Franz Kafka Biography

Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, Czech Republic. Kafka grew up in a middle class, German speaking, Jewish family with his father being a business man, and his mother worked as many as 12 hours each day helping to manage the family business. Kafka's childhood was indeed lonely, and the children grew up largely by a series of governesses and servants. When Kafka was around the age of six, his two younger brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy, leaving him the only son in a family that included three daughters. Kafka had a difficult relationship with both of his parents. His mother, Julie, was a devoted homemaker who lacked the intellectual depth to understand her son's dreams to become a writer. Kafka's father, Hermann, had a forceful personality that often overwhelmed the Kafka home. He was a successful business man. who make his living by retailing men's and women's clothes. Kafka's father had a huge impact on both Kafka's life and his writing. He was a tyrant of sorts, with a wicked temper and little appreciation for his son's creative side. Much of Kafka's personal struggles, in romance and other relationships, came in part from his complicated relationship with his father. His mother as often quiet and shy, and his father distance and absent. Kafka's troubled relationship with his father is evident in his Brief an den Vater, a letter to his father, of more than 100 pages, in which he complains of being extremely affected by his father's dictatorial and demanding character.




As an adult, Franz Kafka worked in numerous places. On November 1, 1907, he was hired at the Assicurazioni Generali, an aggressive Italian insurance company, where he worked for nearly a year. He ended up quitting because of the long and torturous hours from 8pm-6am, which gave him barely anytime to work on his writing. On July 15, 1908, he resigned, and two weeks later found more congenial employment with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. Kafka was very committed to his literary work. Together with his close friends Max Brod and Felix Weltsch these three were called "Der enge Prager Kreis", the close Prague circle. In 1912, at the home of his lifelong friend Max Brod, Kafka met Felice Bauer, who lived in Berlin and worked as a representative for a Dictaphone company. Over the next five years, they corresponded a great deal, met occasionally, and twice were engaged to be married. Their relationship finally ended in 1917. In 1917, Kafka began to suffer from tuberculosis, which would require frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, most notably his sister Ottla. In the early 1920s he developed an intense relationship with Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenská. In 1923, he briefly moved to Berlin in the hope of distancing himself from his family's influence to concentrate on his writing. He lived with Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family, who was independent enough to have escaped her past in the ghetto, in Berlin. As Kafka's tuberculosis worsened, he also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains. He attempted to counteract all of this by a regimen of naturalistic treatments, such as a vegetarian diet. He returned to Prague, then went to a sanatorium near Vienna for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924. His body was ultimately brought back to Prague where he was interred on June 11, 1924, in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Žižkov.






BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Nervi, Mauro. "Kafka's Life (1883-1924)." The Kafka Project. N.p., 08 Jan. 2011. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.                <http://www.kafka.org/index.php?biography>.

"Franz Kafka Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, 2014. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.                                     <http://www.biography.com/people/franz-kafka-9359401>.