Skull, doll and little girl

On the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka's death

Important writers find important answers. In the great work of Franz Kafka - we mention it here because this year marks 100 years since his death - the reader can discover many sides of the human character. In the typology of figures, Kafka sketches (also) the dark, evil, misanthropic traits of human beings. This is where the egoist is distinguished, who looks for the fault only in the other and sees innocence as his property. From selfishness to ignorance, the distance is not kilometers, but millimeters. Ignorance is then mixed with a dose of gossip, with disrespect for the dignity of others, with contempt for the success of others as ridiculous consolation for personal failures. This is the cold hearted man. In Kafka's "Penal Colony" there is a machine that nails a man through a sad procedure. Franz Kafka was a visionary. He predicted that one day the man-machine will break free from sentience and kill sentient man.

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"You see the sun setting slowly and still you get scared when suddenly everything goes dark". There are many dark thoughts in the works of Franz Kafka. He died young, in his 40th year of life. But, like no other author, he continued to live. He continues to live. Thanks to scholars like Reiner Stach. This German, born in 1951, worked for 18 years (!) to write the biography of Franz Kafka. "The Early Years" ("Die frühen Jahre"), "The Years of Understanding" ("Die Jahre der Erkenntnis"), "The Years of Decision" ("Die Jahre der Entscheidungen") - these are the titles (in German) of opus of three volumes. 2000 pages. A life told minute by minute.

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One day at the age of 40, Franz Kafka was walking through a park in Berlin. On that occasion he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her most beloved doll. She and Kafka looked for the doll, but couldn't find it. Kafka told the girl that they would meet the next day at the same place in the park to continue the search for the doll. The next day, after they did not find the doll, Kafka handed the girl a letter "written" by the doll. The letter said: "Please, don't cry! I set out on a journey to see the world. I will write about my adventures."

Thus began a story that lasted until the end of Kafka's life (he died at the age of 40). During the meetings, Kafka read the girl the doll's letters, which were carefully written about her adventures and conversations. The girl was fascinated. Kafka once brought the doll and said that it had returned to Berlin. (Actually Kafka had bought another doll).

"This doll doesn't look like my doll at all," said the girl.

Kafka gave the girl another letter in which the doll wrote: "Travels have changed me." The little girl hugged the new doll and happily took it home.

Kafka died that same year.

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Many years later the now grown girl found a letter inside the doll. On that piece of paper, signed by Kafka, it was said: "Everything you love is likely to be lost, but in the end love will return in a different way. Accept the change. It is inevitable that you will grow up. Together we can transform pain into miracles and love, but it is up to us to create this connection consciously and with purpose". The account of the doll's letters written by Kafka can be found in the volume "Als Kafka mir entgegenkam... Erinnerungen an Franz Kafka" by Hans-Gerd Koch.

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From 1889 to 1893, Franz Kafka visited the German language boys' school in Prague. In all subjects he was very successful - except for gymnastics and fine arts. In these two subjects, he received the "adequate" grade. He got the best grades in the subjects "diligence" (being diligent) and "moral behavior". During the next eight years at the state gymnasium in the old part of Prague, Kafka was not a very good student. His interest in learning waned as he entered puberty. He continued to be a good student only in language subjects, but in his high school graduation year, even in the subject of German, he was evaluated only with the "satisfactory" grade. Kafka had the biggest problems with mathematics. Numbers vs letters? Franz Kafka decided on the letters. And he became a writer.

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In 1918, the Spanish flu swept Europe. In Prague, the patient Franz Kafka became infected. On October 14, the doctor came. Kafka, 40 years old, still lived with his parents. He was so exhausted by the disease that he could not be transported to the hospital. Kafka was in poor health, because in 1917 he was affected by tuberculosis. Now, in 1918, the Spanish flu had added to his illness. While in quarantine, another patient was fighting for survival: the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Czechs demanded autonomy, they wanted to abandon the Danubian kingdom, American President Woodrow Wilson supported their right to independence. From the window of the apartment, the Kafka family witnessed the founding of the Czech state. When he contracted the Spanish flu, Kafka was an Austro-Hungarian citizen, when he emerged from quarantine five weeks later he was already living in the new Czech state. The Franz Joseph train station in Prague had changed its name: it was called the Wilson Train Station (in honor of the American president). Kafka's employer, an insurance firm, had decided that Czech would be the official language. In the new passport, Franz Kafka was called František Kafka. A lot can happen in five weeks.

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Years ago a 15-year-old schoolboy in Germany accepted a gift: a collection of postage stamps. Among the stamps he found an envelope. The letter was sent to "Miss Felice Bauer", the sender was: "Dr. F. Kafka". The postmark indicates that the letter was sent on July 1, 1913 from Prague. The student donated the found envelope to the Archive of German Literature in Marbach, where everything about important writers of the German language is collected, stored, archived and collected. The envelope is empty, the letter was bought in 1987 in New York - by an unknown European. The German newspaper "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" devoted almost a newspaper page (in 2021) to finding an empty envelope. Kafka was twice engaged to Felice Bauer, but did not have the courage to marry. On December 27, 1917, the final partition followed. "Sometimes it seems to me that my brain and lungs have gotten along without my knowledge. "It doesn't work like this anymore," said the brain, and after five years, the lungs were ready to help," Kafka wrote. A tragic love created one of the most important literary works of the 20th century: the novel "Procesi". It was published in 1925, a year after Kafka's death, and made Kafka: immortal!