#about franz

[dailykafka]

— From 'Conversations with Kafka' by Gustav Janouch

[schadenfreudich]

there is something so weird about being loveless and caring about someone

[dailykafka]

— Kafka’s True Will An Introductory Essay by Erich Heller (from Letters to Felice)

[dailykafka]

— Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka

[dailykafka]

[Under the Holy Roman Empire] the Habsburgs' biopolitics intruded harshly on Jewish family planning. According to the "Familiants Law," decreed in 1727 by Karl VI, the father of Maria Theresa, only the eldest son in each family could start his own family, and the number of lewish families allowed to live in Bohemia was frozen.

Every male Jew who did not have the rare special status of a "protected Jew" or "court Jew"—anyone who wanted to marry, have children, and bequeath something to these children—had to wait for a head of the family to die; a head of any family would do.

This is precisely what happened in Wosek (small southern Bohemian manor) in 1802. A Jew named Fischel died, and a few weeks after him his only child died in infancy. Because wives and widows could not be familiants, the spot would be assigned to someone else. A man named Josef Kafka was given the chance to purchase the right to reproduce as guaranteed by the state: Josef Kafka, the great-grandfather of the writer Franz Kafka.

— Kafka: The Early Years by Reiner Stach

[dailykafka]

Unlike often-compared works by Jean-Paul Sartre and others, Kafka’s writings offer no exposition about their meaning, no treatises on alienation in modern life or the lessons to be gleaned from his surreal fables. The alienation is experienced, not described, and therein lies its literary power.

— Haviv Rettig Gur, How an Israel that never liked Franz Kafka came to own his literary legacy

[dailykafka]

— Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka

[dailykafka]

— Reiner Stach, Kafka: The Early Years

— Franz Kafka, Letter to his Father