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93-486: Peter Ulrich Weiss (8 November 1916 – 10 May 1982) was a German writer, painter, graphic artist , and experimental filmmaker of adopted Swedish nationality. He is particularly known for his plays Marat/Sade and The Investigation and his novel The Aesthetics of Resistance . Peter Weiss earned his reputation in the post-war German literary world as the proponent of an avant-garde, meticulously descriptive writing, as an exponent of autobiographical prose, and also as
186-693: A 2016 article that Kafka may have had borderline personality disorder with co-occurring psychophysiological insomnia . Joan Lachkar interpreted Die Verwandlung as "a vivid depiction of the borderline personality" and described the story as "model for Kafka's own abandonment fears, anxiety, depression, and parasitic dependency needs. Kafka illuminated the borderline's general confusion of normal and healthy desires, wishes, and needs with something ugly and disdainful". Though Kafka never married, he held marriage and children in high esteem. He had several girlfriends and lovers during his life. He may have suffered from an eating disorder. Doctor Manfred M. Fichter of
279-517: A Czech citizen and the son acquired his father's citizenship – Weiss was never a German citizen. At age three he moved with his family to the German port city of Bremen , and during his adolescence back to Berlin where he began training as a painter. In 1935 he emigrated with his family to Chislehurst , near London, where he studied photography at the Polytechnic School of Photography . In 1936–1937
372-814: A broad range of visual artistic expression, typically two-dimensional graphics , i.e. produced on a flat surface, today normally paper or a screen on various electronic devices. The term usually refers to the arts that rely more on line, color or tone, especially drawing and the various forms of engraving ; it is sometimes understood to refer specifically to drawing and the various printmaking processes, such as line engraving , aquatint , drypoint , etching , mezzotint , monotype , lithography , and screen printing (silk-screen, serigraphy). Graphic art mostly includes calligraphy , photography, painting, typography , computer graphics , and bindery . It also encompasses drawn plans and layouts for interior and architectural designs . In museum parlance "works on paper"
465-542: A central role in his life and literary work, and those who deny the connection altogether or dismiss its importance, are both wrong. The truth lies in some very elusive place between these two simplistic poles." Kafka considered moving to Palestine with Felice Bauer, and later with Dora Diamant. He studied Hebrew while living in Berlin, hiring a friend of Brod's from Palestine, Pua Bat-Tovim, to tutor him and attending Rabbi Julius Grünthal and Rabbi Julius Guttmann 's classes in
558-424: A creative outburst on the night of 22 September 1912, Kafka wrote the story "Das Urteil" ("The Judgment", literally: "The Verdict") and dedicated it to Felice Bauer. Brod noted the similarity in names of the main character and his fictional fiancée, Georg Bendemann and Frieda Brandenfeld, to Franz Kafka and Felice Bauer. The story is often considered Kafka's breakthrough work. It deals with the troubled relationship of
651-470: A friend of hers, Margarethe "Grete" Bloch, a Jewish woman from Berlin. Brod says that Bloch gave birth to Kafka's son, although Kafka never knew about the child. The boy, whose name is not known, was born in 1914 or 1915 and died in Munich in 1921. However, Kafka's biographer Peter-André Alt says that, while Bloch had a son, Kafka was not the father, as the pair were never intimate. Stach points out that there
744-419: A grand scale, of course with all the defects and weaknesses that go with all these advantages and into which your temperament and sometimes your hot temper drive you". On business days, both parents were absent from the home, with Julie Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day helping to manage the family business. Consequently, Kafka's childhood was somewhat lonely, and the children were reared largely by
837-401: A painter – 1930 to 1950 – Weiss was influenced by old Dutch masters such as Pieter Breughel , and Hieronymus Bosch . After World War II his painting, as well as his work in film and literature, came under the lasting influence of Surrealism . He taught painting at Stockholm's People's University, and illustrated a Swedish edition of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights . In 1952 he joined
930-480: A politically engaged dramatist. He gained international success with Marat/Sade , the American production of which was awarded a Tony Award and its subsequent film adaptation directed by Peter Brook . His "Auschwitz Oratorium," The Investigation , served to broaden the debates over the so-called "Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit" (or formerly) "Vergangenheitsbewältigung" or " politics of history ." Weiss's magnum opus
1023-909: A quality of exaltation bordering on transcendental metaphysical contemplation. An illustrious example is Franz Kafka". Towards the end of his life Kafka sent a postcard to his friend Hugo Bergmann in Tel Aviv, announcing his intention to emigrate to Palestine. Bergmann refused to host Kafka because he had young children and was afraid that Kafka would infect them with tuberculosis. Kafka's laryngeal tuberculosis worsened and in March 1924 he returned from Berlin to Prague, where members of his family, principally his sister Ottla and Dora Diamant, took care of him. He went to Hugo Hoffmann's sanatorium in Kierling just outside Vienna for treatment on 10 April, and died there on 3 June 1924. The cause of death seemed to be starvation:
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#17330858740791116-401: A range of career possibilities, which pleased his father. In addition, law required a longer course of study, giving Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. He also joined a student club, Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten (Reading and Lecture Hall of the German students), which organised literary events, readings and other activities. Among Kafka's friends were
1209-405: A risk category, which cost them more in insurance premiums. He would compile and compose the annual report on the insurance institute for the several years he worked there. The reports were well received by his superiors. Kafka usually got off work at 2 p.m., so that he had time to spend on his literary work, to which he was committed. Kafka's father also expected him to help out at and take over
1302-485: A sense of humour; they also found him handsome, although of austere appearance. Kafka was thought to be "very self-analytic". Brod compared Kafka to Heinrich von Kleist , noting that both writers had the ability to describe a situation realistically with precise details. Brod thought Kafka was one of the most entertaining people he had met; Kafka enjoyed sharing his humour with his friends but also helped them in difficult situations with good advice. According to Brod, he
1395-445: A series of governesses and servants. Kafka's troubled relationship with his father is evident in his Brief an den Vater ( Letter to His Father ) of more than 100 pages, in which he complains of being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character; his mother, in contrast, was quiet and shy. The dominating figure of Kafka's father had a significant influence on Kafka's writing. The Kafka family had
1488-536: A servant girl living with them in a cramped apartment. Franz's room was often cold. In November 1913, the family moved into a bigger apartment, although Ellie and Valli had married and moved out of the first apartment. In early August 1914, just after World War I began, the sisters did not know where their husbands were in the military and moved back in with the family in this larger apartment. Both Ellie and Valli also had children. Franz at age 31 moved into Valli's former apartment, quiet by contrast, and lived by himself for
1581-410: A socialist, I became a Zionist in 1898. The synthesis of Zionism and socialism did not yet exist." Bergmann claims that Kafka wore a red carnation to school to show his support for socialism . In one diary entry, Kafka made reference to the influential anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin : "Don't forget Kropotkin!" During the communist era, the legacy of Kafka's work for Eastern Bloc socialism
1674-462: A son, Felix (1911–1940), and two daughters, Gertrude (Gerti) Kaufmann (1912–1972), and Hanna Seidner (1920–1941). After her marriage to Hermann, she became closer to her brother, whose letters showed an active interest in the upbringing and education of her children. He accompanied her on a 1915 trip to Hungary to visit Hermann, who was stationed there, and spent a summer with her and her children in Müritz
1767-508: Is (symbolically) arrested by a German (Rabensteiner), a Czech (Kullich), and a Jew (Kaminer). He stands for the 'guiltless guilt' that imbues the Jew in the modern world, although there is no evidence that he himself is a Jew". In his essay Sadness in Palestine?! , Dan Miron explores Kafka's connection to Zionism: "It seems that those who claim that there was such a connection and that Zionism played
1860-507: Is a common term, covering the various types of traditional fine art graphic art. There is now a large sector of graphic designers working mostly on web design . Throughout history, technological inventions have shaped the development of graphic art. In 2500 BC, the Egyptians used graphic symbols to communicate their thoughts in a written form known as hieroglyphics . The Egyptians wrote and illustrated narratives on rolls of papyrus to share
1953-948: Is a great deal of contradictory evidence around the claim that Kafka was the father. Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis in August 1917 and moved for a few months to the Bohemian village of Zürau (Siřem in Czech), where his sister Ottla worked on the farm of her brother-in-law Karl Hermann. He felt comfortable there and later described this time as perhaps the best period of his life, probably because he had no responsibilities. He kept diaries and made notes in exercise books ( Oktavhefte ). From those notes, Kafka extracted 109 numbered pieces of text on single pieces of paper ( Zettel ); these were later published as Die Zürauer Aphorismen oder Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den wahren Weg (The Zürau Aphorisms or Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and
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#17330858740792046-423: Is assumed she did not survive the war. Ottilie was Kafka's favourite sister. Hermann is described by Kafka scholar and translator Stanley Corngold as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman" and by Franz Kafka as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature, a certain way of doing things on
2139-401: Is in the midst of replacing all of its street signs that have all capital characters with ones that only have upper and lower case letters. They anticipate that greater readability will improve wayfinding and greatly reduce collisions and injuries. Graphic artists applying for positions in today's job market are expected to be familiar with computers and a variety of software programs to create
2232-567: The French Revolution , and the Marquis de Sade , a writer and intellectual as well, whose attitude towards the revolution is much more ambivalent and who is solipsistically obsessed with sex, violence, and pain. In the play Weiss draws both on Antonin Artaud 's Theater of Cruelty and on its opposite: Brecht's theater of reason. In the words of de Sade: "Our intent in creating such dialogues as these /
2325-509: The GDR . Weiss frequently visited East Berlin and became friends with many East German writers and artists. He developed a collaborative relationship and eventually a close friendship with Manfred Haiduk, professor of literature in Rostock. After Weiss wrote his play about Trotsky, which East German party functionaries interpreted as an anti-Leninist provocation, he for a while became persona non grata , but
2418-644: The New Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Žižkov . Kafka was virtually unknown during his own lifetime, but he did not consider fame important. He rose to fame rapidly after his death, particularly after World War II. The Kafka tombstone was designed by architect Leopold Ehrmann . All of Kafka's published works were written in German. What little was published during his lifetime attracted scant public attention. Kafka finished none of his full-length novels and burned around 90 percent of his work, much of it during
2511-537: The typeface . Due to the development of larger fonts during the Industrial Revolution , posters became a popular form of graphic art used to communicate the latest information as well as to advertise the latest products and services. The invention and popularity of film and television changed graphic art through the additional aspect of motion as advertising agencies attempted to use kinetics to their advantage. The next major change in graphic arts came when
2604-531: The Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College for the Study of Judaism), where he also studied Talmud . Livia Rothkirchen calls Kafka the "symbolic figure of his era". His contemporaries included numerous Jewish, Czech, and German writers who were sensitive to Jewish, Czech, and German culture. According to Rothkirchen, "This situation lent their writings a broad cosmopolitan outlook and
2697-977: The European resistance against Nazi Germany, The Aesthetics of Resistance . Weiss received numerous awards, among them the Charles Veillon Award, 1963; the Lessing Prize, 1965; the Heinrich Mann Prize , 1966; the Carl Albert Anderson Prize, 1967; the Thomas Dehler Prize, 1978; the Cologne Literature Prize, 1981; the Bremen Literature Prize , 1982; the Swedish Theatre Critics Prize, 1982; and finally
2790-558: The Holocaust of the Second World War . Ottilie was Kafka's favourite sister. Gabriele was Kafka's eldest sister. She was known as Elli or Ellie; her married name is variously rendered as Hermann or Hermannová. She attended a German girls' school in Prague's Řeznická Street and later a private girls' secondary school. She married Karl Hermann (1883–1939), a salesman, in 1910. The couple had
2883-603: The Jewish male into his own self-image and writing". Kafka considered suicide at least once, in late 1912. Before World War I, Kafka attended several meetings of the Klub mladých , a Czech anarchist, anti-militarist , and anti-clerical organization. Hugo Bergmann , who attended the same elementary and high schools as Kafka, fell out with Kafka during their last academic year (1900–1901) because "[Kafka's] socialism and my Zionism were much too strident". Bergmann said: "Franz became
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2976-827: The Kafka family to Prague. After working as a travelling sales representative, he eventually became a fashion retailer who employed up to 15 people and used the image of a jackdaw ( kavka in Czech, pronounced and colloquially written as kafka ) as his business logo. Kafka's mother, Julie (1856–1934), was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous retail merchant in Poděbrady , and was better educated than her husband. Kafka's parents, from traditional Jewish society, spoke German replete with influences from their native Yiddish ; their children, raised in an acculturated environment, spoke Standard German . Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom Franz
3069-567: The Kingdom of Bohemia and its successor under the Czechoslovak Republic, rising to the position of chief legal secretary. Being employed full-time forced Kafka to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died in obscurity in 1924 at
3162-589: The Psychiatric Clinic, University of Munich , presented "evidence for the hypothesis that the writer Franz Kafka had suffered from an atypical anorexia nervosa ", and that Kafka was not just lonely and depressed but also "occasionally suicidal". In his 1995 book Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient , Sander Gilman investigated "why a Jew might have been considered ' hypochondriacal ' or 'homosexual' and how Kafka incorporates aspects of these ways of understanding
3255-541: The Royal Shakespeare Theatre in London. Brook's film version (1967) turned Marat/Sade into an international cultural icon. Set in an insane asylum and constantly in danger of being overwhelmed by madness and chaos, the play explores the place of writers and intellectuals in a time of revolutionary upheaval. At its center are two very different historical figures, Jean-Paul Marat , a writer and leading intellectual of
3348-623: The Swedish Experimental Film Studio, where he directed several experimental short films, followed by several socially conscious documentary shorts: Gesichter im Schatten (Faces in the Shadow, 1956), Im Namen des Gesetzes (In the Name of the Law, 1957), Was machen wir jetzt? (What Do We Do Now?, 1958). In 1959 he directed his only full length (experimental) film Hägringen (The Disappeared ). In
3441-777: The Swedish artist and stage designer Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss . In the 1960s Weiss became increasingly politically radical, taking stands for revolutionary Cuba and against US intervention in Vietnam and visiting both countries. In 1966 he visited the United States together with the West German writers group Gruppe 47 . During a conference at Princeton University he denounced the US war against North Vietnam which seems to have scandalized his German colleagues more than his US hosts. In 1967 he participated in
3534-614: The True Way). In 1920, Kafka began an intense relationship with Milena Jesenská , a Czech journalist and writer who was non-Jewish and who was married, but when she met Kafka, her marriage was a "sham". His letters to her were later published as Briefe an Milena . During a vacation in July 1923 to Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea , Kafka met Dora Diamant , a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family. Kafka, hoping to escape
3627-1033: The age of 40 from tuberculosis . Kafka was a prolific writer, spending most of his free time writing, often late into the night. He burned an estimated 90 percent of his total work due to his persistent struggles with self-doubt. Much of the remaining 10 percent is lost or otherwise unpublished. Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime; although the story collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor , and individual stories, such as his novella The Metamorphosis , were published in literary magazines, they received little attention. In his will, Kafka instructed his close friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, including his novels The Trial , The Castle , and Amerika , but Brod ignored these instructions and had much of his work published. Kafka's writings became famous in German-speaking countries after World War II, influencing German literature , and its influence spread elsewhere in
3720-536: The anti-war Russell Tribunal in Stockholm and in 1968 he joined the eurocommunist Swedish Left Party (VPK). During the same year he also visited North Vietnam and published a book about his trip. In 1970 Weiss suffered a heart attack. During the following decade, he wrote his monumental three-part novel, The Aesthetics of Resistance , as well as two very different stage versions of Kafka 's novel The Trial . He died in Stockholm in 1982. During his early life as
3813-590: The auspices of the graphic designer. Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was an Austrian-Czech novelist and writer from Prague . He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature ; he wrote in German. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic . It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio- bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation , existential anxiety , guilt , and absurdity . His best known works include
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3906-540: The business, but he later resented the encroachment of this work on his writing time. During that period, he also found interest and entertainment in the performances of Yiddish theatre . After seeing a Yiddish theatre troupe perform in October 1911, for the next six months Kafka "immersed himself in Yiddish language and in Yiddish literature". This interest also served as a starting point for his growing exploration of Judaism. It
3999-562: The capital of the Czech Republic , also known as Czechia). He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education was employed full-time, for a year handling cases for the indigent in the city's Provincial and Criminal Courts by an insurance company, then working for nine months for an Italian insurance company, and finally, starting in 1908, spending 14 years with the Austrian Imperial and Royal Workmen's Accident Institute for
4092-406: The condition of Kafka's throat made eating too painful for him, and since parenteral nutrition had not yet been developed, there was no way to feed him. Kafka was editing " A Hunger Artist " on his deathbed, a story whose composition he had begun before his throat closed to the point that he could not take any nourishment. His body was brought back to Prague where he was buried on 11 June 1924, in
4185-558: The early 1950s, Weiss had begun to write again, producing a number of prose works, some in German, others in Swedish. Most are short, intense, surrealist text which suggest the influence of Kafka (whose work Weiss would later adapt for the stage). The most important of these prose texts is Der Schatten des Körpers des Kutschers ( The Shadow of the Body of the Coachman , 1952). It is a nearly hermetic experimental work which explores language through
4278-534: The eightieth anniversary of his birth, reassessed the importance of Kafka's portrayal of bureaucracy. Whether Kafka was a political writer is still an issue of debate. Kafka grew up in Prague as a German-speaking Jew. He was deeply fascinated by the Jews of Eastern Europe , who he thought possessed an intensity of spiritual life that was absent from Jews in the West. His diary contains many references to Yiddish writers . Yet he
4371-430: The family fancy goods store. In his later years, Kafka's illness often prevented him from working at the insurance bureau and at his writing. In late 1911, Elli's husband Karl Hermann and Kafka became partners in the first asbestos factory in Prague, known as Prager Asbestwerke Hermann & Co., having used dowry money from Hermann Kafka. Kafka showed a positive attitude at first, dedicating much of his free time to
4464-715: The family moved to Czechoslovakia. Weiss attended the Prague Art Academy. After the German occupation of the Czech Sudetenland in 1938, his family moved to Sweden , while Weiss was visiting Hermann Hesse in Switzerland . In 1939 he joined his family in Stockholm , Sweden, where he lived for the rest of his life. He became a Swedish citizen in 1946. Weiss was married three times: to the painter Helga Henschen, 1943–47; to Carlota Dethorey, 1949; and from 1964 until his death to
4557-408: The first issue of the literary journal Hyperion under the title Betrachtung ( Contemplation ). He wrote the story " Beschreibung eines Kampfes " ("Description of a Struggle") in 1904; in 1905 he showed it to Brod, who advised him to continue writing and convinced him to submit it to Hyperion . Kafka published a fragment in 1908 and two sections in the spring of 1909, all in Munich. In
4650-449: The first time. From 1889 to 1893, Kafka attended the German boys' elementary school at the Masný trh/Fleischmarkt (meat market), now known as Masná Street. His Jewish education ended with his bar mitzvah celebration at the age of 13. Kafka never enjoyed attending the synagogue and went with his father only on four high holidays each year. After leaving elementary school in 1893, Kafka
4743-512: The first upgraded moving type of mechanical equipment called as the printing press . His printing press aided the mass creation of text and visual art, eventually obviating the need for hand transcriptions. Again during the Renaissance years, graphic art in the form of printing played a major role in the spread of classical learning in Europe. Within these manuscripts, book designers focused heavily on
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#17330858740794836-796: The group of writers, which included Kafka, Felix Weltsch and Brod himself. Brod soon noticed that, although Kafka was shy and seldom spoke, what he said was usually profound. Kafka was an avid reader throughout his life; together he and Brod read Plato's Protagoras in the original Greek , on Brod's initiative, and Flaubert 's L'éducation sentimentale and La Tentation de St. Antoine ( The Temptation of Saint Anthony ) in French, at his own suggestion. Kafka considered Fyodor Dostoevsky , Gustave Flaubert, Nikolai Gogol , Franz Grillparzer , and Heinrich von Kleist to be his "true blood brothers ". Besides these, he took an interest in Czech literature and
4929-661: The highest German literary award, the Georg Büchner Prize , 1982. All works were originally written in German unless otherwise noted. English translations and, where applicable, place of publication, publisher and date of English language publication, are in parentheses. These two pieces (Leavetaking & Vanishing Point) were published in English (from a translation by Christopher Levenson) in 1966 and published by Calder & Boyars Graphic arts The daffodils family kakamega A category of fine art , graphic art covers
5022-729: The influence of his family to concentrate on his writing, moved briefly to Berlin (September 1923-March 1924) and lived with Diamant. She became his lover and sparked his interest in the Talmud . He worked on four stories, including Ein Hungerkünstler ( A Hunger Artist ), which were published shortly after his death. Kafka's parents had six children; Franz was the eldest. His two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy; his three sisters, Gabriele ("Elli") (September 22, 1889 – fall of 1942), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1942) and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943), are believed to have been murdered in
5115-423: The journalist Felix Weltsch , who studied philosophy, the actor Yitzchak Lowy who came from an orthodox Hasidic Warsaw family, and the writers Ludwig Winder , Oskar Baum and Franz Werfel . At the end of his first year of studies, Kafka met Max Brod , a fellow law student who became a close friend for life. Years later, Brod coined the term Der enge Prager Kreis ("The Close Prague Circle") to describe
5208-480: The language, though he spoke German with a Czech accent. He completed his Matura exams in 1901. Kafka was admitted to the Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität of Prague in 1901. He was originally admitted for philosophy, and he had additionally signed up for chemistry. Kafka began studying chemistry but switched to law after two weeks. Although this field did not excite him, it offered
5301-414: The marriage never took place. During this time, Kafka began a draft of Letter to His Father . Before the date of the intended marriage, he took up with yet another woman. While he needed women and sex in his life, he had low self-confidence, felt sex was dirty, and was cripplingly shy—especially about his body. Stach and Brod state that during the time that Kafka knew Felice Bauer, he had an affair with
5394-481: The mid-1960s until his death. In 1965, Weiss wrote the documentary play The Investigation ( Die Ermittlung ) on the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials . Like Marat/Sade it attracted wide international attention and became the focus of heated debates about the 'right' way of representing Auschwitz and about who gets to decide what is acceptable and what is not. This was followed by two experimental plays about
5487-401: The most appealing, up to date artworks. Graphic art software includes applications such as: Beside computers and software, graphic artists are also expected to be creative with processing camera work, registration, crop marks, and masking. ‹The template How-to is being considered for merging .› One of the most common career paths for a graphic artist is web design. With
5580-479: The next five years, met occasionally, and were engaged twice. Kafka's extant letters to Bauer were published as Briefe an Felice ( Letters to Felice ); her letters did not survive. After he had written to Bauer's father asking to marry her, Kafka wrote in his diary: My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature.... I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else ... Nervous states of
5673-576: The novella The Metamorphosis and the novels The Trial and The Castle . The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations like those depicted in his writing. Kafka was born into a middle-class German- and Yiddish -speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia , which belonged to the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today
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#17330858740795766-503: The period he lived in Berlin with Diamant, who helped him burn the drafts. In his early years as a writer he was influenced by von Kleist, whose work he described in a letter to Bauer as frightening and whom he considered closer than his own family. Kafka drew and sketched extensively. Until May 2021, only about 40 of his drawings were known. In 2022, Yale University Press published Franz Kafka: The Drawings . Kafka's earliest published works were eight stories that appeared in 1908 in
5859-431: The personal computer was invented in the twentieth century. Powerful computer software enables artists to manipulate images in a much faster and simpler way than the skills of board artists prior to the 1990s. With quick calculations, computers easily recolor, scale, rotate, and rearrange images if the programs are known. The design of street signs has been impacted by scientific examinations into readability. New York City
5952-508: The popularity of the World Wide Web , the demand for web designers is immense. Graphic artists use their creativity with layouts, typography, and logos to market the products or services of the client's business. In addition to creating graphical designs, graphic artists also need to understand hypertext, web programming, and web page maintenance to successfully create a web page. The responsibility for effective communication also falls under
6045-841: The public for what came next: A play about the French Revolution which through its title alone became an overnight a sensation: "Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade ( The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of Monsieur de Sade ). First performed in West Berlin in 1964, it quickly brought Weiss notoriety. The following year, 1965, British director Peter Brook staged it at
6138-416: The relationship soon revived. Weiss was one of only a handful of western artists and intellectuals whose work attracted wide interest in both Germanies though in both states he was also subjected to distrust and denunciations. During this period Brecht's influence on Weiss's plays became more evident. He also became obsessed with Dante 's Divine Comedy the influence of which is present in all his works from
6231-519: The spring of 1942. She was probably killed in the Kulmhof extermination camp in the fall of 1942. Of Elli's three children, only her daughter Gerti survived the Second World War . A memorial plaque commemorates the three sisters at the family grave in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague. Kafka had a lifelong suspicion that people found him mentally and physically repulsive. However, many of those who met him found him to possess obvious intelligence and
6324-458: The stories and art with others. During the Middle Ages, scribes manually copied each individual page of manuscripts to maintain their sacred teachings. The scribes would leave marked sections of the page available for artists to insert drawings and decorations . Using art alongside the carefully lettered text enhanced the religious reading experience. In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg created
6417-614: The struggle for self-determination in the 'Third World': Gesang vom lusitanischen Popanz ( Song of the Lusitanian Bogey [a better translation would be Canto of the Lusitanian Bogey ] 1967) about Angola, and Viet Nam Diskurs ( Viet Nam Discourse , 1968). The next two plays once again focused on intellectuals and writers in times of upheaval: Trotzki im Exil ( Trotsky in Exile , 1970) and Hölderlin (1971). Between 1971 and 1981 Weiss worked on his opus magnum: his three part 1000 page novel on
6510-559: The time. It was especially true of factories fitted with machine lathes , drills , planing machines and rotary saws , which were rarely fitted with safety guards. His father often referred to his son's job as an insurance officer as a Brotberuf , literally "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills; Kafka often claimed to despise it. Kafka was rapidly promoted and his duties included processing and investigating compensation claims, writing reports, and handling appeals from businessmen who thought their firms had been placed in too high
6603-524: The use of surreal, disturbing imagery whereby an apparent rural idyll is transformed into a kafkaesque nightmare. The Surrealist effect was enhanced by collages in the style of Max Ernst , so-called xylography , which Peter Weiss created for the book. Coachman has been linked both to the French nouveau roman of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Raymond Queneau , as well as to French absurdist works by Samuel Beckett , Eugene Ionesco , and Jean Genet . When it
6696-615: The work of Hans Blüher on male bonding. Saul Friedländer argues that this mental struggle may have informed the themes of alienation and psychological brutality in his writing. Although Kafka showed little interest in exercise as a child, he later developed a passion for games and physical activity and was an accomplished rider, swimmer, and rower. On weekends, he and his friends embarked on long hikes, often planned by Kafka himself. His other interests included alternative medicine , modern education systems such as Montessori , and technological novelties such as airplanes and film. Writing
6789-588: The world in the 1960s. It has also influenced artists, composers, and philosophers. Kafka was born near the Old Town Square in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . His family were German-speaking middle-class Ashkenazi Jews . His father, Hermann Kafka (1854–1931), was the fourth child of Jakob Kafka, a shochet or ritual slaughterer in Osek , a Czech village with a large Jewish population located near Strakonice in southern Bohemia. Hermann brought
6882-403: The worst sort control me without pause ... A marriage could not change me, just as my job cannot change me. According to the biographers Stach and James Hawes , Kafka became engaged a third time around 1920, to Julie Wohryzek, a poor and uneducated hotel chambermaid. Kafka's father objected to Julie because of her Zionist beliefs. Although Kafka and Julie rented a flat and set a wedding date,
6975-539: The year before he died. With the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929, the Hermann family business experienced financial difficulties and eventually went bankrupt. Karl Hermann died February 27, 1939, and Elli was supported financially by her sisters. On October 21, 1941, she was deported together with her daughter Hanna to the Łódź Ghetto , where she lived temporarily with her sister Valli and Valli's husband in
7068-625: Was The Aesthetics of Resistance , called one of the "most important German-language work[s] of the 70s and 80s." His early, surrealist-inspired work as a painter and experimental filmmaker remains less well known. Weiss was born in Nowawes (now part of Potsdam-Babelsberg ) near Berlin , to a Hungarian Jewish father and a Christian mother. After the First World War and the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire Weiss's father became
7161-589: Was a passionate reciter, able to phrase his speech as though it were music. Brod felt that two of Kafka's most distinguishing traits were "absolute truthfulness" ( absolute Wahrhaftigkeit ) and "precise conscientiousness" ( präzise Gewissenhaftigkeit ). He explored inconspicuous details in depth and with such precision and love that unforeseen things surfaced that seemed strange but absolutely true ( nichts als wahr ). Kafka's letters and unexpurgated diaries reveal repressed homoerotic desires, including an infatuation with novelist Franz Werfel and fascination with
7254-488: Was admitted to the rigorous classics-oriented state gymnasium , Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium , an academic secondary school at Old Town Square, located within Kinský Palace . German was the language of instruction, but Kafka also spoke and wrote in Czech. He studied the latter at the gymnasium for eight years, achieving good grades. Although Kafka received compliments for his Czech, he never considered himself fluent in
7347-464: Was also very fond of the works of Goethe . Kafka was awarded the degree of Doctor of Law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as a law clerk for the civil and criminal courts. On 1 November 1907, Kafka was employed at the Assicurazioni Generali , an insurance company, where he worked for nearly a year. His correspondence during that period indicates that he
7440-467: Was at about this time that Kafka became a vegetarian. Around 1915, Kafka received his draft notice for military service in World War I, but his employers at the insurance institute arranged for a deferment because his work was considered essential government service. He later attempted to join the military but was prevented from doing so by medical problems associated with tuberculosis , with which he
7533-407: Was at times alienated from Judaism and Jewish life. On 8 January 1914, he wrote in his diary: In his adolescent years, Kafka declared himself an atheist . Hawes suggests that Kafka, though very aware of his own Jewishness , did not incorporate it into his work, which, according to Hawes, lacks Jewish characters, scenes or themes. In the opinion of literary critic Harold Bloom , although Kafka
7626-456: Was diagnosed in 1917. In 1918, the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute put Kafka on a pension due to his illness, for which there was no cure at the time, and he spent most of the rest of his life in sanatoriums . Kafka never married. According to Brod, Kafka was "tortured" by sexual desire, and Kafka's biographer Reiner Stach states that his life was full of "incessant womanising" and that he
7719-475: Was eventually published in Germany in 1960 it put its 45-year-old writer at the forefront of the West German literary scene. Weiss abandoned painting and filmmaking and turned exclusively to writing. Nearly all his subsequent works – and all of the major ones – are written in German. His next prose work, Abschied von den Eltern ( Leavetaking , 1959/60) was less hermetic than Coachman and strongly autobiographical. It
7812-469: Was filled with a fear of "sexual failure". Kafka visited brothels for most of his adult life and was interested in pornography. In addition, he had close relationships with several women during his lifetime. On 13 August 1912, Kafka met Felice Bauer , a relative of Brod's, who worked in Berlin as a representative of a dictaphone company. A week after the meeting at Brod's home, Kafka wrote in his diary: Miss FB. When I arrived at Brod's on 13 August, she
7905-502: Was hotly debated. Opinions ranged from the notion that he satirised the bureaucratic bungling of a crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire , to the belief that he embodied the rise of socialism. A further key point was Marx's theory of alienation . While the orthodox position was that Kafka's depictions of alienation were no longer relevant for a society that had supposedly eliminated alienation, a 1963 conference held in Liblice , Czechoslovakia, on
7998-452: Was not only a critical but also a public success, as was its follow-up Fluchtpunkt ( Vanishing Point , 1962) Since the early 1950 Weiss had also been writing plays: Der Turm ( The Tower , 1950), Die Versicherung ( The Insurance , 1952), Nacht mit Gästen ( Night with Guests , 1963), Wie dem Herrn Mockinpott das Leiden ausgetrieben wird (How Mister Mockinpott was Cured of His Sufferings , 1963/68). But none of these stage works prepared
8091-435: Was sitting at the table. I was not at all curious about who she was, but rather took her for granted at once. Bony, empty face that wore its emptiness openly. Bare throat. A blouse thrown on. Looked very domestic in her dress although, as it turned out, she by no means was. (I alienate myself from her a little by inspecting her so closely ...) Almost broken nose. Blonde, somewhat straight, unattractive hair, strong chin. As I
8184-431: Was taking my seat I looked at her closely for the first time, by the time I was seated I already had an unshakeable opinion. Shortly after this meeting, Kafka wrote the story " Das Urteil " ("The Judgment") in only one night and in a productive period worked on Der Verschollene ( The Man Who Disappeared ) and Die Verwandlung ( The Metamorphosis ). Kafka and Felice Bauer communicated mostly through letters over
8277-401: Was the eldest. Franz's two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy before Franz was seven; his three sisters were Gabriele ("Elli") (1889–1942), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1942) and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943). All three were murdered in the Holocaust of World War II . Valli was deported to the Łódź Ghetto in occupied Poland in 1942, but that is the last documentation of her; it
8370-491: Was to experiment with various antitheses / to oppose each to each so that we might / upon our many doubts shed some light". Much of the discussion of the play has focused on whether it is Marat's or Sade's position which prevails. Beginning with Marat/Sade Weiss's work increasingly attracted the attention of communist East Germany. The play and all the ones to follow were staged in exemplary fashion in Rostock and other theaters in
8463-400: Was uneasy with his Jewish heritage, he was the quintessential Jewish writer. Lothar Kahn is likewise unequivocal: "The presence of Jewishness in Kafka's oeuvre is no longer subject to doubt". Pavel Eisner , one of Kafka's first translators, interprets Der Process ( The Trial ) as the embodiment of the "triple dimension of Jewish existence in Prague ... his protagonist Josef K.
8556-595: Was unhappy with a work schedule—from 08:00 until 18:00 —that made it extremely difficult to concentrate on writing, which was assuming increasing importance to him. On 15 July 1908, he resigned. Two weeks later, he found employment more amenable to writing when he joined the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia ( Úrazová pojišťovna dělnická pro Čechy v Praze ). The job involved investigating and assessing compensation for personal injury to industrial workers; accidents such as lost fingers or limbs were commonplace, owing to poor work safety policies at
8649-835: Was vitally important to Kafka; he considered it a "form of prayer". He was highly sensitive to noise and preferred absolute quiet when writing. Kafka was also a vegetarian and did not drink alcohol. Pérez-Álvarez has claimed that Kafka had symptomatology consistent with schizoid personality disorder . His style, it is claimed, not only in Die Verwandlung ( The Metamorphosis ) but in other writings, appears to show low- to medium-level schizoid traits, which Pérez-Álvarez claims to have influenced much of his work. His anguish can be seen in this diary entry from 21 June 1913: and in Zürau Aphorism number 50: Italian medical researchers Alessia Coralli and Antonio Perciaccante have posited in
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