Kafka+Biography

=Franz Kafka was born in Prague, then a part of = the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on July 3, 1883. He was the oldest surviving child of Jewish parents Hermann Kafka, a successful merchant, and Julie Löwy Kafka. Hermann Kafka was an overbearing man who was never able to appreciate his son’s special talents. The strained relationship between father and son became the key element in Kafka’s personality and led to lifelong guilt, anxiety, and lack of self-confidence.

The young Franz was a good student and popular with his classmates and teachers. Already, however, the boy showed signs of an inward-looking personality and the poor health that was to trouble him his entire life. He disliked the authoritarian discipline of school life but found pleasure and <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">escape in literature. The English novelist Charles <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Dickens was a favorite.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">In 1901, when he was eighteen, Kafka went <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">to the German University in Prague. He studied <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">for a law degree, a course of study approved by his <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">domineering father and one that would lead to a <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">prestigious job, but the young man found the <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">coursework boring. His real interest was literature, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">and he attended many lectures and readings in his <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">spare time. He also began to write short sketches <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">and other pieces of fiction.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Soon after graduating with a law degree in <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">1906, Kafka began working in a government workers’ <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">insurance office. Like Gregor Samsa, the main <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">character of //The Metamorphosis,// Franz Kafka still <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">lived with his parents. His work at the insurance <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">office, while dull, did leave some time for Kafka to <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">pursue his interest in literature. However, family <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">tensions, the deteriorating health of his parents, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">and his own self doubts made concentrating on his <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">writing difficult. He began to keep a diary and also <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">started work on his novel //Amerika.//

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">In 1912, when he was twenty-nine, Kafka <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">wrote //The Metamorphosis.// That same year, he had <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">met Felice Bauer, a visitor from Berlin. Although <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">he was tortured by his usual self-doubts, Kafka <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">became engaged to Felice in 1914. Three months <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">later, he broke the engagement, worried that marriage <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">and family life were incompatible with his <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">writing. Several months later, they became <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">engaged again. In August of that year, Kafka <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">finally moved out of his parents’ home. He began <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">work on a novel, //The Trial,// the dark, eerie tale of <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">a man arrested and executed for reasons he never <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">discovers.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The year 1917 was a startlingly productive <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">one for Kafka, during which he wrote about a <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">dozen stories//.// These stories feature bizarre situations <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">and characters that embody the alienation, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">search for meaning, and despair of modern life. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">Kafka’s health worsened, and in 1917 he was diagnosed <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">with tuberculosis. He took a leave of <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">absence at the insurance institute. He also broke <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">his engagement to Felice a second time. In 1918 <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">he became engaged to Julie Wohrzek, but this <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">engagement, too, he broke.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">The last years of Kafka’s life were marked by <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">periods of intense writing activity, family tensions, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">unsuccessful love relationships, and worsening <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">health. In 1922, he was forced to retire from the <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">insurance institute. When he was healthy enough, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">he continued to write. In 1924, however, he went <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">to a rest home in Austria, where he died at the <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">age of forty-one. During Kafka’s lifetime, only a <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">handful of his writings were published.