Prague has many faces. It is a city of bridges, towers, alchemists, but also a city in which stories were born that are now known to readers all over the world. Franz Kafka, a writer with a gentle soul, a sharp gaze and an extremely original language, lived his entire life here. He never really left Prague, and yet he felt like a stranger in its streets. Walking in his footsteps means not only discovering the places where he lived and created, but also gaining an insight into the atmosphere of the city that was both his inspiration and his prison.
FRANZ KAFKA’S ROUTE
If you want to experience Prague through Kafka’s eyes, follow in his footsteps with me. We will start in Celetná Street and continue to Old Town Square and stop at Kafka Square, where the house where the writer was born once stood. And then we will head to Josefov. We will stop at the Old Jewish Cemetery, walk along Pařížská Street to the Vltava River and cross the Mánes Bridge to Lesser Town. There we will visit the Kafka Museum and finally climb the Castle to the Golden Lane. And in the evening? We will end the day at the Louvre Café, where we will have a coffee in honor of the man who managed to create world-class stories from an ordinary walk through Prague.
BASIC ROUTE MAP:
📍HRZAN PALACE OF HARASOV📍HOUSE OF THE WHITE UNICORN📍KINSKY PALACE📍HOUSE AT THE MINUTE📍FRANZ KAFKA SQUARE 📍OLD JEWISH CEMETERY 📍BRONZE STATUE OF FRANZ KAFKA📍FRANZ KAFKA SOCIETY 📍HOUSE OF THE TWO SUNS📍GOLDEN LANE AT PRAGUE CASTLE📍OLD CASTLE STAIRS📍FRANZ KAFKA MUSEUM📍LOUVRE CAFE
In the article you will find other places that are connected with the character of Kafka. His family moved quite a lot, so if you want to be quite precise, there is nothing stopping you from visiting all his places of residence. However, this trip will not only be about places, but also about people who are connected with his life. Well, you will not be bored. I promise!
WHY FOLLOW IN THE FOOTSTEPS
OF FRANZ KAFKA?
Kafka is not just a “boring required reading”, as I perceived him until quite recently. It is a story about a sensitive man who walked the same cobblestones that you walk on today. And Prague still has its atmosphere. Just look up from your phone and look. I guarantee you will see Kafka everywhere now. 🙂
“Prague won’t let go. None of us. This motherfucker has claws. One has to give in, or...,” Franz Kafka wrote to his friend Oskar Pollak while still a student.
📌PALACE OF THE HRZÁN OF HARASOV
We will start our journey on Celetná Street, which is now full of tourists, cafes and shops. Back then it was the main road connecting the Old Town with Prague Castle. Here you will find a house that is connected to Franz Kafka’s family. This is the Hrzán Palace, which once belonged to the noble Hrzán family from Harasov. Hermann Kafka, Franz Kafka’s father, had a large textile warehouse in this house. It was towards the end of his successful business career that he stopped providing over-the-counter sales and only delivered goods to shops in Prague and other cities.
ADDRESS: 📍Celetná 2
MY TIP:
Passing through the Hrzánský Palace, you will reach the inconspicuous Kamzíková alley, where one of Prague’s most luxurious brothels was located in the House at the Red Peacock. Many celebrities used to visit here, including German-language writers, including Franz Kafka. It is possible that he visited here during his studies at Charles University, formerly Karlo-Ferdinand University, which is just around the corner.
STUDYING LAW
AT CHARLES UNIVERSITY
Kafka studied law at Charles University (Karolinum, in the Fruit Market). It was not his choice, but his father’s wish. The studies took up five years of his life, during which Kafka wrote his first literary attempts. And even though he became a lawyer, his true language remained literature. Kafka painfully analyzed his relationship with his father, who expected obedience and success from him, in Letter to His Father, one of the most intimate texts he ever wrote. He dreamed of going to Italy for a while after his studies, but that did not work out.
ADDRESS: 📍Charles University, Karolinum
📌THE HOUSE AT THE STONE LAMB
OR THE PHARMACY
AT THE WHITE UNICORN
So I almost didn’t find this house, or rather the famous plaque with Einstein, because the house is now home to the Einstein Ristorante Pizzeria. The plaque and number were covered by umbrellas.
The House of the Stone Lamb has many names, such as the Pharmacy of the White Unicorn or just the House of the White Unicorn. The house is located on the south side of Old Town Square at the mouth of Celetná Street, next to the Štorch Publishing House. According to some historians, it was one of the oldest houses in Prague.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Berta Fantová, an intellectual and occasional writer, ran a literary and cultural salon in the U Jednorožce house, where important figures of Prague of that time gathered. Among them were Franz Kafka, Max Brod (a Czech Jewish German-writing writer, translator and composer), Franz Werfel (a Czech, German-writing Jewish writer), Samuel Hugo Bergmann (a Czech-German-Israeli Jewish philosopher, founder and director of the Jewish National and University Library and the first rector of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem). Among the guests was even the physicist Albert Einstein (a physicist, one of the most important scientists of all time), who played violin duets here with pianist Otýlia Nagelová in 1911–1912.
ADDRESS: 📍Old Town Square No. 551/17
WHO WAS BERTA FANTOVÁ?
Berta Fantová came from a wealthy Jewish family. She married the pharmacist Max Fanta, the inventor of the Fanta bowl. Although Berta was of Jewish origin, she was not interested in Judaism or Jewish doctrine as an adult. She was rather an admirer of German culture. And it was in her apartment that Berta organized unofficial meetings of a circle of intellectuals every Thursday evening, which were attended by many prominent personalities. Some social evenings were dedicated to art and music. The First World War shook her confidence in European civilization, and she therefore wanted to emigrate to Palestine. However, this did not happen, as she had a stroke, after which she never woke up from her unconsciousness.
📌KINSKY PALACE
IN THE OLD TOWN SQUARE
On the Old Town Square. are many houses here that are connected with this author. The Kinský Palace on the Old Town Square is where Franz Kafka spent eight long years. In one wing of the building, at the end of the 19th century, the German State Gymnasium was located, which Franz Kafka attended from 1893 to 1901. Kafka was not a bad student, the only problem he had was mathematics. Kafka’s friends at the gymnasium included Hugo Bergmann (a Jewish philosopher, member of the Prague Writers’ Circle, founder and director of the Jewish National and University Library, and the first rector of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem), Oskar Pollak (an art historian who wrote several studies, mainly on the history of Renaissance and Baroque art in Bohemia and Rome), and Ewald Felix Příbram (he came from a respected Jewish family, many of whose members became famous as medical professionals). In 1901, Kafka successfully passed his high school leaving exam. At the same time, the writer’s father, Hermann Kafka, opened his own haberdashery here between 1912 and 1918.
Today it houses the National Gallery. Just imagine young Franz entering the building day after day and looking out at the bustling square while carrying his dreams and nightmares in his head.
ADDRESS: 📍Kinsky Palace, Old Town Square
📌HOUSE AT THE MINUTE
ON THE OLD TOWN SQUARE
On the Old Town Square, right next to the Town Hall, stands the Renaissance house At the minute, where Kafka lived for a time. The rich sgraffito decoration on the facade seemed to contrast with his inner world full of doubts and anxiety. Yet this very place provided him with inspiration. Here, in the very center of Prague life, he wrote and thought.
ADDRESS: 📍Old Town Square 3/2
IN THE OLD TOWN, WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
📌HOUSE BY THE TOWER
But I must take you back to the very beginning. Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, in the house by the tower on the corner of Maiselova and Kaprova streets, in close proximity to the church of St. Nicholas. Kafka lived in the house with his parents for the first two years of his life. His father’s name was Hermann Kafka, and he was a Jewish haberdashery wholesaler. However, Kafka did not get along with his father and felt misunderstood by him. His father made high demands on Franz, perhaps also because, after the deaths of Franz’s two younger brothers, Georg and Heinrich, he was the only male child left in the family.
The house no longer stands today, having been demolished during the renovation of part of the Jewish town. On the site where it once stood, you can only find a memorial plaque by Jan Kaplický and a bronze bust by academic sculptor Karel Hladík. The area in front of the house was renamed Franz Kafka Square in the writer’s honor in 2000. It is a reminder that the man who became a symbol of modern world literature was born here.
Imagine a young Jewish child growing up between German and Czech environments, surrounded by a strict father and a kind but submissive mother. It is this tension between authority and fragility, between the desire for freedom and the pressure of society, that later found its way into Kafka’s texts.
ADDRESS: 📍 Franz Kafka Square, Old Town
KAFKA BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
📌JEWISH QUARTER
Kafka grew up in an environment where three cultures mixed: Czech, German and Jewish. He spoke German, went to school in Czech and learned Hebrew out of obligation. The Jewish town, now Josefov, seemed cramped at the time, with a tangle of alleys and old houses. It was here that Kafka learned to understand that one can be at home and a stranger at the same time.
When you walk through Josefov, try to remember how Kafka walked here. Past the Old-New Synagogue, through the Old Jewish Cemetery, where Rabbi Löw, for example, lies. Kafka himself was not religiously orthodox, but his Jewish identity accompanied him throughout his life. Later, paradoxically, he returned to it with greater intensity than in his childhood.
Until 1850, Josefov was called the Jewish Town, and even earlier this part was called the Jewish Ghetto. Today it is a well-preserved complex of significant Jewish monuments of European importance.
The original Jewish ghetto was condemned to “clean-up” as a slum in the late 1880s. Few buildings from the ghetto have survived, including the Jewish Town Hall, the Old Jewish Cemetery, and six synagogues: Klaus Synagogue, Maisel Synagogue, Pinkas Synagogue, Old-New Synagogue, Spanish Synagogue, and High Synagogue.
ADDRESS: 📍Široká 23/3
Web: here
📌BRONZE STATUE OF JAROSLAV RÓNA
In the Old Town, near the synagogue, you can find a large bronze statue by Jaroslav Róna. It depicts Kafka as a small man sitting on the shoulders of a giant empty figure in a suit. This sculpture has been located in a very symbolic place since 2003. Kafka’s family lived on Dušní Street, where it is located, and there are also shrines of three religious directions near the statue: the Spanish Synagogue, the Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit, and the Protestant Church of St. Salvator. The resulting image came from an art competition in 2000, in which seven leading Czech artists participated, of which Jaroslav Róna won.
ADDRESS: 📍Dušní Street, Old Town
📌FRANZ KAFKA’S COMPANY
The Franz Kafka Society (SFK) was founded in 1990 as an association of citizens who sought to repay the cultural debt to Franz Kafka. The Franz Kafka Society initiated the creation of a monument to Franz Kafka in Prague’s Old Town. It organizes the international Franz Kafka Literary Award, which honors and brings the world’s leading writers to Prague, thus focusing the attention of the world’s media on the city as a literary metropolis.
ADDRESS: 📍Široká 14, Josefov
Web: here
📌HOUSE OF TWO SUNS
Kafka used to come here to visit his friend and translator Milena Jesenská. Nerudova Street is one of the most beautiful in Prague and I think that visiting this place gives you the opportunity to experience Kafka’s personal side of life.
ADDRESS: 📍Nerudova 47, Lesser Town
“Kafka never wanted to explain where his stories take place. In fact, in none of his literary texts, with one exception, do we find the name of the place. Therefore, we do not know whether it is in Prague, Frýdlant, Siře, or anywhere else.”
NIGHT WRITER
Kafka wrote mainly at night. He went to work during the day, and spent time with friends or family in the evening. When the city fell silent, he sat down at his desk. Sometimes he wrote until dawn. His life was thus an eternal clash between daytime reality and nighttime stories.
📌GOLDEN LANE AT PRAGUE CASTLE
One of the most picturesque places associated with Kafka is the Golden Lane at Prague Castle. He rented a room in the small house number 22 in 1916–1917. His sister Ottla rented the house here, and from time to time she lent it to her brother. He did not sleep there, of course, but it was his escape space, where he could write undisturbed. The atmosphere of the narrow street, the evening calm and the view of the city, all of this became the backdrop for his work. Today you can imagine Kafka sitting down at his desk here and writing down sentences that would later change the face of world literature.
“Today (living in a house) suits me completely and perfectly. In everything: the beautiful way up, the silence there, only a very thin wall separates me from one neighbor, but that neighbor is quite quiet. Then the advantage of the way home, I have to decide to stop. And life there: there is something special about having your own house, closing the door not to the room, not to the apartment, but immediately the door to the house, going out of the apartment door almost straight into the snow of a quiet street.” This is what he wrote in his diaries and letters.
ADDRESS: 📍Golden Lane, Prague Castle
MY TIP:
If you go in the evening, when there are fewer people in the Castle, the Golden Lane has a special, almost fairy-tale-like, cramped atmosphere. Almost like in Kafka’s novels.
SPORTS LOVER
Although we associate him with melancholy, Kafka enjoyed sports. He swam, ran, exercised, and even tried horseback riding. At a time when physical culture was not so popular, he was surprisingly active.
📌OLD CASTLE STAIRS
A short distance away, on the Castle Stairs, he liked to walk. It is said that he loved to wander around Prague at night. He would wander for hours through the empty streets and let himself be carried away by the silence and melancholy. This is also related to the fact that he was very athletic. Many people think that Kafka was sick all his life. Compared to his friends, for example Max Brod, he was definitely in much better physical condition. He would go for long walks, not only in Prague but also outside Prague.
ADDRESS: 📍Castle Stairs
📌KAFKA MUSEUM
For those who want to understand Kafka a little more, a visit to the Kafka Museum in Lesser Town is a must. The exhibition is designed in a modern way – I would say with an emphasis on atmosphere. Only here you will find the descriptions more or less in English, so if you don’t speak English, you will feel lost.
Don’t expect classic display cases, but rather dark spaces, rustling papers, projections, voices whispering his texts. The museum tries to convey how Kafka perceived the world. As a labyrinth where one vainly searches for solid ground under one’s feet.
WOMEN IN HIS LIFE
Kafka had complicated relationships with women. He was engaged several times, but never married. The most famous is his relationship with Felice Bauerová, with whom he wrote hundreds of letters. In addition to her, Julie Wohryzková, Milena Jesenská (a Czech journalist and writer), and Dora Diamantová also played an important role.
FELICE BAUER – OFFICER
Franz’s relationship with women was as complex as his inner feelings and shyness. He had his first serious relationship in 1912 with civil servant Felicia Bauer, to whom he was even engaged twice, but their relationship ended definitively in 1917.
Felice Bauer was a relative of Max Brod. Max Brod’s sister, Sophie, married Felice Bauer’s cousin. Felice went to Budapest and stopped by the Brods on the way, where Kafka happened to be. That’s how they met. Then Kafka wrote her his first letter.
She was with Kafka for five years. They broke off their first engagement in 1914 after an argument over Kafka’s close relationship with Felicia’s friend Greta Bloch. Kafka broke off the engagement the second time, fearing that married life would make it impossible for him to write. Their complicated, contradictory, and volatile relationship is documented in their correspondence.
“Miss Felice, I want to ask you for a favor that sounds really crazy. It’s this: write to me only once a week, because I can’t stand letters every day. For example, I answer your letter and then lie seemingly calmly in bed, but my heart beats through my whole body and knows only about you. I belong to you, why am I the only one who’s crazy and still sitting in the office, or here at home, instead of jumping on the train with my eyes closed and opening them only when I’m with you.”
Kafka exchanged five hundred letters with Felice Bauer. Her relative and Kafka’s friend Max Brod later asked her to sell the letters so that Kafka’s personality and genius could live on. She finally agreed.
MY TIP:
The book Life after Kafka by Czech author Magdaléna Platzová was published about the relationship between Felicia Bauerová and Franz Kafka. She was never worth studying independently by literary scholars, and little is known about her life after her breakup with the Prague writer. She married, had two children, and emigrated to America. For forty years, she kept the letters of the man who left her. The author began searching for Felicia’s traces in America in 2010, when her son was still alive. Meeting him and his family resulted in a book that is ultimately not only about Felicia, but also about other people who were close to Kafka in some way and whose destinies are connected to pre-war Europe and its ruins.
Book: here
JULIE WOHRYZKOVÁ – CLERK
AND PROCURIST
At that time, Franz developed tuberculosis and often went on recuperative stays. During one such stay in a boarding house in Želízy, he met his second fiancée, Julia Wohryzková, but the relationship also failed there.
Kafka soon began to urge her to marry him. His intention was met with resistance from Hermann Kafka’s father, who rejected an unequal marriage for social reasons. At the critical moment, when they had already secured an apartment in Vršovice and set a wedding date, Kafka reversed his decision before the end of 1919. He then sent Julia’s married sister Käthe Nettel a “lawyer’s” letter, written at the same place (in Želízy) and at the same time as the Letter to His Father. In it, he describes the course of his acquaintance with Julia and what led him to break off the engagement. He suggests continuing the acquaintance without marriage as one possible solution. And so Julia’s suffering with Kafka continued into 1920. Kafka’s new relationship with Milena Jesenská contributed to its end.
Julie Wohryzková married Josef Werner, the director of a Prague bank branch, in 1921. She survived World War II, was interned by the Nazis in 1943, and then deported to Auschwitz, where she died in the fall of 1944.
MILENA JESENSKÁ – CZECH JOURNALIST
AND TRANSLATOR
The third woman, a more platonic friend, was the Czech journalist and translator Milena Jesenská, with whom Franz corresponded intensively. They only met physically twice. The first in Vienna was happy and promising, the second in Gmünd on the border ended in Kafka’s failure and marked a turning point in their relationship. However, Jesenská later contributed to the translations of Franz’s texts into Czech.
Throughout her life, Milena demonstrated courage in the struggle against fascist violence. Her life ended with her death in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944.
DORA DIAMANT
When Kafka met a young Polish Jewess, Dora Diamantova, who had acting ambitions, in a Baltic resort in the summer of 1923, he was forty and she was twenty-five. It was love at first sight and for the next three weeks they spent every day together. In September they began to live modestly in Berlin, but Kafka’s health deteriorated, he had to spend most of his time in bed and eventually stopped eating.
In early 1924, Franz’s tuberculosis of the larynx worsened, he could no longer speak or swallow, and so he went to the Austrian sanatorium in Kierling for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924, at the age of forty. Dora stayed with him, even moving to a sanatorium outside Vienna, where he died in her arms.
After Kafka’s death, she was accused of burning his writings at Kafka’s request. She also kept some of his diaries and 36 letters he had sent her. Despite Max Brod’s request that she hand over all the documents she had about Franz Kafka, Dora kept the letters that Kafka had written to her. In addition, Dora secretly kept an unknown number of Kafka’s notebooks, which remained in her possession until they were stolen from her apartment, along with other documents, in a Gestapo raid in 1933.
It is not known which notebooks remained with Dora and which were given to Brod at the end of Kafka’s life.
WHO WAS MAX BROD?
Max Brod was a Czech Jewish German-language writer, translator and composer. It is from Brod that the largest and most significant part of the testimony about Kafka’s life and work comes. Brod saved most of Kafka’s work from destruction, because he decided not to fulfill his explicit wish, expressed twice in writing, to burn all his unpublished manuscripts without mercy. On the contrary, he began to publish his estate immediately after Kafka’s death.
SCULPTURES OF DAVID ČERNÝ
In front of the museum you will also find the famous statue of David Černý. Two bronze male figures urinating in the shape of a map of the Czech Republic. This is also a bit of a Kafkaesque gesture: irony, absurdity and a smile through tears.
ADDRESS: 📍Cihelná 2b, Lesser Town
Web: Tady
MY TIP:
If you want to understand why his books feel like someone is holding you in a dream, go here. The Kafka Museum is dark, the soundscapes surround you, and the display cases display original manuscripts, photographs, and letters.
VEGETARIAN AND EXPERIMENTATOR
Kafka was a staunch vegetarian and interested in a healthy diet, which was quite unusual for his time. He loved fresh fruits and vegetables. He even enthusiastically participated in experiments with “modern” medical methods, such as sunbathing and staying in sanatoriums.
ARTISTIC LIFE AND FAMOUS CAFES
FAMOUS ARCO CAFE
Kafka loved going to the cinema, for example to Ponrep, which was located in Karlova Street at the time, or to Lucerna. And of course Kafka also went to cafés. The Arco café no longer exists in its original form, but at that time it was the centre of the Prague intelligentsia writing in German. Kafka went there with his friends Max Brod, Franz Werfel and Egon Erwin Kisch. Arco was something of a “cultural incubator” of Prague’s German literature.
It is located on the corner of Hybernská and Dlážděná streets, opposite Masaryk Station in the Prague 1-New Town district. After World War II, the café fell into disrepair and only in the early 1990s were its premises completely closed to the public. Today, the Arco Café is under the management of the Services Facility for the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic and continues to operate as a restaurant (self-service cafeteria). However, it lacks the genius of the place.
ADDRESS: 📍Hybernská 16
📌LOUVRE CAFE
And where did Prague intellectuals of the early 20th century meet? Of course, in cafes. Kafka liked the Louvre cafe on Národní třída, where he met his friends Max Brod and Felix Weltsch. The cafe atmosphere back then was similar to today’s coworking spaces. People not only drank coffee here, but also discussed literature, politics, and art.
The café even had billiard halls and game rooms. All the tables were custom-made and were of precise American manufacture. Those who “belonged to the better Czech society” or “cultivated artistic and literary contacts or moved in the world of science” met in the café. There was also a German philosophical circle, for example. Among the members were also law students of the time, such as Max Brod and Franz Kafka. Since Brod was expelled from the association, Kafka left with him in solidarity. However, this did not prevent them from visiting their favorite café. Their correspondence even shows that they preferred it to other venues at that time.
If you visit the Louvre today, you can imagine Kafka sitting at a table in the corner, drinking black coffee and writing sentences in a notebook that would later grow into a short story or novel.
ADDRESS: 📍Národní 22
Albert Einstein also frequented Café Louvre when he taught at Prague University.
LABOR OFFICER, NOT BY BOHEMIAN
Although he might seem like a typical café-type writer today, Kafka worked most of his life in an insurance company. Specifically, in the Workers’ Accident Insurance for the Kingdom of Bohemia. He had a reputation as a meticulous official and he handled his work excellently. Literature was more of a secret escape for him than the main activity of the day.
At the age of twenty-four, he joined the Prague branch of the insurance company Assicurazioni Generali, headquartered in Trieste. The company built a huge building on the corner of Wenceslas Square and Jindřišská Street. It was a time when, in connection with the establishment of factories, there was talk of occupational safety and workers’ insurance. It was this area that Kafka, as a clerk with a law degree, devoted himself to. After two years, he left for the Workers’ Accident Insurance on Na Poříčí Street. He stayed there until 1922, when he asked to be released for health reasons. He spent his entire working life in this insurance company.
ADDRESS: 📍At Poříčí 7, the building still stands and is now home to various companies.
“… my job is unbearable for me because it contradicts my only calling, which is literature ….”
📌STATUE OF METAMORPHOSIS
And then there’s David Černý’s moving sculpture “Metamorphosis” in the piazza in front of the Quadrio shopping center, near the Národní třída metro station. The giant rotating head of Kafka is made of metal plates.
The statue of David Černý made of rotating stainless steel panels rotates every hour from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day. The rest of the time, it occasionally shakes slightly.
ADDRESS: 📍Charvátova, Nové Město
Web: Socha Franze Kafky | Quadrio
KAFKA’S LAST STEPS
Kafka died in 1924 at the age of just 40 in a sanatorium in Kierling, Austria, from tuberculosis. He published only a few short texts during his lifetime and felt rather misunderstood. The greatest paradox of his life is that he only achieved world fame after his death. And this was actually thanks to his friend Max Brod, who, despite Kafka’s last will, did not burn the manuscripts. Thanks to him, we have The Trial, The Castle, or America today. If Brod had listened, we might not have known Kafka at all.
FINAL RESTING PLACE
NEW JEWISH CEMETERY IN OLŠANY
His grave, shared with his parents, is located in the New Jewish Cemetery. It is a quiet and dignified place that is still visited by admirers from all over the world.
The grave is simple, often decorated with stones, as Jewish tradition dictates. It is a quiet place where one can reflect on his story in peace.
ADDRESS: 📍Želivského, Prague 3
According to an old Jewish custom, flowers are not brought to the cemetery, but stones are placed on the tombstones. This custom is reminiscent of burials in ancient Israel, when graves were covered with large stones to protect them from animals. The animals do not notice them and therefore they remain on the tombstones forever.
KAFKA’S PARADOX
Today, Kafka is as much a symbol of Prague as the astronomical clock or the Charles Bridge. His name has become synonymous with absurdity and existential uncertainty. And although he often felt uprooted, it was Prague that provided him with the backdrops without which his work could not have been created.
Kafka himself considered himself a failure and doubted the meaning of writing. His books did not sell well and he felt misunderstood in Prague as a writer. Today, however, his name is a symbol of absurdity, bureaucracy and existential uncertainty. So much so that the word “Kafkavian” was even coined, which we use all over the world.
AND HOW DO I UNDERSTAND KAFKA?
Prague without Kafka would still be beautiful, but it wouldn’t be the same. He gave it a new dimension. A hidden one, a little disturbing, but fascinating. And as you walk in his footsteps today, you might feel that the city really breathes stories. They are the stories of Franz Kafka, but in a sense the stories of all of us.
Whether you’ve read Kafka or not, Prague has his face and you’ll find his traces here at every turn. So come with me on a walk through the places where Kafka lived, wrote… and maybe even got a little scared.
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