Authors: Franz Kafka
DATE | AUTHOR’S LIFE |
1883 | Birth in Prague (3 July) of Franz Kafka, son of a prosperous Jewish businessman who will later insist on German schools and the German University. Franz Kafka is brought up as a non-orthodox, Western Jew. |
1889 | Attends German elementary school until 1893. Birth of the first of his three sisters (two younger brothers die in infancy). |
1893 | Attends German Staatgymnasium until 1901. |
1901 | Studies Law at the German Karl-Ferdinand University in Prague but is drawn to the literary circles of the city. |
1902 | Kafka very quickly defines his ideal style – cool, sober and very elegant: a language ‘ohne Schnörkel und Schleier und Warzen’. Meets Max Brod. |
1904 | Begins ‘Description of a Struggle’. |
1906 | Receives law degree. Embarks on his year of practical training in Prague Law Courts. |
1907 | Writes ‘Wedding Preparations in the Country’. Takes temporary position with Assicurazioni Generali, Italian insurance company. |
1908 | Accepts position in Prague with Workers’ Accident Insurance Company, the Arbeiter-Unfall-Versicherungs-Anstalt. |
1909 | Eight prose pieces published in Hyperion. Trip to Riva and Brescia (with Max and Otto Brod). Writes Die Aeroplane in Brescia. |
1910 | Begins to write a diary in which he relentlessly analyses his inner life. Five prose pieces published in Bohemia. Trip to Paris (with Max and Otto Brod). Visit to Berlin. |
1911 | Official trip to Friedland and Reichenberg. Trip (with Max Brod) to Switzerland, Italy and France, writing travelogues. Becomes interested in Yiddish theatre and literature. |
1912 | Meets a Jewish girl from Berlin, Felice Bauer, to whom he will be engaged twice. The short story ‘Das Urteil’ (‘The Judgment’) is written six weeks later. Visits Leipzig and Weimar. Works on a novel to be called Der Verschollene , to be published posthumously in 1927 as Amerika. |
1913 | Publication of Betrachtung ( Meditation ), The Judgment and Der Heizer ( The Stoker ). Visits Felice in Berlin. Travels to Vienna and Italy. Meeting with Grete Bloch and beginning of correspondence. (She becomes the mother of his son who dies in 1921, and of whose existence Kafka is ignorant.) |
1914 | Engaged to Felice. Breaks off his engagement. Visit to Germany. Starts working on Der Prozess ( The Trial ). Writes ‘In der Strafkolonie’ (‘In the Penal Colony’). |
1915 | ‘Die Verwandlung’ (‘The Metamorphosis’), an acknowledged masterpiece of precision, lucidity and grotesque implication, is published. Reconciliation with Felice. |
1916 | Resumes writing after two years’ silence: the fragment of ‘A Country Doctor’, ‘The Hunter Gracchus’ and other stories later included in A Country Doctor. |
1917 | Tuberculosis of the lung is confirmed. Relationship with Felice ends. Writes stories, among others: ‘A Report to an Academy’ ‘The Cares of a Family Man’ and ‘The Great Wall of China’. Learning Hebrew. |
1919 | Stays in various sanatoria. Briefly engaged to Julie Wohryzek who inspires him to write ‘Brief an der Vater’ (‘Letter to his Father’). ‘In the Penal Colony’ and A Country Doctor are published. |
1920 | Meets Milena Jesenska-Pollak, with whom he later corresponds. |
1921 | Goes back to work with the Workers’ Accident Insurance Company. ‘The Bucket Rider’ published. |
1922 | Writes Der Schloss ( The Castle ), ‘A Hunger Artist’ and ‘Investigations of a Dog’. Breaks off relations with Milena Jesenska-Pollak. Retires from the insurance company because of his ill-health and works until his death in a sanatorium near Vienna. ‘A Hunger Artist’ published. |
1923 | Meets Dora Dymant, daughter of an orthodox Polish rabbi, and lives with her for a time in Berlin. His illness drives him to Prague before he enters a sanatorium near Vienna. Writes ‘The Burrow’. |
1924 | Moves back to Prague. Writes ‘Josephine the Singer’. He is nursed in his last months by Dora Dymant, in a nursing home at Kierling. Dies there and is buried in Prague. Collection, A Hunger Artist , published shortly after his death. He leaves a testamentary direction that his work has to be destroyed after his death, which is disregarded by his friend and executor Max Brod. |
1925 | Publication by Max Brod of Der Prozess ( The Trial ). |
1926 | Publication by Max Brod of Das Schloss ( The Castle ). |
1927 | Publication by Max Brod of the unfinished Amerika. |
DATE | LITERARY CONTEXT |
1883 | Maupassant: Une Vie. Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra (to 1884). Death of Turgenev. |
1884 | Huysmans: À Rebours. Tolstoy’s What I Believe is banned. |
1885 | Howells: The Rise of Silas Lapham . Maupassant: Bel Ami. Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil. |
1886 | Rimbaud: Les Illuminations. Hardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge. Tolstoy: The Death of Ivan Ilych. His play, The Power of Darkness , offends the Tsar and is banned. Henry James: The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima. |
1888 | Mallarmé: Poésies. Strindberg: Miss Julie. Sudermann: Frau Sorge. Birth of Anna Akhmatova. |
1889 | Ibsen: Hedda Gabler. Hauptmann: Before Sunrise. Strindberg: The Creditors. Birth of Jean Cocteau. |
1890 | Hamsun: Hunger. Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Critic as Artist. Henry James: The Tragic Muse. William James: The Principles of Psychology. |
1891 | Wilde: The Soul of Man under Socialism. Howells: A Modern Instance. Shaw: Quintessence of Ibsenism. Birth of Bulgakov. |
1892 | Hamsun: Mysteries. Ibsen: The Master Builder. Hauptmann: The Weavers. Hofmannsthal: The Death of Titian. |
1893 | Fontane: Frau Jenny Treibel. Tolstoy: The Kingdom of God is within You. Sudermann: Heimat. Schnitzler: Anatol. Death of Maupassant. |
1894 | Hamsun: Pan. Bryusov publishes The Russian Symbolists. Heinrich Mann: In a Family. |
1895 | Hardy: Jude the Obscure. Fontane: Effi Briest. Wilde’s trial and imprisonment; writes An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. Gorky: Chelkash. Birth of Ernst Jünger. |
1896 | Chekhov: The Seagull. Fontane: Poggenpuhls. |
1897 | Housman: A Shropshire Lad. Henry James: What Maisie Knew. |
1898 | Tolstoy: What is Art? Zola: J’accuse. Shaw: Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant. Wilde: The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Strindberg: Inferno. Thomas Mann: Little Herr Friedemann. Svevo: As a Man Grows Older. Birth of Erich Maria Remarque. Death of Fontane and Mallarmé. |
1899 | Yeats: The Wind Among the Reeds. Tolstoy: Resurrection. Chekhov: The Lady with the Little Dog. Gorky: Foma Gordeev. Birth of Borges. |
1900 | Conrad: Lord Jim. Freud: Interpretation of Dreams. Schnitzler: La Ronde. Dreiser: Sister Carrie. Death of Wilde and Nietzsche. |
1901 | Chekhov: Three Sisters. Thomas Mann: Buddenbrooks. Strindberg: Dance of Death. |
1902 | Rilke: The Book of Pictures. Gide: L’Immoraliste. Sudermann: The Joy of Living. Henry James: The Wings of the Dove. Death of Zola. |
1903 | Thomas Mann: Tristan, Tonio Kröger. Moore: Principia Ethica. Shaw: Man and Superman. |
1904 | Henry James: The Golden Bowl. Conrad: Nostromo. Pirandello: The Late Mattia Pascal. |
1905 | Thomas Mann: Fiorenza. The Blood of the Walsungs is withdrawn. Rilke: The Book of Hours. Gumilev: The Path of the Conquistadors. Wharton: The House of Mirth. Birth of Sholokhov. |
1906 | Gorky: The Mother (to 1907). Hofmannsthal: Oedipus and the Sphinx. Death of Ibsen. |
1907 | Blok: The Terrible World. Rilke: New Poems. Strindberg: The Ghost Sonata. Adams: The Education of Henry Adams. Conrad: The Secret Agent. William James: Pragmatism. |
1908 | Forster: A Room with a View. Bennett: The Old Wives’ Tale. |
1909 | Bely: The Silver Dove. Gide: La Porte étroite . |
1910 | Tsetsaeva: Evening Album. Rilke: Sketches of Malte Laurids Brigge. Forster: Howards End. Wells: Mr Polly. Döblin co-founds the Expressionist Der Sturm. Death of Tolstoy. |
1911 | Pound: Canzoni. Conrad: Under Western Eyes. Heinrich Mann’s manifesto: Spirit and Deed. The Poets’ Guild formed (founders of Russian Acmeism). Wharton: Ethan Frome. |
1913 | Proust: A la Recherche du temps perdu (to 1927). Lawrence: Sons and Lovers. Trakl: Poems. Alain Fournier: Le Grand Meaulnes. Apollinaire: Alcools. Mandelstam: Stone. Gorky: Childhood. Cather: O Pioneers! |
1914 | Joyce: Dubliners. Kaiser: The Burghers of Calais. Blok: Carmen. Akhmatova: Rosary. |
1915 | Ford: The Good Soldier. Lawrence: The Rainbow. Woolf: The Voyage Out. Mayakovsky: A Cloud in Trousers. |
1916 | Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Death of Henry James. |
1917 | Yeats: The Wild Swans at Coole. Eliot: Prufrock and other Observations. Pasternak: Above the Barriers. |
1918 | Joyce: Exiles. Kraus: The Last Days of Mankind (to 1922). Thomas Mann: Considerations of an Unpolitical Man. Spengler: The Decline of the West (to 1923). Kaiser: Gas (to 1920). Blok: ‘The Twelve’. Birth of Solzhenitsyn. |
1919 | Sherwood Anderson: Winesburg, Ohio. Dos Passos: One Man’s Initiation. Cocteau: Ode to Picasso. |
1920 | Lawrence: Women in Love. Wharton: The Age of Innocence. Sinclair Lewis: Main Street. Pound: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley. Mayakovsky: 150,000,000. Čapek: RUR. |
1921 | Death of Blok and Gumilev. Thomas Mann: Goethe and Tolstoy. Hašek: The Good Soldier Švejk. Pirandello: Six Characters in Search of an Author. |
1922 | Eliot: The Waste Land. Woolf: Jacob’s Room. Joyce’s Ulysses published in Paris. Brecht: Baal, Drums in the Night. Pasternak: My Sister Life. Toller: The Machine Wreckers. Mandelstam: Tristia. Borges: Fervor de Buenos Aires. Čapek: The Absolute at Large. Death of Proust. |
1923 | Gorky: My Universities. Babel: Red Cavalry (to 1925). Rilke: Duino Elegies, Sonnets to Orpheus. Cather: A Lost Lady. |
1924 | Mann: The Magic Mountain published. Pasternak: The Childhood of Luvers, Themes and Variations. Mayakovsky: Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Ford: Some Do Not. Forster: A Passage to India. O’Neill: Desire under the Elms. O’Casey: Juno and the Paycock. |
1925 | Woolf: Mrs Dalloway and The Common Reader. Cather: The Professor’s House. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby. O’Neill: The Fountain. Dreiser: An American Tragedy. Stein: The Making of Americans. |
1926 | Gide: Si le Grain ne meurt. Ford: A Man Could Stand Up. Death of Rilke. |
1927 | Woolf: To the Lighthouse. Hesse: Der Steppenwolf. Brecht: Man is Man. Birth of Günter Grass. |