#Kafkaesque honours one of the most beloved European writer of all time, who died 100 years ago on the 3rd June 1924.
Exactly 100 years ago, one of the best (and most beloved) European writers of all time died, aged only forty. Franz Kafka was born to a middle-class family Jewish family in Prague, back then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Pic: University of Brighton Design Archives, Imaginace, Black Light Theatre, Czechoslovakia (1990s), available here
In spite of being written between 113 and 102 years ago, Franz Kafka’s novel are still remarkably fresh and compelling to read. His writing style was characterized by surreal and existential themes, marked by a sense of alienation, absurdity, and the individual's struggle against oppressive systems. His works frequently explore themes of bureaucracy, guilt, identity, and the search for meaning in a world that seems indifferent or hostile: so no wonder that he started his professional career working for an insurance company, the Italian giant Assicurazioni Generali.
Kafka did not achieve significant commercial success or widespread recognition as a writer while still alive. He published only a few short stories and fragments in literary magazines.. He worked in relative obscurity as a lawyer, though in 1915, he was exonerated from serving in World War I as his employers stated that his work was considered essential government service. In 1917 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and one year later the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute put him on a pension due to his illness, for which there was no cure at the time. He spent most of the rest of his life in sanatoriums. His three full novels, "The Trial," "The Castle," and "Amerika" were published posthumously, and gathered more and more attention over the years. Here is a theatre adaptation of "Carta ao Pai" (“Letter to his father”, from a letter written to his father Hermann in November 1919 and never delivered, but published in 1966) performed in 1992 by the "Companhia Absurda" company in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
And here is the Czech poster of the English film based on the novel Der Process (The Trial), directed by Orson Welles
University of Brighton Design Archives, Poster The Process directed by Orson Welles, available here
Over the years, with posthumous success, Kafka’s work became also under the radar of censorship: the Nazi condemned his work as degenerate, and later in the Eastern bloc his works were scrutinised and sometimes censored due to their perceived existential pessimism and their focus on the individual's plight against oppressive systems, which could be seen as a critique of communist ideology. However, no censor was more merciless than Kafka himself: he burnt about 90% of his work, and he left the rest to his friend and literary executor Max Brod, with explicit instructions that he should burn everything after his death. Luckily for us, Max Brod ignored his friend’s will. He also left about 20 diaries and 35 letters written to her lover, Dora Diamant, with specific instructions that she should burn everything after his death. Again, she ignored Kafka’s wish; however, in 1933 the Nazis ransack her apartment, looking for Nazi propaganda. After the theft of her secret Kafka treasure, Dora contacted Max Brod to beg that he rescue the materials, but he was told that the mountainous stacks of papers confiscated in the early days of Nazi rule made it impossible to recover at the time. The search is still ongoing, across archival institutions everywhere in the world - it is called the Kafka project. In the pic, the scrutiny operated by the DDR on Kafka’s work, needed in order to approve publication (from 1983 and 1985)
University of Brighton Design Archives , Imaginace, Black Light Theatre, Czechoslovakia (1990s), available here
Archives Nationales du monde du travail, Document about Assicurazioni Generali, available here
University of Brighton Design Archives, Poster The Process directed by Orson Welles, available here
Bundesarchiv, Scrutiny operated by the DDR on Kafka’s work, needed in order to approve publication (1983-1985), available here
Research by Anna Batzeli; text by APE staff
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