Franz Kafka

Author Code: OFKX

Kafka was born of German-speaking, Jewish parents and was educated at the German National Humanistic Gymnasium and the Ferdinand-Karls University, where he received his doctorate in law in 1906. Throughout his working life, Kafka was employed by various insurance businesses. He began writing stories while still at university and befriended a number of intellectuals including Max Brod and Oskar Baum. Most of Kafka's works were not published until after his death. During his lifetime only a few stories reached the general public and these included The Metamorphosis (1915) and In the Penal Colony (1919). Kafka contracted tuberculosis in 1917 and from that point his health deteriorated until he was forced to retire in 1922. In 1924, moved to Kierling Sanatorium near Vienna where he died six weeks later. Kafka was spared the agonies of the Holocaust in which all three of his sisters perished at the hands of the Nazis. His lifelong friend, Max Brod, ensured that Kafka's works were published after his death in spite of Kafka's own wishes that his manuscripts be destroyed. His extensive diaries and letters were published in 1951. His other works included Meditation (1913), The Judgement (1913), A Country Doctor (1919), The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).