#Kafka writer trial

In September 1912 Kafka met a young Jewish girl from Berlin, Felice Bauer, with whom he fell in love-an affair that was to have far-reaching consequences for all his future work.

B.,” that is, Max Brod, who had been Kafka's closest friend since their first meeting as university students in 1902. Preoccupied with problems of reality and appearance, they reveal his objective realism based on urban middle-class life. Polished, light impressions based on observations of life in and around Prague. Between 19, more than one million Austro-Hungarian soldiers were killed, and more than three and a half million were wounded.Įarly Work and Engagement to Felice Bauer Kafka's first collection of stories was published in 1913 under the title Contemplation. Kafka's generation of young men was decimated by the brutal European war. Apparently, he did his job admirably well-so well in fact that his supervisors arranged for him to be excused from military service during World War I. In early 1908 he joined the staff of the Workmen's Compensation Division of the Austrian government. In June 1906 he graduated with a degree of doctor of jurisprudence.Ĭivil Service During World War I In October 1906 Kafka started to practice law at the criminal court and later at the civil court in Prague, meanwhile gaining practical experience as an intern in the office of an attorney. In college he initially majored in German literature, but changed in his second semester to the study of law. Kafka later transformed the total lack of communication between them into a recurring relationship in his stories between a God/Father figure and mankind.įranz Kafka attended only German schools: from 1893 to 1901 the most authoritarian grammar school, the Deutsches Staatsgymnasium in the Old Town Square, and from 1901 to 1906 the Karl Ferdinand University of Prague. Franz's childhood and youth were overshadowed by constant conflict with his father, whom he respected, even admired, and at the same time feared and subconsciously hated.

The Father-God Kafka's father was a powerful, robust, imposing man, successful in his business, who considered his son a weakling unfit for life. She would ultimately prove unable to defuse the tensions between her brusque, domineering husband and her quiet, very sensitive son. Kafka's mother, Julie Lowy Kafka, came from a family with older Prague roots and some degree of wealth. His mother tongue was Czech, but he spoke German, correctly seeing the language's importance in the struggle for social and economic mobility and security. His father, Hermann Kafka, of humble rural origin, was a hardworking, hard-driving, successful merchant. Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, a large provincial capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was home to many Czechs, some Germans, and a lesser number of German-cultured, German-speaking Jews. Works in Biographical and Historical Context Kafka's masterful use of the German language and his odd blend of the surreal and the mundane combine to create a unique style of fiction that has proven endlessly fascinating to readers, critics, and other writers for nearly one hundred years. His most famous works, including “The Metamorphosis,” The Trial, and The Castle have come to be seen as stories of the struggles of individuals to preserve their dignity and humanity in an increasingly faceless and bureaucratic world.

#Kafka writer trial

MAJOR WORKS: The Metamorphosis (1915) The Country Doctor: A Collection of Fourteen Short Stories (1919) The Trial (1925) The Castle: A Novel (1926) Amerika (1927) OverviewĬzech writer Franz Kafka is one of the founders of modern literature. BORN: 1883, Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic)