The Life of Kafka

            Franz Kafka was born on the third of July, 1883, in Prague, Bohemia, which was part of the Austria-Hungary Empire back then, but is now the Czech Republic. He was born into a middle class, German-speaking Jewish family, and was the youngest of six children, Kafka being the oldest. His two younger brothers died at the ages of fifteen and sixteen months old, and he had three surviving, younger sisters. He was well educated throughout his youth and into adulthood. He attended the Deutsche Knabenschule German boys' elementary school from 1889-1893, and around the time he went on to secondary school, he ended his Jewish education with his Bar Mitzvah which was at the age of 13. His secondary school that he attended for eight years was Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, which was a challenging classic-oriented school. At the age of 18, he was admitted to the German Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague, in which he studied chemistry, and then law, in which he got a doctorate in on June 18, 1906. He had tough times in his childhood, such as his brothers dying at young ages. Overall he had a good childhood and youth, hiking with his friends, having many interests in athletics, education, and writing, and a good family.

            Kafka's adult life was full of promise and problems in different parts of his life. After receiving his doctorate in Law, he took a few jobs such as being a part of two insurance companies, the first, Assicurazioni Generali, in 1907 and the second, Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia, in 1908. In 1911, he started to work at Prager Asbestwerke Hermann and Co, a factory. He would always write regardless of his free time, but he became serious about writing around 1908. He would mainly write short stories, and many of them at that, but only publish a few in his adult life. In the midst of the businesses he worked for, he wrote these stories and novels at home. In 1912, he wrote the stories Das Urteil ("The Judgment"), Die Verwandlung ("The Metamorphosis"), and few others that became popular throughout literature. He wrote many novels in his adult life as well, such as Der Heizer ("The Stoker") in, or Der Process ("The Trial") in 1914. He had a troubling relationship with his father, and was discriminated against for being Jewish, which both of these personal hardships critiques believed influenced his own writing. He also had a problem with his sex-life, and how he had a lot of intimacies to compensate for thinking he was bad in sex and to make him feel good for other things that were going on in his life. Kafka had an overall pleasant adult life, with a few personal problems, but his writing career progressed well in silence. The few pieces he published were quite popular and are today in world literature.

            Kafka influenced writers of all kinds in the 20th century and today. His most influential and published writing was The Metamorphosis and it is studied in today's schools and universities for his style and creative, complex writing. Kafka had a particularly big influence on the Jewish population and Jewish literature in his hometown of Prague at the time, but he also is in Jewish communities around the world even today. Being the world known writer he was and is now, it was amazing to have such an influential Jewish writer back in his time, and especially because of where he was from. Not only was Kafka an influential figure in literature, but he was influenced by other things and people as well. Kafka followed Judaism, but was interested in Zionism, the protest religion that promoted the settlement of Jews in Palestine. The founder, Theodor Herzl, was one of his biggest influences. Other influences in the Jewish religion to Kafka were fellow friends such as Max Brod and Martin Buber, and teachers such as Thieberger and Dora Dymant. All these people were influential to Kafka because they taught him of Hebrew, Judaism in its whole, Jewish traditions and culture, and political points such as Zionism. These were important people to him because his interests and thus is writing was all based on Jewish aspects and religion, in a metaphorical and creative way. He was just as influential as he was influenced in many ways. Kafka wrote stories, novels, translations, and other forms of writing, creative or analytical, but his style of writing will always be easily recognized and will be forever.

            Franz Kafka died the third of June,1924. Kafka's death was caused from the disease laryngeal tuberculosis, a deathly cough. The main reason he died was because he starved himself to death, but only because his cough hurt his throat so much that it was too painful to swallow anything. He was sent away from his family to Berlin, so he would not infect his children, the year before his death. When he returned to Prague, it had only worsened, and he was sent to Hoffman's sanatorium for treatment on April 10, 1924, in which he stayed there until his grueling death. His three sisters all died 18-20 years later from/during the Holocaust, leaving the whole original Kafka family dead. Kafka died as a hero in literature, and will forever be remembered, cherished, and studied for his writing.

Works Cited

Biography.com. "Franz Kafka Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, 2013. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.

CliffNotes. "The Metamorphosis and Other Stories By Franz Kafka Critical Essays Kafka's Jewish Influence." Kafka's Jewish Influence. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.

Nervi, Mauro. "Kafka's Life (1883-1924)." The Kafka Project. The Kafka Project, 08 Jan. 2011. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.

Page, Larry, and Sergey Brin. "Google." Google. Larry Page, 1998. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.

Wikipedia.org. "Franz Kafka." Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia, 17 Mar. 2014. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.