Franz Kafka
(1883-1924)
1883: Born in Prague, July 3, son of Hermann (1852-1931) and Julie née Löwry (1856-1934).
1889-93: Elementary school at Fleischmarkt.
1889, 1890, 1892: Birth of sisters Elli, Valli, Ottla. Two younger brothers died in infancy.
1893-1901: German gymnasium, Prague; friendship with Oskar Pollak. Family resides in Zeltnergasse.
Circa 1899-1900: Reads Spinoza, Darwin, Nietzsche. Friendship with Hugo Bergman.
1899-1903: Early writings (destroyed).
1901-06: Study of German literature, then law at German University, Prague; partly in Munich. Influenced by Alfred Weber's critical analysis of industrial society.
1902: Vacation in Schelesen and Triesch, with uncle Dr. Siegfried Löwry (the "country doctor"). Met Max Brod; friendship with Felix Weltsch and Oskar Baum.
1903: Working on a novel The Child and the City (lost).
1904-05: "Description of a Struggle"
Reads diaries, memoirs, letters: Byron, Grillparzer, Goethe, Eckermann.
1905-06: Summers in Zuckmantel. Love affair with an unnamed woman. Meetings with Oskar Baum, Max Brod, Felix Weltsch.
1906: Works in law office of Richard Löwry, Prague.
June: Gets degree of doctor juris at German University, Prague.
From October: One year's internship in the law courts.
1907-08: "Wedding Preparations in the Country" (fragments of a novel).
1907: October: Position with "Assicurazioni Generali", Italian insurance company. Family moves to Niklas-Strasse.
1908: Position at the semi-governmental Worker's Accident Insurance Institute (until retirement, July 1922). Close friendship with Max Brod. Writes "On Mandatory Insurance in the Construction Industry".
1909: Publication of eight prose pieces in Hyperion.
September: At Riva and Brescia with Max and Otto Brod. Writes "The Aeroplanes of Brescia".
1910: Member of circle of intellectuals (Mrs. Berta Fanta).
March: Publication of five prose pieces in Bohemia.
May: Beginning of the Diaries (quarto notebooks; last entry, June 12th, 1923).
Yiddish theater from Eastern Europe performs.
October: Paris, with Max and Otto Brod.
December: Berlin.
1911: January-February: Business trip to Friedland and Reichenberg.
Summer: Zurich, Lugano, Milan, Paris (with Max Brod). Plans to work with Brod on a novel, "Richard and Samuel".
Alone in a sanatorium in Erlenbach near Zurich, travel diaries.
Writes "Measures to Prevent Accidents [in Factories and Farms]" and "Workers' Accident Insurance and Management".
1911-12: Winter: Yiddish theater company. Friendship with Yiddish actor Isak Löwry; study of Jewish folklore; beginning of a sketch on Löwry.
1911-14: Working on Amerika (main parts written 1911-12).
1912: First studies of Judaism (H. Graetz, M.I. Pines).
February: Gives lecture on the Yiddish language.
July: Weimar (Goethe's town, with Max Brod), then alone in the Harz Mountains (Sanatorium Just).
Meets Ernst Rowohlt and Kurt Wolff, joint managers of Rowohlt Verlag.
August 13: Meets Felice Bauer from Berlin, in the house of Max Brod's father in Prague.
August 14: Manuscript of Meditation sent to the publisher.
September 20: Beginning of correspondence with Felice Bauer.
September 22-23: "The Judgement" written.
September-October: Writes "The Stoker" (or "The Man Who Disappeared") which later became the first chapter of Amerika.
October 1912 to February 1913: Gap in the diaries.
November: "The Metamorphisis" written.
1913: January: Publication of Meditation.
February 1913 to July 1914: Lacuna in productivity.
Easter: First visit to Felice Bauer in Berlin.
Spring: Publication of The Judgement.
May: Publication of "The Stoker".
September: Journey to Vienna, Venice, Riva. At Riva, friendship with "the Swiss girl".
November: Meeting with Grete Bloch, friend of Felice Bauer. Beginning of correspondence with her.
[She becomes mother of his son, who died before reaching the age of seven, and of whom Kafka never knew.]
1914: Easter: In Berlin.
April: Engagement to Felice Bauer in Berlin.
July 12: Engagement broken.
Summer: "Memoirs of the Kalda Railroad" written. Hellerau, Lübeck, Marienlyst on the Baltic (with Ernst Weiss).
October: "In the Penal Colony" written. Fall: Begins writing The Trial. Winter: "Before the Law" (part of The Trial ) written.
1915: January: Renewed meeting with Felice Bauer (in Bodenbach).
Continues working on The Trial
Receives Fontane Prize for "The Stoker".
February: Moves from parents' home into rented rooms; Bilekgasse and Langengasse.
Journey to Hungary with sister Elli.
November: Publication of The Metamorphisis.
December (and January 1916): "The Village Schoolmaster [The Giant Mole]" written.
Meets Georg Mordecai Langer.
1916: July: Meeting with Felice Bauer in Marienbad.
August 20: Draws up a list of reasons for and against marriage.
Stories written, later collected in A Country Doctor.
Winter: Bothered by noise, moves to remote Alchemists' Lane, Prague.
1917: First Half: "The Hunter Gracchus" written.
Learning Hebrew.
Spring: "The Great Wall of China" written.
July: Second engagement to Felice Bauer.
August: Begins coughing blood.
September 4: Diagnosis of tuberculosis. Moves to sister Ottla in Zürau.
September 12: Leave of absence from office.
November 10: Diaries break off.
End of December: Breaking of second engagement to Felice Bauer.
Fall and Winter: Aphorisms written (octavo notebooks).
1918: January to June: Zürau. Reading Kierkegaard.
Spring: Aphorisms continued.
Prague, Turnau.
November: Schelesen. Meets Julie Wohryzek, daughter of a synagogue custodian.
A project for "The Society of Poor Workers", an ascetic society.
1919: January 10: Diary entries are resumed.
Schelesen; Spring: Again in Prague
[Spring: Felice Bauer married.]
Spring: Engagement to Julie Wohryzek (broken November 1919).
May: Publication of In the Penal Colony.
Fall: Publication of A Country Doctor.
November: "Letter to His Father" written.
Winter: "He", collection of aphorisms, written. Schelesen, with Max Brod.
1920: January 1920 to October 15, 1921: Gap in diaries.
Sick leave from Worker's Accident Insurance Institute.
Meran.
End of March: Meets Gustav Janouch. Meran.
Meets Milena Jesenská-Pollak, Czech writer (Vienna). Correspondence.
Summer and Fall: Prague. Writing stories.
December: Tatra Mountains (Matliary). Meets Robert Klopstock.
1921: October 15: Note in diary that Kafka had given all his diaries to Milena.
[Kafka's son by Grete Bloch dies in Munich.]
Until September: Tatra Mountains sanatorium; then Prague; Milena.
1921-24: Stories written, collected in A Hunger Artist.
1922: January to September: The Castle written.
February: Prague.
Spring: "A Hunger Artist" written.
May: Last meeting with Milena.
End of June to September: In Planá on the Luschnitz with sister Ottla. Prague.
Summer: "Investigations of a Dog" written.
1923: Prague.
July: In Müritz (with sister Elli); in a vacation camp of the Berlin Jewish People's Home. Meets Dora Dymant.
Prague, Schelesen (Ottla).
End of September: With Dora Dymant in Berlin-Steglitz; later moves, with Dora, to Grunewaldstrasse.
Attends lectures at the Berlin Academy (Hochschule) for Jewish Studies.
Winter: "The Burrow" written.
Kafka and Dora move to Berlin-Zehlendorf.
A Hunger Artist sent to publisher.
1924: Spring: "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" written.
Brought as a patient from Berlin to Prague.
April 10: To Wiener Wald Sanatorium, Professor Hajek's clinic in Vienna; the sanatorium in Kierling, near Vienna (with Dora Dymant and Robert Klopstock).
June 3: Death in Kierling, burial June 11, in the Jewish cemetery in Prague-Straschnitz.
Publication of A Hunger Artist.
1942: Death of Kafka's sister Ottla in Auschwitz. The other two sisters also perished in German concentration camps.
1944: Death of Grete Bloch at the hands of a Nazi soldier.
Death of Milena in a German concentration camp.
1952: August: Death of Dora Dymant in London.
1960: Death of Felice Bauer.
Chronology taken from "The Complete Stories" by Franz Kafka. Published by Schocken Books © 1971.
Kafka was born July 3, 1883, into a middle class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, in the Austrian province of Bohemia, inside the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was the Galanteriewaren merchant Hermann Kafka (1852-1931) and his mother was Julie Kafka, nee Löwy (1856-1934). Although his native language was German, he also learned Czech as a child, and spoke it fluently throughout his life. He also had some knowledge of French language and culture; one of his favorite authors was Flaubert and he had a sentimental affinity for Napoleon. He had two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, neither of whom lived two full years and died before Kafka was six, and three sisters, Elli, Valli and Ottla. From 1889 to 1893, Kafka attended the Deutsche Knabenschule at Fleischmarkt in Prague and finished his Matura exam in 1901. He went on to study law, and obtained his law degree in 1906, then worked for a worker's accident insurance agency. He began writing on the side. In 1917 he began to suffer from tuberculosis, which would require frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, mostly notably his sister Ottla, whom he had much in common with.
The asceticism and self-deprecation with which Kafka is associated is well-documented in the letters of his and of his friends and family; however, it does need to be put into context. Chronic sickness--whether real or psychosomatic is a matter of debate--plagued him; aside from tuberculosis, he suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments. He attempted to counteract this by a regimen of naturopathic treatments, such as a vegetarian diet and consumption of large quantities of unpasteurized milk (the latter possibly the causal factor of his tuberculosis). Most likely today he would have been diagnosed as clinically depressed, but because of this his self-critical attitudes are severely exaggerated. While at school, he took an active role in organizing literary and social events, he did much to promote and organize performances for Yiddish theater, despite the misgivings of even his closest friends such as Max Brod, who usually supported him in everything else, and quite contrary to his fear of being perceived as both physically and mentally repulsive, impressed others with his boyish, neat, and austere good looks, his quiet and cool demeanor, and his intelligence and odd sense of humor.
Kafka's relationship with his domineering father is an important theme in his writing. In early 1920s he has important love affair with Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenska. In 1923 he briefly moved to Berlin in the hope of distancing himself from his family's influence to concentrate on his writing. His tuberculosis worsened; he returned to Prague, then went to a sanatorium near Vienna for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924, apparently from starvation (Kafka's condition made it too painful on his throat to eat, and since intravenous therapy had not been developed, there was no way to feed him). His body was brought back to Prague where he was buried June 11, 1924 in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Zizkov.
Kafka published only a few short stories during his lifetime, a small part of his work, and consequently his writing attracted little attention until after his death. Before dying, he instructed his friend and literary executor Max Brod, to destroy all of his manuscripts. His lover Dora Dymant faithfully destroyed the manuscripts that she had, but Brod did not follow Kafka's instructions and oversaw the publication of most of his work, which soon began to attract attention and critical regard. All his published works were written in German.