the SDSU Kafka Project is working to recover materials written by Franz Kafka, the widely acclaimed modernist author, stolen by the Gestapo in 1933. The search continues in Eastern Europe and Israel. [1]

The SDSU Kafka Project, headed by SDSU adjunct professor and biographer Kathi Diamant, with an international board of advisors, is searching for Kafka's notebooks and letters written in correspondence to Dora Diamant, his lover at the time of his death in 1924, as well as Dora's correspondence with Kafka's friend, literary executor and first biographer Max Brod. Kafka's missing writings consist of 35 letters written to Dora Diamant between 1923–1924 and up to 20 notebooks, [2] representing the last year of his life. [3] The contents of these letters and notebooks is unknown and has never been published. The 70 letters that Dora wrote to Max Brod between 1924 and 1952 are amongst the hotly contested Brod Collection. [4] Dora Diamant's letters to Max Brod contain information to further identify the missing materials [5]

Kafka requested that all his extant writings be destroyed. However, Dora secretly kept them in her Berlin home. Following the Nazi takeover in 1933, the Gestapo ransacked her Berlin flat and confiscated every piece of paper, looking for Communist propaganda. [6] In the early 1930s, Dora and her husband, Lutz Lask, were members of the KPD and Lask was the editor of the illegal Communist organ, "Die Rote Fahne." After the theft of her secret Kafka treasure, Dora contacted Max Brod to beg that he rescue the materials. Brod was told that the mountainous stacks of papers confiscated in the early days of Nazi rule made it impossible to recover at the time. [7] In the mid-1950s, Brod, now living in Tel Aviv, worked with Kafka scholar and biographer Klaus Wagenbach to attempt recovery of Kafka's lost writings. However, their search ended at the Iron Curtain when the Berlin Chief of Police informed them Kafka's papers were most likely amongst confiscated materials taken out of Berlin in a train transport during the Allied bombing for safekeeping in Silesia. [8]

The Kafka Project has conducted two extensive research projects, in 1998 in the German archives [9] and in 2008 in Poland. The Kafka Project has been responsible for the discoveries of three original Kafka letters, Dora Diamant's missing diaries and letters, and the only extant personal possession of Kafka, his hairbrush. [10] "also found in Kafka Project Discoveries" Archived 2011-10-05 at the Wayback Machine , Kafka Project . The Project has been supported by the Hadassah Research Institute Brandeis University, the Weingart Foundation, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Hedgebrook, and individual donors. [ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franz Kafka</span> Bohemian writer (1883–1924)

Franz Kafka was a German-language novelist and writer from Prague. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the novella The Metamorphosis and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations like those depicted in his writing.

<i>The Trial</i> 1925 novel by Franz Kafka

The Trial is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Heavily influenced by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Kafka even went so far as to call Dostoevsky a blood relative. Like Kafka's two other novels, The Castle and Amerika, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which appears to bring the story to an intentionally abrupt ending.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Brod</span> Bohemian-Israeli author, composer, and journalist (1884–1968)

Max Brod was a Bohemian-born Israeli author, composer, and journalist.

<i>Amerika</i> (novel) 1927 novel by Franz Kafka

Amerika, (German working title Der Verschollene, "The Missing") also known as The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika), Amerika: The Missing Person and Lost in America, is the incomplete first novel by author Franz Kafka (1883–1924), written between 1911 and 1914 and published posthumously in 1927. The novel originally began as a short story titled "The Stoker". The novel incorporates many details of the experiences of his relatives who had emigrated to the United States. The commonly used title Amerika is from the edition of the text put together by Kafka's close friend, Max Brod, after Kafka's death in 1924. It has been published in at least three major English-language versions: as Amerika, translated by Edwin and Willa Muir (1938); as The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika), translated by Michael Hoffmann (1996); and as Amerika: The Missing Person, translated by Mark Harman (2008).

<i>The Castle</i> (novel) 1926 novel by Franz Kafka

The Castle is the last novel by Franz Kafka. In it a protagonist known only as "K." arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle supposedly owned by Graf Westwest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Judgment</span> Short story by Franz Kafka

"The Judgment", also translated "The Verdict", is a short story written by Franz Kafka in 1912, concerning the relationship between a man and his father.

Abraham Nahum Stencl was a Polish-born Yiddish poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dora Diamant</span> Lover of Franz Kafka (c. 1900 – 1952)

Dora Diamant is best remembered as the lover of the writer Franz Kafka and the person who kept some of his last writings in her possession until they were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933. This retention was against the wishes of Kafka, who had requested shortly before his death that they be destroyed.

"The Burrow" is an unfinished short story by Franz Kafka written six months before his death. In the story a badger-like creature struggles to secure the labyrinthine burrow he has excavated as a home. The story was published posthumously in Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer by Max Brod, Kafka's friend and literary executor. The first English translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, was published by Martin Secker in London in 1933. It appeared in The Great Wall of China. Stories and Reflections.

<i>Die Rote Fahne</i> German newspaper

Die Rote Fahne was a German newspaper originally founded in 1876 by Socialist Worker's Party leader Wilhelm Hasselmann, and which has been since published on and off, at times underground, by German Socialists and Communists. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg famously published it in 1918 as organ of the Spartacus League.

<i>Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings</i>

Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings is a collection of writings by Franz Kafka translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins with notes by Max Brod. The title derives from Kafka's Letter to His Father, which begins with this salutation. In 2007, a translation by Howard Colyer, titled Letter to My Father, was published by lulu.com. A translation of Dearest Father, with notes and an introduction by its translators, Hannah and Richard Stokes, was published in 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franz Kafka bibliography</span>

Franz Kafka, a German-language writer of novels and short stories who is regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, was trained as a lawyer and later employed by an insurance company, writing only in his spare time.

Heinz Politzer was an internationally recognized academic and writer. As a young man he was forced to flee Nazism first to Palestine and then to the United States, where he taught German language and literature as a professor at the Bryn Mawr College, Oberlin College, and the University of California, Berkeley. He was a literary scholar, published poet, and prominent editor, particularly of Franz Kafka. As a close associate of Kafka's protégé, Max Brod, Politzer coedited with Brod the first complete collection of Kafka's works in eight volumes, published initially by the Schocken publishing house of Berlin during the early years of the Nazi dictatorship and subsequently by the successor firm Schocken Books in New York.

Camill Hoffmann (1878-1944) was a Czechoslovak Jewish diplomat and writer born in 1878. He was murdered in the Holocaust.

Ilse Esther Hoffe was a Jewish woman known for being the secretary and presumed mistress of writer Max Brod. Upon his death in 1968, she received a large trove of materials relating to Franz Kafka, Brod's friend. Some of these were sold but most were controversially passed, unreleased to the public, to her two daughters after her own death. She was born in Troppau (Opava).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Felice Bauer</span> Businesswoman and fiancée of Franz Kafka

Felice Bauer was a fiancée of Franz Kafka, whose letters to her were published as Letters to Felice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reiner Stach</span> 1951 German author

Reiner Stach is a German author, biographer of Franz Kafka, publisher, and publicist. Stach lives and works as a freelancer in Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franz Kafka and Judaism</span>

Franz Kafka's life (1883-1924) and connection to Judaism is covered in the main article Franz Kafka. Additional discussion is provided here.

Berta Lask was a German writer, playwright and journalist. She joined the Communist Party in 1923 and much of her published work is strongly polemical.

<i>The Glory of Life</i> (2024 film) 2024 German-Austrian film by Judith Kaufmann and Georg Maas

The Glory of Life is a 2024 drama film directed by Judith Kaufmann and Georg Maas from a script written by Maas, Michael Gutmann and Michael Kumpfmüller based on Kumpfmüller's 2011 novel of the same name. An international co-production between Austria and Germany, the film stars Sabin Tambrea and Henriette Confurius as Franz Kafka and Dora Diamant, respectively.

References

  1. ↑ Reiner Stach in Der Tagesspiegel
  2. ↑ McNearney, Allison (2017-02-04). "Unraveling a Nazi Mystery: Are Franz Kafka's Missing Love Letters in Berlin?". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2017-08-10.
  3. ↑ Schneider, Howard (6 January 2010). "In Israel, a tangled battle over the papers of Franz Kafka". The Washington Post. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
  4. ↑ Aderet, Ofer "A Friend of Kafka", Haaretz , Tel Aviv, 8 October 2009. Retrieved on 2010-3-21.
  5. ↑ Bloomberg.com Kafka's Trial Comes to Life in Court Battle Over His Papers "
  6. ↑ Diamant, Kathi (2003). Kafka's Last Love, p. 183. Basic Books, New York. ISBN   0-465-01550-6
  7. ↑ Pawel, Ernst (1984). "The Nightmare of Reason", p. 438. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, New York. ISBN   0-374-22236-3.
  8. ↑ Sources: Kafka, by Nicolas Murray, pages 367, 374; "Summary of the Results of the Kafka Project Berlin Research 1 June – September 1998" published in December 1998 Kafka Katern, quarterly of the Kafka Circle of the Netherlands
  9. ↑ Thomas,Gina,"Kafkas Geliebte" Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 17 August 1999, Nr. 189/Page 47.
  10. ↑ BookThink interview with Kathi Diamant
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.