How Franz Kafka Died

Franz Kafka was a Jewish writer born in the  Austro-Hungarian Empire, Austria; his work is considered a jewel of one of the most beautiful arts, literature. He is among the great writers that make up the list of universal literature, he is among the first representatives.

His style is a compact treasure of psychological literature, since among his recurring themes are certain existential conflicts. For example, a typical plot of this writer is the way in which his protagonists face conflicts about their humanity.

These are works in which the existence of a single man is involved in various emotional adventures and labyrinthine episodes that lead people to rethink their own life scenarios, since the works of Franz Kafka recreate the unspeakable conflicts of the family and the inner transformations of one’s own being.

Like the great writers, Kafka’s literary work had a real impact posthumously, since in his lifetime he only achieved insignificant publications. His Jewish nature caused him several inconveniences in the middle of the Second World War, as the Nazi police confiscated many of his manuscripts. So, it was in post-war Europe that this writer’s work saw the light of day, but the depth of his subject matter quickly led him to worldwide fame as an existentialist writer.

The search for many of his first manuscripts is still in force, due to the importance of this writer in universal literature. Next, in this post you will learn how Franz Kafka died and the importance of his work worldwide.

How did Franz Kafka live?

Kafka’s father was engaged in the textile trade, but always had financial problems; His status improved when he got married. His father’s name was Hermann Kafka, from a humble Czech family that also lived by butchering. Franz Kafka’s mother was Julie Löwy, also from the Czech Republic, but from a wealthier family. Kafka’s maternal family was in the beer-making business.

Thanks to the Kafka family business, they were able to afford young Franz a good education at a German school. He studied law out of his father’s and not personal desire, but during his university days he found time for his greatest hobby: literature, since he who would be recognized posthumously as one of the best contemporary writers, enjoyed reading literature and philosophy more than law.

By then, he met his eternal friend Max Brod, who encouraged him towards the literary and philosophical. Personally, Franz Kafka was a shy and insecure human being with clinically diagnosed personality disorders, part of his Jewish heritage in a Nazi reality; but his literary and philosophical readings gave his puny soul an inquisitive spirit about the truths of being.

After college he worked in law firms, a job he did until 1920, when he retired due to ill health. For 12 years he practiced as a lawyer in the morning, but the rest of the day he dedicated to writing and reading, the trade that allowed him to transcend time and that gave his work the qualification of Kafkaesque.

Franz Kafka married Felice Bauer, but the emotional instability of the writer caused them to separate several times. Finally, this relationship ends definitively for Bauer when he is  diagnosed with tuberculosis, a disease that leads to his death.

After his diagnosis, the writer spends a long time confined to hospitals. During this period, he meets Julie Wohryzek, with whom he falls madly in love. However, despite finding love and emotional comfort in that woman, there was always a natural opposition between Franz and his father, which never allowed them to have good relations and which plunged him more and more into his miseries.

It was around 1919 when Kafka’s father was relentlessly opposed to the love between his son and Julie. This episode marked Kafka greatly, leading him to write a heartfelt letter to his father that he never delivered. The work that titled as Letter to the father. This work reveals a deep and heartfelt artistic expression where great truths about the filial relationships between a father and his son are brought to light.

The journalist Milena Jesenská will be the one who inspires Kafka to write around the time of 1920 his well-known Letters to Milena. These letters describe an impossible type of love in which neither lover can make it real, for they very purposefully reveal Milena as a married woman and Franz as a sick man. The sending of missives or letters between the two allows the compilation of this work.

How did Franz Kafka die?

Towards the last years of his life, Franz Kafka retired to his sister’s country house. His state of health was already quite serious, he was 40 years old at that time. His stay in this house allows him to create the masterpiece El castillo, which defines himself as a Kafkaesque being, a man who is looking for something in the midst of his own tribulations.

Almost at the end of his life, Franz Kafka met Dora Diamant, his last, desired and great love; This last light in the life of the writing gave him a little vitality and renewed his worn-out days. The disease worsened, and even Dora’s youth did not long stop the devastating path of tuberculosis.

Franz Kafka died in an apparently calm way, because in the end he had the company of those who loved him the most. He was accompanied by his friend Max Brod, his uncle and his beloved Dora, on June 3, 1924. However, it cannot be said that knowing that death stalks you and consumes little by little with a disease produces peace of mind.  Despite this, it was a death that had already been announced due to the weakness of his body.

Specifically, due to the respiratory disease he suffered, he was transferred in the midst of a crisis to the university clinic in the capital; then, at the end of April, he was admitted to the Dr. Hoffmann Sanitarium in Kierling, where he died. His funeral was on June 11 at the New Prague-Žižkov Cemetery.

Instructions for died Franz Kafka

Kafka is not really dead, if you want to know him you just have to read his works and he will live in you forever. The themes that are explored in Kafka’s works delve into human needs. For the interpretation of his work, key questions are: what or who am I? or where am I going?

To interpret the literary work of Franz Kafka take into account the following:

1. First, you must understand the Kafkaesque origin, growth and formation.
2. Kafka’s birth into a Jewish middle-class family, in a time of war, was key.
3. Kafka’s academic training unleashes a crucial point in what would later become his relationship with his father.
4. Franz Kafka’s profession in Law was by pure paternal desire, as Franz preferred  philosophical and literary readings. Therefore, from now on, we will understand that the filial relationship between the two was marked by oppositions and disagreements;  this fact is important for the literary interpretation of Franz Kafka.
5. In his works, family relationships are described from the ignorance of the other.
6. Thus, another very Kafkaesque theme is inner loneliness.
7. Franz Kafka describes his characters as anti -heroes who battle against their adventures from their own solitudes.
8. Here comes the existentialist theme that surrounds all the work of Franz Kafka.
9. His philosophical readings left a great mark on his writing, which is why the existential names everything.
10. This means that themes such as: loneliness, the search, the recognition of the other are crucial in his work.

What do you need for Franz Kafka died?

• Know your work.
• Analyze the language and images that Franz Kafka describes.
• Knowing the circumstances of his life: his loneliness, his searches for love, for things he couldn’t understand.
• Establish analogies between his life and his work.
• Episodes like his study in law, and his search for love as a company, are fundamental.

Tips for Franz Kafka Died

Interpreting the work of Franz Kafka is immersing yourself in a world of great torment. This Czech writer turned his work into a dark world with great adversities that seem to surpass the human. To interpret the work of Franz Kafka with great sharpness and skill, take the following into account:

• The term Kafkaesque is used to describe the writer’s style and his influences on subsequent authors.
• His way of writing, from a syntactic analysis, denotes through the focus of the arguments, which creates a metaphorical quality that by dint of being so complicated, becomes fictional, as in his novel The metamorphosis.
• Kafka’s worldview is a space of anguish in which each character is created from the depths of their being, where they struggle to exist.
• All Kafkaesque reality, from its first notes, involves its characters in concerns that surpass them.
• If you want to understand Kafka in order to make a good text commentary, you must start by getting rid of your own literary and cultural prejudices, opening your mind towards a much more sensitive analysis, paradoxically in order to understand the crude objectivity with which the author expresses human darkness.