Franz Kafka’s Father
Kafka’s father, the dry-goods merchant Hermann Kafka, came from Wossek (Czech: Osek), a small village in southern Bohemia. He was born there in 1852, in a poor shack, the son of a Jewish butcher. Hermann was never able to forget his harsh childhood: having to set off with a little cart early every morning, in cold or hot weather alike, to his father’s far-flung customers. As a young man he travelled to Prague, married “well”, and was able to make use of both his hard work and his wife’s dowry to set up a haberdashery, which developed over time into a successful business. His son, however, born a year after his marriage, did not want to follow in his energetic father’s footsteps and went to university, becoming a clerk – and later a writer. Hermann Kafka outlived him by seven years. When he died in Prague on 6th June 1931, a respected citizen and homeowner, he had not the faintest idea of his son’s significance.
My dear departed husband was born in Osek near Strakonice. […] My husband was sent to a strange place as a fourteen-year-old lad and had to earn his own living. He became a soldier in his twenties and reached the rank of platoon leader. He married me in his thirties. He had established himself with few funds and, because we were both very hard-working, made a respected name for himself.
Julie Kafka
You also have a particularly beautiful, very rare way of smiling a quiet, satisfied, approving smile that can make the person for whom it is meant entirely happy.
Franz Kafka, Letter to Father
