Franz Kafka once described his native city of Prague as being a dear little mother with claws who never let him go.  Throughout his life he had a love-hate relationship with the city, always wanting to go but never seeming able to escape.  Ironically, now, many years after his death, Kafka’s entrapment in Prague is greater than ever. 

Declaring itself the “City of Kafka”, Prague has associated itself with the brooding iconic face of Franz Kafka.  Gift shop shelves are cluttered with Kafka mugs, Kafka books and screen-printed Kafka t-shirts.  There is a Kafka memorial near the Old-New Synagogue, a Kafka Café pub and a Kafka bust standing guard in the Mercure Hotel’s lobby, located in the office Kafka once worked at as an attorney. 

With a newly opened museum chronicling the writer’s prolific and tormented life, Kafka is now forever trapped in the “bird cage” of Prague.

The Prague Castle, as seen from Charles Bridge.

“I think he would hate it,” laughs Dr. Marketa Malisova, director of the Franz Kafka Society, when asked what Kafka would think of his celebrity status.  “He never thought he was a good writer,” Malisova says, reiterating Kafka’s dying wish for all his works to be burned. 

“He was an attorney first and a writer by night.  During his lifetime, Franz Kafka was known as a great attorney.  He did not become known as a writer until well after his death.” 

But how did Kafka go from being a successful attorney with a writing hobby to becoming the literary icon of Prague?  “During communist times, Kafka was forbidden,” says Malisova.  “After the fall of communism, as Prague looked to morph its image into something new, Franz Kafka offered a piece of Czech culture that Prague could hold out to the world and say, ‘This is us’.”  Thus, The City of K, a postmodern exhibition, was born. 

Whether he would love it or loathe it, the ghost of Kafka has a presence felt at all levels of the city.  Beyond the knick-knacks filling souvenir shops, Kafka has successfully, albeit unintentionally, shaped Prague. 

There are the cultural events organized by the Franz Kafka Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving both the literary genius of Kafka and also promoting and supporting aspiring writers and artists.

The Franz Kafka society is responsible for operating a Kafka library, featuring both his canon of works and a variety of literary criticism, along with creating the hauntingly abstract Franz Kafka memorial.

The haunts of Kafka’s lifetime speckle the city’s main attractions.  Tracing his footsteps through the city gives the traveler a thorough tour of Prague.  Even Kafka himself once seemingly foretold of this, stating that if one drew a circle around a map of Old Town, “That narrow circle encompasses my entire life.” 

Continued: Prague: The City of Kafka
1 |2 |Next