Four years ago, a new trend took TikTok by storm, with young women developing an obsession with a desirable bachelor by the name of Franz (Amshel) Kafka. The #Kafka hashtag received over 140 million views, and female TikTokers filmed themselves reading selected passages from Letters to Milena, the collection of correspondence written by Kafka to his muse, Milena Jesenská. Praise was lavished on the iconic author for his good looks and poetic writing style, and his written expressions of love were soon setting the bar for young women on TikTok, who declared that they would settle for nothing less in their future partners.
But what the Kafka fangirls missed was that the writer’s relationships with women had less positive aspects as well. In today’s terms, one could even argue that he was a bit of a “douche” or a “gaslighter.” These tangled relationships did not lead to a happy marriage or to a settled family life, but they did result in one of humanity’s greatest literary classics.
But the story I’m about to tell isn’t just juicy gossip concerning this tortured author. Who knew that the hurt feelings of a single man would lead to the creation of one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, one which ostensibly has nothing to do with romantic relationships?
Kafka met Felice Bauer at the home of his good friend Max Brod in 1912 and was immediately impressed by her as a talented businesswoman and even a Zionist – a trait he found endearing, to his surprise. Bauer was an independent and modern woman by the standards of the time, the daughter of a German Jewish family who worked as a clerk in Berlin. He wrote to her five weeks after their first meeting and presented himself as the man who had been seated across from her at a table in Brod’s apartment and who had handed her a series of photographs to examine:
“and who finally, with the very hand now striking the keys, held your hand, the one which confirmed a promise to accompany him next year to Palestine”
(From a letter by Kafka to Felice Bauer, appearing in Kafka’s Other Trial by Elias Canetti)
Kafka was a man who fell in love via the written word, and indeed, his relationship with Felice was characterized by intense, powerful writing – more than 700 pages spread over the course of 500 letters.
They corresponded for years, yet only the letters that reached her have survived to this day. Even his marriage proposal was put in writing, included as a mere side issue in a letter that mainly discussed his manuscript of The Stoker. But as was his wont – the moment Felice said “yes,” Kafka began to panic at the very thought of settling down with a woman. In the following letters, he presented legal arguments that essentially attacked himself, artfully edited and arranged in a manner that clearly disclosed his own professional experience as a lawyer. He explained why she should reconsider marrying him – due to his own great concern for her:
“Haven’t I for months now been squirming before you like something poisonous? Am I not here one moment, there the next? Are you not beginning to feel sick at the sight of me? Can you not see by now that if disaster – yours, your disaster, Felice – is to be averted, I have to remain locked up within myself?”
(From a letter by Kafka to Felice Bauer, appearing in Kafka’s Other Trial by Elias Canetti)
Felice used the only weapon at her disposal in response – silence. She ceased responding to his letters, and if she did reply – she did so with a succinctness which tortured him. After months of sparse communication, Kafka told her that he had fled to Vienna. There, he participated in the Zionist Congress taking place at the time, but due to his bitter mood, his impression of the event was entirely negative.
Felice continued her stubborn silence, but since she heard nothing from Kafka, she sent her good friend Grete Bloch and asked her to mediate between them. Had she known the consequences of putting her friend in Kafka’s sights, she probably would have done anything to reverse that decision.
Very little is known of Grete Bloch. Like Felice, she was also Jewish, a businesswoman and a practical type. Kafka’s quotes of her letters imply that her writing was efficient rather than literary, though she also tended to open up emotionally and share her experiences and inner world freely with the author.
The two often corresponded regarding Felice, discussing her deficiencies – such as dental treatments which left her with mostly golden teeth. Despite this occupation with Felice’s less attractive sides, Kafka finally returned and asked Felice once again to marry him, as a result of his correspondence with Bloch.
Yet despite the renewed engagement between Kafka and Felice, he continued to correspond with her good friend, sharing his continued fears regarding his upcoming marriage to Felice.
“Our relationship, which for me at least holds delightful and altogether indispensable possibilities, is in no way changed by my engagement or my marriage”
(From a letter by Kafka to Grete Bloch, appearing in Kafka’s Other Trial by Elias Canetti)
Although we know little about Bloch, we do know one thing for certain – she was a good and faithful friend to Felice. Bloch therefore took care to inform Felice that her fiancé was again becoming fickle and getting cold feet regarding their engagement. She also let Felice know that Kafka was corresponding with her (Grete) with the same passion and emotional warmth he’d expressed when writing to his betrothed.
The High Court of Love
This strange love triangle reached a crescendo in a particularly charged meeting that included all three parties. Kafka was invited to a hotel in Berlin, and there in the lobby, he was put on trial for his duplicitous behavior with Bloch and Bauer. The prosecution was represented by Felice and her sister Erna, while Kafka was defended by his good friend, writer Ernst Weiss, who never liked Felice. Grete Bloch served as the judge, while also bringing forth his letters and marking all his dismissive statements towards Felice in red.
Kafka did not even try to defend himself on this occasion, and it is no wonder that this improvised trial terminated the engagement.
“He felt attacked,” said Stefan Litt, curator of the Humanities Collection at the National Library of Israel, “he felt that he was being unjustly tried, and that he was being accused without even understanding the charge.”
The sense of persecution and the “romantic trial” – in which Kafka’s loves served as accusers, judges, and executors – greatly influenced Kafka. As part of his effort to process and respond to what happened, he began to write one of the most important works in the western canon – The Trial.
All’s Fair in Love and War
The Trial tells the story of Josef K., a senior bank clerk who is accused one fine day of a crime he did not commit. Except that the investigators don’t investigate him, and the judges and surrounding officials aren’t even willing to tell him what he’s being charged with, instead making his life miserable with a row of damning accusations, charges, and legal proceedings. Josef feels powerless to halt the wheels of justice which are slowly but thoroughly grinding both him and – justice itself – into dust.
Alongside the many deep readings of Kafka’s story, which was previously thought to be primarily an indictment of modern bureaucracy, there is also the interpretation which establishes it as the way he experienced the “court” formed by the two women in his life, who put him “on trial” when they chose to support each other against him.
In real life, despite the traumatic encounter which led to the writing of the book, Kafka and Felice Bauer continued to correspond and even became engaged again after the dust had settled. Kafka intended to marry her – until he learned he was sick with tuberculosis. This bitter news greatly affected him emotionally and he had difficulty imagining a future, so he called off the engagement, thus ending his relationship with Bauer.
Other women over the years had an influence on Kafka’s writing and work, the most famous of which were Milena Jesenská – a Czech journalist and intellectual who also translated Kafka’s works into Czech from their original German – and Dora Diamant. Diamant met Kafka towards the end of his life, when he was 40 and she was 25. Originally from a family of Ger Hasids, she was the only woman he lived with in his adult life and she was the one who cared for him during his final years.
The Court Adjourns
Most of Kafka’s relatives and the women in his life were murdered in the Holocaust. Felice Bauer was an exception, having immigrated to the United States before the war. Like the good businesswoman she was, she sold the letters Kafka sent her, which were then collected into a volume. Bauer ultimately married to another man, one who did not panic at the very thought of being in the presence of a woman, and ultimately passed away in the 1960s in the United States.
You must be asking yourselves: What about Grete Bloch? As already noted, we know very little about her and her fate aside from the fact she perished in the Holocaust. But there are unconfirmed rumors about her and Kafka continuing their relationship, even after he ended things with Felice Bauer. Bloch gave birth to a child, and never said anything about the identity of the father. Some tried to claim that Kafka may have been the father, but the child died at the age of five, and documentation of him has not survived.
For his part, Kafka married neither Bauer nor Bloch. It’s really no wonder that the Kafka-Bauer-Bloch love triangle did not result in any sort of stable or normal relationship, and instead brought The Trial into the world. Kafka’s story would likely not have seen the light of day were it not for the tension and difficulty he experienced when confronted by two friends, bound by a sense of sisterhood, who stood together against him in the moment of truth.
One of the many letters Kafka wrote to Bloch will be displayed in the “Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author” exhibition, which will open on December 4, 2024 at the National Library of Israel. In the exhibition, rare items such as Kafka’s will, letters in his handwriting, and even draft pages of The Castle that were left out of the published book will be on display, as well as items which tell the complicated story of Kafka and the women in his life. The exhibition marks the 100th anniversary of Kafka’s passing.
