Dearest Father, 

You asked me recently why I maintain that I am afraid of you.

It was with these words that 35-year-old Czech-Jewish writer Franz Kafka opened a letter to his father, Herman Kafka, in November of 1919. For most of his life, Kafka attempted to step out of his father’s shadow. He refused to enter the family business, a haberdashery in Prague. Instead, he opted to pursue an education in law. In his last few years, Kafka rarely visited his parents’ home as he tried to build a new life for himself as a lawyer working for a government-run insurance company, eventually developing into a rarely–published writer.

This momentum was interrupted after another devastating intervention by his father – an intervention that led to the cancellation of his son’s engagement to Julie Wohryzek. Kafka could no longer contain his anger and lashed out at his father, cataloguing a series of incidents of abuse against his children and articulating the pain he himself experienced as a result.

Throughout the letter, the figure of Herman Kafka is revealed as a strict and cruel father. While he worked hard all his life to support his family, Herman’s harsh, all-knowing character prevented any possibility of empathy from his children. This was reinforced by his tendency to constantly suppress his children’s wishes and dismiss all opinions not his own as the product of a defective mind. At one point, Kafka points out that his father spat venomous criticism at the whole world (and first and foremost at his eldest son) until he was the only one remaining on the “side of right.”

“I was a timid child.” Kafka wrote to his father, “For all that, I am sure I was also obstinate, as children are. I am sure that Mother spoiled me too, but I cannot believe I was particularly difficult to manage; I cannot believe that a kindly word, a quiet taking by the hand, a friendly look, could not have got me to do anything that was wanted of me”.

One incident from his childhood, spent in the shadow of Herman, transcended all others. The young Franz Kafka was “whimpering for water”, admittedly with the partial intention of annoying his parents and amusing himself. His angry father then proceeded to uproot him from his bed and lock him out on the balcony in the freezing Czech winter. This traumatic experience made it clear to the child that, at any moment, he could be taken from his comfortable surroundings and thrown into a cruel, lawless world. This was the embodiment of the Kafkaesque moment, the key element that is repeated again and again in his fictional writing – from Josef K.’s encounter with the law to Gregor Samsa’s sudden realization upon waking that he has turned into a “monstrous vermin” in his bed.

Between these various accusations, Kafka also chose to illuminate his father’s positive character traits, qualities that gave him hope for a better relationship in the future. He fondly recalls the time when Herman visited him when he was recovering from a serious illness- how he approached softly and peered into his room, quietly waving hello so as not to disturb his son’s rest. He told his father that moments like this could make one “weep for happiness, and one weeps again now, writing it down.” The letter gradually reveals itself for what it truly is – a desperate attempt by a disgruntled but loving son to gain the approval of his father.

When Kafka finished writing the letter, he gave it to his mother. After reading its contents, she decided that it was better if her husband never saw it and returned it to her son. He did not attempt to send it again. The 47-page letter never reached its destination. A typewritten copy found its way to Kafka’s good friend, Max Brod who noted that Kafka had typed it himself. The last page, however, was handwritten in Kafka’s own script. Unfortunately, we cannot conclusively determine whether this is the same copy Kafka passed on to his mother, or if it is a different draft. Another version of the letter, entirely in Kafka’s handwriting, is kept in the German Literature Archive in Marbach.

The Letter to His Father stands as Kafka’s only autobiographical text completed in his lifetime and, although the memories within its pages were chosen to serve the belligerent spirit in which it was written, this is the text that provides the sharpest image of the childhood of the great modernist writer. There is often a sharp distinction drawn between Kafka’s literary writing, with its strange allegories and parables, and his personal writing, which consists of letters, diaries and notebooks full of introspective reflection. The Letter to His Father proves difficult for researchers of Kafka to place conclusively in either of these categories.

You can view Kafka’s letter to his father on the National Library of Israel website, here.

See more items from the Kafka Collection:

The Drawings of Franz Kafka

Kafka’s “Blue Notebook” Revealed

The Fate of Franz Kafka’s Archive

1917 was a fateful year in the life of Franz Kafka. In that year, the same year he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, Kafka began teaching himself Hebrew. When his friend Max Brod heard about this, he was stunned. How was it possible that for over six months his close friend had been studying Hebrew without telling him—a Zionist activist planning on immigrating to Palestine? The discovery led to a broad correspondence in Hebrew, in which the Czech-Jewish writer and lawyer sought to practice his Hebrew with a more qualified speaker than himself.

If at first Brod viewed his friend’s decision mainly as an attempt to entertain himself intellectually, the more Kafka deepened his study of the language, the more his interest in Zionism and in his Jewish roots grew. In addition to his desire to read the Bible in the original language, he was becoming more interested in the Socialist stream of Zionism. He followed a number of Zionist journals in German and made sure to keep up on the news of the Second Aliyah (Jewish immigration wave) to the Land of Israel.

We find evidence of this in one of Kafka’s eight Hebrew notebooks, which were recently received at the Library as part of the estate of Max Brod, at the end of a long legal process (which you can read about here). Besides the list of Hebrew vocabulary words and their German translations, in the “Blue Notebook,” Kafka documented the teacher’s strike in Mandatory Palestine in November 1922. This record enables us to date the notebook—two years before his death from tuberculosis in Klosterneuburg, Austria. At that time, Kafka’s Hebrew teacher, a young woman named Puah Ben Tovim, from the Hebrew Yishuv in the Land of Israel, had arrived in Prague with the aim of studying medicine. Even when Kafka’s health began to fail, he continued pursuing his Hebrew studies.

Kafka wrote (in Hebrew!) to his teacher Puah:

…from the heavy and deep sighs that arise from the economic pressure that Zionism and the workers of the Land of Israel are under. The teachers took nine measures and eight of these measures were taken by the teachers of Jerusalem. There is no end to the threats of strike or protests and deafening reminders [?] flying from all around. There is the impression that the teachers have fallen into the worst situation of all the workers in the Yishuv and they are the only ones who are suffering and deprived of wages. The question of teacher salaries has become the central and burning issue. As if here begins and ends the entire episode of suffering and difficult struggle of this helpless period.

The turning point came in the last year of his life, 1924, when he told his beloved, Dora Diamant, about his plans for the future: to settle in the Land of Israel and open a restaurant that would serve the Zionist pioneers. The plan was amazingly simple—Dora would be responsible for cooking the food, and he would serve as the restaurant’s waiter and manager. The plan he concocted probably sounded to Dora like another of the many stories he liked to tell his friends. However, it might have contained more than just a wish: A year earlier, Kafka corresponded with his friend from his university days, the philosopher and educator Samuel Hugo Bergmann and his wife Elsa, about the possibility that Kafka might accompany Elsa on her journey back to Mandatory Palestine.

In fact, though Bergmann had given his consent, he tried to evade his promise to Kafka with various excuses, all fairly reasonable: he told his wife that he preferred that Kafka wait a while longer in Europe. That the house was too small, he would have to sleep in the children’s room, and mainly, that Kafka was too sick for the arduous journey and difficult conditions he would encounter in the Land of Israel.

In the end, his precarious medical condition put an end to any possibility of his traveling. When it became clear that tickets for the ship he had planned to sail on with Elsa were sold out, he told her not to pay too much attention to his plan to accompany her because it was nothing more than the fantasy of an ill man. He did not, however, rule out the possibility that he would visit them when his health improved.

Kafka spent more than seven years studying Hebrew. His plan to open a restaurant in Palestine was probably nothing more than a pipedream, but his desire to see the developing Hebrew community with his own eyes and to speak the language of the local pioneers remained unchanged until his death.

He never made the journey because he died on June 3^rd, 1924 in the sanitarium in Klosterneuburg. The Czech-Jewish writer was laid to rest in Prague, where he lived most of his life and where he wrote most of the works that have granted him eternal fame.

You can now browse through Franz Kafka’s “Blue Notebook” on the National Library of Israel website, here.

See more items from the Kafka archives:

The Drawings of Franz Kafka

The Fate of Franz Kafka’s Archive

Kafka’s Rare Manuscripts: From the Vault in Switzerland to the Library in Jerusalem