A page torn from the manuscript of Franz Kafka’s "The Castle" has been revealed for the first time. What is written on that missing page? Who tore it out? Why would anyone want to keep it hidden?
A portrait of Franz Kafka and an AI-generated castle
Franz Kafka passed away from tuberculosis in a sanatorium in 1924, leaving behind a note addressed to his best friend, Max Brod.
Kafka’s “will”, which was found on that note, was unequivocal: Brod was to collect all of his writings and burn them. He was not to leave a trace behind. However, when the moment came, Brod betrayed Kafka. Though Kafka’s suffered from low self-esteem and did not think much of his own writing, Brod recognized Kafka’s genius from the very first time they met as university students. Not only did Brod not burn the manuscripts – he began editing them and preparing them for publication.
One of these was the manuscript that would become the novel The Castle, a story that would change the way we write about and describe modern life. Had it not been for Brod’s intervention, it would have vanished into oblivion.
Just as Brod and Kafka were intertwined in life, so too were their archives – both of them eventually arriving at the National Library of Israel, after a lengthy legal saga. Among the many items now being revealed to the public for the first time in the exhibition “Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author“, is a rare page containing a scene that was omitted from The Castle, shedding further light on this influential work.
Kafka’s first will.The Max Brod Archive at the National Library of Israel, photographed by Ardon Bar-Hama, with the generous support of George Blumenthal, New York.
Behind the Castle Walls
The plot of The Castle focuses on K., a land surveyor who is sent to take up a post in a tiny village nestled in a mountainous landscape. The village is located at the foot of a high castle that manages all the bureaucracy of the village and its surroundings but is completely inaccessible to the villagers.
K. tries to figure out who he needs to speak with in order to carry out his duty but finds himself running around between various strange functionaries– from the village council chairman to a clerk named Klamm, and to the other villagers who are all completely disconnected from what goes on in the castle but are eager to offer their own speculative interpretations. K. becomes increasingly convinced that he must approach the castle, but his ideas are not well-received by the villagers, who believe that the people in the castle must be justified in their actions and should not be disturbed with trivial matters. K. continues to try, in vain, to understand what exactly he is expected to do, why he was sent to this village, and who he is supposed to speak with in order to understand these details.
A figure riding on the edge of a cliff, drawn by Franz Kafka, the Max Brod Archive at the National Library of Israel, photographed by Ardon Bar-Hama, with the generous support of George Blumenthal, New York
The Wheels of Bureaucracy Grind Slowly
A torn page found in the archives describes a scene that was omitted from the Kafkaesque plot of The Castle. In this scene, K. arrives at the home of the village council chairman, who is there lying in bed because he is ill. The chairman delivers a speech about the importance of bureaucracy, which cannot make mistakes because the entire bureaucratic system is designed to facilitate the best possible decision being taken. And if it does not produce the best decision, the oversight office is there to ensure that the bureaucratic mechanism continues to grind on. Or, in Kafka’s sharp words, the purpose of bureaucracy is to continue striving toward the most correct decision, but never actually reach it:
Then K. said, as he rose and held in his hand the crumpled letter from Klamm: “I wish I had enthusiastic supporters or enthusiastic enemies up in the castle, but unfortunately, there is no one from whom I can hear an unequivocal ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ And even so, I must find such a person. You’ve already given me a few ideas about how I can do so.”
“I had no such intention,” the village chairman said to K. with a laugh, as he shook hands in farewell. “But it was very nice to talk with you. It really eases my conscience. Perhaps we will meet again soon.”
“It’s safe to assume that there will be a need for me to come,” K. said, bending down toward Mitzi the cat. He cautiously reached out to pet her, but Mitzí backed away with a small meow of fear and hid under a pillow.
The chairman petted Mitzi lovingly. “You’re always welcome,” he said, perhaps to help K. cope with Mitzí’s behavior, but then he added, “Especially now, when I am ill. When I recover and can return to my desk, we can assume that my official work will require all my attention.”
“Do you mean to say,” K. asked, “that you weren’t speaking with me officially even today?” The chairman replied, “Of course I wasn’t speaking with you officially. You could call it a semi-official conversation.”
“You don’t appreciate unofficial matters enough, as I’ve already said, but you also underestimate official matters,” the village chairman said. “An official decision is not like this bottle of medicine that sits here on the table. You can’t just take it and get your answer. A true official decision requires countless small considerations, deliberations, and checks. That requires years of work by the very best clerks, even if in some cases, the clerks already know at the start what the final decision will be.
And will there even be a final decision? That’s why there are oversight offices, to prevent the possibility of one appearing.”
“Well, fine,” said K., “everything is exceptionally organized, who could doubt that? You described it in such an enticing manner that now I can’t help but make every effort to learn about it to the finest detail.”
K. left after saying goodbye to the staff, and as he did, a wave of whispers and hushed laughter was heard behind him.
He returned to the inn. In his room, he found a surprise: The room had been thoroughly cleaned. Frieda had worked diligently and greeted him with a kiss on the threshold of the door. The room was well-ventilated, the stove was emanating heat, the floor had been washed, the bed was made, and the servants’ belongings, including their pictures, were gone. A new picture was now hanging on the wall above the bed.
K. approached the new picture hanging on the wall.
A page from the manuscript of the novel The Castle, 1922, the National Library, Max Brod Archive, photographed by Ardon Bar-Hama, with the generous support of George Blumenthal, New York
“We believe that the person who tore out the page was Max Brod himself,” says Stefan Litt, curator of the Humanities Collection at the National Library of Israel. “Because it was torn out at a very early stage. You can understand why—the scene is a bit subversive and strongly criticizes the bureaucratic apparatus.”
The scene not only describes the futility of the bureaucratic system as a whole but also criticizes the oversight mechanisms that are supposedly there to prevent mistakes but in reality, only feed into the inefficient process that crushes and tramples the average citizen.
“The reason why this scene wasn’t included in the final work,” says Litt, “might be that Brod was trying to ensure the draft remained faithful to the final product, and therefore, this page was torn out of Kafka’s notebook.”
Despite the attempts to erase it, the torn page and the omitted scene were preserved in the archives, and are now being displayed to the public for the first time, as part of the unique exhibition entitled “Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author” at the National Library. The exhibition showcases rare handwritten items, drafts and letters by Franz Kafka, an author who changed the very face of Western literature.
From Hitler’s Beer Hall to the National Library in Jerusalem
In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, a large number of Jewish books were discovered by the Jewish Brigade in a famous Munich beer hall considered to be the cradle of Nazism. How did the books end up there? And after they were discovered, where did some of them disappear to?
Italy, March 1945. Following a training period and many delays, thousands of soldiers from the Jewish Brigade finally arrived in northern Italy. They managed to take part in the fight against the Nazis for several weeks before World War II came to an end. Their next mission was no less important. From combat, they transitioned into carrying out rescue operations.
The Brigade (officially the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group) established its base in Tarvisio, located in the tri-border region of Italy, Austria, and Yugoslavia. Very quickly, Jewish survivors of the Holocaust began streaming into the area, having heard that there were Jewish soldiers stationed there who could help them. During June and July 1945, the Brigade soldiers worked tirelessly to help their fellow Jews and facilitate their immigration to the Land of Israel. The “Center for Europe” initiative was established, under which the Brigade units operated to rescue the remnants of European Jewry. In the Tarvisio camp, the “House for Olim” was founded to provide refugees with clothing, food, rest, encouragement, and guidance [Olim – Hebrew for Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel]. From there, with the help of Jewish Brigade drivers, the refugees were transported to training centers in Italy and to ports where they could board Jewish immigrant ships bound for what was still Mandatory Palestine at the time.
Soldiers of the Jewish Brigade in a group photo taken during training, Fiuggi, Italy, 1944. This item is part of the Archive Network Israel project and is made available thanks to the collaborative efforts of Yad Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage, and the National Library of Israel.
The Jewish Brigade didn’t wait for the refugees to come to them. Several delegations from the “Center for Europe” set out across liberated Europe searching for additional survivors, to help them and guide them to Italy. The first delegation embarked on June 20, 1945, for a 10-day journey during which Brigade representatives visited Bavaria and Salzburg. They went to the displaced persons camps and spoke with the Jewish residents about Zionism and immigration to the Land of Israel.
The delegation participated in a large Zionist assembly in Munich, where a survivors’ committee was established to raise awareness about aid for displaced Jews and immigration to Mandatory Palestine. Stages were constructed, flags of the Zionist movement were flown, and the pictures of the founders of Zionism were hung with slogans such as “If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem” and “If You Will It, It Is No Dream.” The Jewish audience drank it all in and listened attentively to the organizers. The many Holocaust survivors marveled at the sight of Jewish soldiers, but also expressed frustration that help had not come sooner.
The Jewish Brigade organized another assembly towards the end of July in the hospital of St. Ottilien Archabbey near Munich. The Brigade’s vehicles gathered about 100 Jewish representatives from dozens of displaced persons camps across Germany and Austria. There were also U.S. Army chaplain rabbis and Zionist representatives from the Land of Israel. Some of the speakers had harsh words about the policies of the occupying armies and their poor treatment of the survivors, who were destitute and battered. Representatives of the camps described the conditions in these facilities, and the assembly concluded with the singing of Hatikvah. After the assembly, the delegation traveled to Munich and stopped at what was known as “Hitler’s Beer Hall.”
What was the delegation looking for in Hitler’s beer hall?
The large and famous beer hall known as Bürgerbräukeller was one of a great many beer halls in the city of Munich. Some of these establishments could host thousands of people and served as meeting places for discussions, events, or political and social debates.
On the night of November 8, 1923, Adolf Hitler and his associates stormed into the Bürgerbräukeller, where the leaders of the Bavarian government were gathered. Hitler fired a shot into the air to silence the crowd, stood on a chair, and declared a “national revolution,” hoping that Munich would serve as a launching point for a swift takeover of all of Germany. From the beer hall, Hitler and his followers—accompanied by about 2,000 supporters and SA members (Nazi stormtroopers)—marched toward the Bavarian Ministry of Defense. In the ensuing gunfight with soldiers, 16 Nazis were killed. Two days after the failed coup attempt, Hitler was captured. He was tried and imprisoned in Landsberg Prison alongside other associates. During his months in prison, he devoted some of his time to writing his book Mein Kampf.
Hitler and his associates in Landsberg “Prison,” 1924
“Scattered on the floor”
The beer hall became a highly symbolic place for the Nazis, and they held annual ceremonies there to commemorate the historic event known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” During one of these events in 1939, there was an assassination attempt on Hitler. The would-be assassin planted explosives in a column near where Hitler was standing and delivering a speech. Hitler survived because he left the beer hall earlier than scheduled. However, the explosion caused significant damage, and the hall was no longer used afterward.
The beer hall during a Nazi Party event.
The delegation of the Jewish Brigade along with the other conference participants made their way to this location, the cradle of Nazism, in July 1945. They concluded their visit with a written declaration:
“We, the survivors of the masses of European Jewry, who were exterminated as a people, whose sons and daughters fought the enemy in the forests of Europe, in the bunkers of the ghettos, in the underground movements, within the ranks of the Allied forces, the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group, and the armed service units of the Land of Israel, raise our voices as a nation and demand the immediate establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, the recognition of the Jewish People as an equal member among all the Allied nations, and its inclusion in the Peace Conference” (from The Book of the Jewish Brigade, page 384).
The document, written in Yiddish, was signed by some of those present at the beer hall in Munich.
Upon leaving the beer hall, the soldiers of the delegation held up the flag of the Zionist movement before the entrance gate. However, they did not leave empty-handed.
Soldiers of the Jewish Brigade by the entrance to the beer hall (from Aharon Hoter-Yishai’s book The Brigade and the She’erit Haplita [surviving remnant]).
One of the participants of the conference that ended in the beer hall was Rabbi Ya’akov Lipschitz, the chaplain rabbi of the Jewish Brigade, who described the event in his book The Book of the Jewish Brigade, which he wrote after the war. In a letter from July 9, 1945, which is preserved in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People at the National Library of Israel, Rabbi Lipschitz wrote to the president of the Hebrew University Judah Magnes about books that he found “scattered on the floor of Hitler’s beer hall in Munich.” Most of these books apparently belonged to the Ezra Judaic Library in the city of Kraków. In his letter, Rabbi Lipschitz listed several items he collected from the beer hall and sent to the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem (which later became the National Library of Israel). He wrote:
“Our brothers and sisters in Jerusalem will study these books and fondly remember the 18,000 pure souls of the Kraków community who were annihilated by the Nazi murderers.”
Rabbi Lipschitz’s letter to Magnes
The reply from Magnes to Rabbi Lipschitz emphasizes the importance of the books that were found in the beer hall and asks the rabbi and the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade to continue with their attempts to locate books, manuscripts, archives, documents, and any other sacred objects that survived the war.
The reply from Magnes to Lipschitz
The first book listed by Rabbi Lipschitz is a Talmud – the tractates of Shabbat and Eruvin in one volume – printed in Vienna in 1806–1807. This book is indeed now part of the National Library’s collection, and in the dedication on the cover page, Rabbi Lipschitz recounts the story of how it was discovered:
“I found this book on the 17th of Tammuz, 5705, lying on the floor of Hitler’s beer hall in Munich, looted by the Nazis from the Jewish community in Kraków. Dedicated to the National and University Library in Jerusalem, as the property of the Jewish People.
Dr. Yaakov Lipschitz, Rabbi of the Jewish Brigade, Tarvisio, 28th of Tammuz, 5705”
Inside cover of the Talmud that was found in the beer hall and sent to the National Library of Israel
“Found in the office of that wicked one”
Many years passed, and in 2023, I was contacted by Yad Vashem regarding a donation that President Isaac Herzog decided to make to the organization. The item in question was a Talmud, the tractate of Pesachim, also printed in Vienna in the same year and by the same printer (Anton von Schmid). This book, too, was found in the same beer hall during the same gathering in July 1945. However, the person who retrieved this Talmud volume was Eliyahu Dobkin, a leader of the Jewish Agency who was present at the event.
Dobkin reported on the gathering during a meeting with David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann in London.
He took the Talmud from the beer hall and presented it to Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, who at the time was the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Mandatory Palestine. The Talmud remained in the family collection until the current president, Rabbi Herzog’s grandson, expressed his wish to entrust it to Yad Vashem. The inside cover of this Talmud does not have a dedication like the one in the National Library, but has a note handwritten by Rabbi Herzog:
“This book was found in the office of that wicked one—may his name and memory be erased… It was given to me by Mr. Dobkin… Two books were found there, this one and a copy of the Yad HaChazakah (the Mishneh Torah) by Rambam, of blessed memory, which was given to Dr. Chaim Weizmann, of blessed memory.”
The team at Yad Vashem tried to locate the Mishneh Torah in the Chaim Weizmann Archive, but their search yielded no results. Yad Vashem staff also visited us at the National Library to examine the book preserved here, which was also rescued from the beer hall, and to compare it with the volume in their possession.
The Talmud that President Herzog donated is currently displayed at the Holocaust History Museum at Yad Vashem.
The Talmud at Yad Vashem (photo from the Yad Vashem website)
The Talmud that the Herzog family entrusted to Yad Vashem reignited my curiosity about the Jewish books collected and rescued from Hitler’s beer hall. I tried to locate the other items that Rabbi Lipschitz sent to us at the National Library, according to his letter. I found several copies of the mentioned books, but none bore the stamps of the Ezra Library or had any identifying marks that could definitively link them to the items that were sent. The list also included pieces of parchment taken from a Torah scroll (containing everything from the Bereishit portion to the Vayetzei portion). The Library holds many parchment fragments of partial Torah scrolls, but we found none matching the description in the letter.
I then searched the bibliographic journal Kiryat Sefer, published by the National Library of Israel. In 1945, it mentions donations arriving from around the world, but unfortunately, there was no reference to a donation by Rabbi Lipschitz and the Jewish Brigade—not for the Torah scroll nor for the other books. Honestly, this is somewhat surprising, given that the journal lists various donations that seem far less remarkable. I tried checking the Library’s manuscript registration records. I did find that in 1945, “pages from a Torah manuscript on parchment” were received. For a moment, I was excited to see that the pages had been sent from Munich, but my enthusiasm quickly faded. The pages were found in Berlin and merely shipped from Munich. Moreover, these were handwritten pages of a Book of Torah, not fragments of a Torah scroll.
It is possible that the scroll fragments from the beer hall never made it to the Library or were sent elsewhere.
This dead end led me to a more fundamental question: How did books from the Ezra Library in Kraków even end up in Hitler’s beer hall in Munich?
To the best of our knowledge, there is no documentation of this transfer. While it is true that the Germans looted millions of books from libraries across Europe, many of them Jewish, these books were typically sent to organized and recognized research institutions in Berlin, Frankfurt, and other locations—not to destroyed beer halls. The National Library brought hundreds of thousands of books that had been stolen to Israel, tens of thousands of which are now part of our collection.
So, what do we know about the books from the Ezra Library? The Ezra Library was established in Kraków in 1899 and served the Jewish community until the Nazis occupied the city and shut down its educational and cultural institutions. With its 6,000 books, it was considered the largest public Jewish library in Kraków.
The Nazis burned numerous libraries, including those belonging to schools and synagogues. However, some of the larger collections were preserved and transferred to the Staatsbibliothek, the State Library that was opened in Kraków in April 1941 as part of an effort to bring German culture and education to the occupied territories. Most of the Jewish books from the Ezra Library were moved to the Oriental Studies Department of this library. While 2,100 books from the Ezra Library were lost in the early stages of the war, 65% survived and were transferred after the war to the Old Synagogue in Kraków.
Stamp of the Ezra Library in Kraków
What about the 2,100 lost books from the Ezra Library? It is assumed that they were stolen or destroyed. Here are some attempts to explain their disappearance:
In October 1939, Professor Peter Paulsen from the University of Berlin arrived in Poland. Over several months, he and his team looted works of art from Polish cities and sent them to Germany. He also stole books and sent them to the library of the Reich Main Security Office – the SS office that managed all internal security matters. This vast library was situated in Berlin, so even if books from the Ezra Library were taken this way, they were likely not sent to Munich. Another academic institution that stole books from Jewish libraries was the Institute for the Study of the History of the New Germany in Berlin. This institution’s department for “Research on the Jewish Question” operated in Munich. However, that still doesn’t explain whether this institution received books from Kraków, and if so, how they got there and why they would have been sent to the beer hall.
We may never know.
One of the people who was at that same event in the beer hall was Aharon Hoter-Yishai, an officer in the Jewish Brigade. In his book, The Brigade and the She’erit Haplita [surviving remnant], he writes:
“…In the basement, they discovered piles of holy books, edition upon edition, bound in beautiful, expensive leather. There was such a quantity that, in my estimation, it would have required two or three train cars and several trucks to collect them [the books].”
Hoter-Yishai suggested that the looted books might have been used for an exhibition and served as a sort of record of Nazi activity and Hitler’s extensive efforts “to make Europe Judenrein (free of Jews).”
Today, the Talmud in the Library’s collection, along with the additional copy at Yad Vashem, tells an entirely different story. Instead of being desecrated on the floor of a Nazi landmark in Munich, the books serve as an eternal testimony in Israeli institutions in Jerusalem.
Book Review: “Come With Me to the Ritz” by Vasile Dubb
A collection of anecdotal short stories that contain an intellectual playfulness that keeps readers engaged.
Alexandru Cistelacan notes that the work masterfully incorporates “Jewish humor,” often drawing on traditional Jewish anecdotes and a literary tradition shared by renowned authors like Amos Oz. At the same time, it resonates with the distinct humor of Czech literature, bringing to mind the clever and satirical tones of Karel Čapek and Bohumil Hrabal. This intersection of cultural humor provides the book with a rich, multilayered texture.
In the book’s preface, Emil Nicolae-Nadler emphasizes the continuous stream of lively, interconnected stories filled with unexpected twists and moments of linguistic brilliance. These elements are not merely comedic but also serve to reflect deeper cultural and existential themes, offering a blend of light-heartedness and meaningful reflection. The text’s cultural intertextuality and rich allusions make it a rewarding experience for readers who appreciate nuanced, intellectually stimulating humor.
The book stands out as a testament to the enduring power of storytelling that bridges humor with profound insight, securing its place within contemporary literary discourse.
Dubb’s book is a collection of short stories. Included among these is the novella “Till Death Do Us Part” (Până când moartea ne va despărți), a rich narrative exploring themes of love, marriage, tradition, and familial duty within a Jewish community, likely set in the historical region of Maramureș.
The story employs humor, mysticism, and cultural detail to delve into the complexities of a relationship that is heavily influenced by religious and social norms.
Lipka, or by his full name Chananya Yom Tov Lipa Teitelbaum, is a learned and devout man from a Hasidic Jewish background. He became the Grand Rebbe of the Siget Hasidic Dynasty, and the author of Kedushath Yom Tov, a commentary on the Torah which he wrote in 1895. His knowledge of Jewish laws, the Mishnah, and the Gemara was unparalleled, making him a hugely respected figure in the Jewish world.
However, his inability to father children with his wife Reizele becomes a central tension in “Till Death Do Us Part”. This failure subjects him to societal and familial scrutiny, leading to discussions about divorce and his responsibilities as a rabbi.
The story revolves around the marriage of Lipka and Reizele, a union initially believed to be thrice-blessed but fraught with challenges. It explores the pressures of procreation, the significance of symmetry in beauty and life, and the weight of tradition. The story humorously and poignantly portrays the struggle between adhering to religious expectations and coping with personal shortcomings.
At its core, the story examines several themes:
– The societal expectations of marriage: Especially in traditional communities where childbearing is central to a couple’s identity.
– The burden of religious duty: Highlighted by Lipka’s anguish over being a rabbi without children, which undermines his authority.
– The role of women: Reizele is described vividly, emphasizing both her physical attributes and her vibrant personality, contrasting her predicament as a “barren” wife.
– The humor in adversity: The narrative blends sharp wit with the gravity of the characters’ dilemmas, such as the absurdity of needing to gather 100 rabbinical approvals for a divorce.
Finally, although the novella is deeply rooted in the specific cultural and spiritual life of a Jewish Hasidic community, it also carries additional messages revolving around universal themes of human frailty, love, and the search for meaning in relationships. “Till Death Do Us Part” is just one of the stories included in Come With Me to the Ritz (Vino cu mine la Ritz), which you can find at the National Library of Israel today.
Another Trial: A Kafkaesque Love Triangle
Despite his romantic and tortured image, Franz Kafka’s attitude towards women had its darker aspects. Who would have guessed that the tangled romantic triangle between Kafka, his fiancée Felice Bauer and her good friend Grete Bloch would produce one of the greatest literary classics of all time?
Franz Kafka and Felice Bauer, 1917. Mondadori Portfolio, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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?
By Merav Salomon, from the “Kafka: Metamorphosis of an Author” exhibition at the National Library of Israel
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.
Franz Kafka’s calling card
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.
One of Kafka’s own drawings, appearing in what’s known as the “The Black Notebook”, the National Library of Israel
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.
A letter by Kafka to Grete Bloch, Felice Bauer’s friend, the National Library of Israel
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.
