Kafka: He not only wanted to explore the depths of things, he himself was in the depths.

When it comes to 20th-century literature, Kafka’s works are the most difficult to read. Of course, great works often have obstacles, but Kafka’s barriers are like an oxygenless zone on a mountain peak. For readers, every scene, every detail, even every sentence in his writing is unexpected and strikes the soul. This sensitive person likes to turn everything into a dilemma, expressing the “impossibility” of things. There are many paths to Kafka, one of which is himself—viewing himself as a character in his works, whether that character is an insect or a mouse. Because of this, understanding Kafka’s life becomes especially important.

Among many biographies of Kafka, German scholar Rainer Stach’s “Kafka: The Years of Understanding” trilogy took eighteen years to complete and references the latest firsthand materials. “Kafka: The Years of Understanding” is the final volume, covering Kafka’s last nine years from 1916 to 1924. Readers often think Kafka’s life was very simple—being a German-speaking Jew living in Prague, working as an employee at the Labor Accident Insurance Office, writing in his spare time—such experiences seem to have no story. However, this detailed and delicate biography restores Kafka’s daily life, allowing us to glimpse his inner world and survival struggles.

In terms of artistry, readers can treat this biography as a novel, with Kafka as the protagonist.

This content is from Beijing News · Book Review Weekly, March 13, Special Issue “Kafka’s Years of Understanding: You Can Completely Leave the Cage” B02-03.

B01 “Theme” Kafka’s Years of Understanding: You Can Completely Leave the Cage

B02-03 “Theme” Kafka: Not only does he want to explore the depths of things, he is already in the depths

B04-05 “Theme” Kafka: In a vast city, yet unable to find a place to rest

B06-07 “History” “Today to Chang’an”: Tang Dynasty Chang’an beneath Vanity and Dust

B08 “Chinese Academic Book Excerpt” A Brief on Scientific Ethics

Written by Jing Kaixuan

Kafka: The Years of Understanding 1916-1924

Author: Rainer Stach

Translator: Huang Xuanyuan, Cheng Weiping

Publisher: Guangxi Normal University Press · Shanghai Beibeite

January 2026

A Turning Point in History

Kafka’s era was precisely a turning point in history, a prosperous Europe brewing a great crisis. Just three weeks after Kafka and his fiancée Felice Bauer broke off their engagement, World War I broke out. He wrote in his diary: “Germany declares war on Russia—went to swimming school in the afternoon.” This sentence is widely quoted, seen as Kafka’s alienation from the world, but in fact, Kafka was not indifferent to the war. On the contrary, he realized that the war affected his life; he had planned to resign from his job and move to Berlin to write full-time. However, due to border closures and communication censorship caused by the war, he lost hope of establishing a new life.

He fell into dual loneliness—breaking off the engagement, being physically weak, suffering from insomnia and headaches for years. His publisher Wolf, friends Muzil and two brothers-in-law all enlisted. Kafka also wanted to serve and passed the physical exam, but his supervisor at the insurance office, Pfur, and Mashna, sought to keep him by applying for exemption from military service. Kafka proposed to resign and voluntarily gave up his pension. But his superiors refused his request and instead granted him paid leave.

Exemption from military service meant Kafka, a year after the war’s outbreak, never saw the war with his own eyes. Afterwards, Kafka kept requesting to resign. Although by the third year of the war he felt this slaughter was a derailment of history, he never wanted to avoid military service. Yet, his superiors always rejected his resignation requests. After the war, the responsible officials at the insurance bureau were replaced from Germans to Czechs, and the new officials were equally friendly to him—until his health was completely broken, and he was finally allowed to resign. This was Kafka’s luck.

It’s hard to say whether Kafka had any particular views on the war; his service was simply an attempt to escape his job at the insurance bureau. In fact, for Kafka, who suffered from social anxiety, dealing with dull numbers all day was the most suitable job for him to make a living. His diaries and letters rarely mention the war, as if he was outside of history. Thomas Mann, Rilke, and Zweig all supported the war at one point. However, Kafka was still ordered to write a fundraising appeal for the war, not to defend it, but to focus on individual suffering. He was fully aware of the brutality of war—street deserters and wounded soldiers shattered the heroism myth. Kafka’s own myth remained in his inner world.

Regarding his Jewish identity, Kafka also held a unique attitude. As a Western European Jew, he did not feel particularly anxious about his identity. He followed friends’ advice, engaged with Hasidism and Zionists, and found that rabbis were shaped by paternal authority—an eye for examining power. He read Martin Buber’s works but had little interest in prayer and rituals. During his convalescence in Kralovice, his reading list included Dickens, Herzen, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, indicating he never established a direct relationship with a national community. His novels never specify characters’ identities—another proof.

After breaking off the engagement, Kafka maintained contact with Felice. He told her that in Berlin, there was a Jewish National Home that accepted many Eastern European Jews during wartime, becoming a new bond between them. Felice was very interested in the work of the National Home, but Kafka always kept his distance. During every crisis in history, identity politics often flared up; most people sought collective belonging to gain security. Kafka’s friend, Max Brod, was a staunch Zionist and often interpreted Kafka’s works from a religious perspective.

However, Kafka had no such national ideas. He believed Zionism’s concept was unimportant; he never cared about the collective identity of a nation. His true concern was human universality, unbiased freedom, and individual existence. He wrote in his diary: “What do I have in common with Jews? I hardly have anything in common with myself.” This Kafkaesque statement shows that his highest standard for evaluating things was “truth,” not people’s identities. His extraordinary insight stemmed precisely from his alienation from society.

In autumn 1917, Kafka suddenly began coughing blood. The diagnosis was tuberculosis—an incurable disease at that time. Kafka treated illness and love with the same indifference on the surface, but illness was his most authentic self. He believed it was caused by the cold air in the Golden Alley where he lived. He decided to rest at his sister Ottla’s farm in Kralovice, again proposing to resign, but his supervisor Mashna refused and granted him three months’ leave. Kralovice was remote and harsh but met his desire for solitude.

By late 1917, Austria-Hungary had a ceasefire with Russia, but the change in Russian regime reignited anti-Semitic sentiments across Europe. Governments reverted to pre-liberal times, and anti-Jewish sentiments flourished, no longer protecting Jewish rights. After returning from Kralovice to Prague, Kafka contracted the “Spanish flu.” The old era was collapsing, and a new one was emerging. Demonstrations and riots broke out in Czechoslovakia. Kafka’s father closed his family shop.

At one point, Kafka was eager to learn Hebrew, but only for himself, not for the entire Jewish nation. His alienation from the world persisted. His worsening tuberculosis further confirmed the depiction in “The Metamorphosis”: he felt himself becoming a “untouchable” in society.

From Kafka’s letters to Brod, he already realized the surrounding rejection of Jews. The era of legal protection for Western European Jews was ending—an era once described by Zweig as “the world of yesterday,” tolerant and orderly. After the war, Prague, now dominated by Czechs, was no longer the city Kafka knew. Under democracy, people fought each other, making Jews feel even less secure. Still, Kafka persisted in humanist ideas, agreeing with Buber’s view that Jews should reflect on their own responsibilities.

However, he could not foresee the later gas chambers, nor did he sense the breach of civilization’s bottom line. All three of his sisters died in gas chambers; his uncle committed suicide. Four women close to him—Yulie and Mirena—died in concentration camps. Felice emigrated to the U.S., Dora escaped to London.

Kafka and his sister Ottla

Emotional entanglements with four women

The biography recounts Kafka’s emotional entanglements with four women. He twice engaged to Felice Bauer, both times ending in breakup. They met in early 1912 and quickly fell in love. Felice planned to marry Kafka in fall 1914 and even resigned from her managerial job in Berlin. On July 11, 1914, Kafka went to Berlin to see Felice. The next day, at the Askennyshahov Hotel, Felice, her sister, and friend Gloger harshly criticized his hesitation about marriage and announced the breakup. Kafka silently accepted the “Berlin court’s” verdict, viewing his fiancée and her accusations as childish and malicious—similar to his father’s attitude toward him.

Fortunately, after their breakup, Felice found a new job in Berlin. They kept in touch, and Kafka even agreed to meet her before Christmas 1915 in Bohemia, later meeting alone in Karlsbad. He wrote that “there is a misunderstanding between us” and “we must start over,” but his letters, like his works, were ambiguous, never revealing what the obstacles to marriage were. Essentially, Kafka doubted the function of language communication; he never expected hearts to truly connect. He inwardly believed: “I know I am destined to be lonely.”

In June 1916, Kafka applied for a three-week leave to meet Felice in Marienbad, hoping to rekindle his creativity. In subsequent letters, he subtly hinted that they had been intimate and even re-engaged. In July 1917, Felice suddenly came to Prague—an arranged visit. They went on vacation in Budapest. But Kafka already sensed their growing distance; the joy of reunion did not lead to marriage, and they parted again.

When Kafka was hospitalized in Kralovice with tuberculosis, Felice visited him. He was very cold toward her, and their five-year love affair ended. Kafka’s realization was that he was physically and mentally too weak to manage their relationship. In fact, he wanted not cohabitation but understanding. He feared “the trouble of living together,” feared spending his life in the office, feared family responsibilities, feared the prison of family suffocating his creativity, and feared having to stop writing someday.

Kafka and Felice Bauer

In October 1918, Kafka went to Serešín for convalescence, where he met a Jewish girl named Yulie, daughter of a church servant. They had an intimate relationship and even secretly got engaged. This rekindled Kafka’s father’s anger. Their marriage almost succeeded, but the booked apartment was suddenly given to another applicant, and the wedding was indefinitely postponed. Their relationship ended.

Soon after, Kafka went to Melfi, which after the war was assigned to Italy. There he met Milena, the translator of his Czech works. Milena was an open-minded woman who had two abortions and attempted suicide twice before marriage. She married a Jewish writer against her family’s wishes and lived in Vienna, also suffering from tuberculosis. Facing such an intelligent and proactive woman, Kafka quickly fell in love. Her letters are lost, but from Kafka’s letters, we see his eagerness to live with her.

He and Milena spent four days in Vienna, feeling immensely happy. Milena’s husband Polak also knew about this but took no action. Kafka asked Milena to leave her husband, but she was indecisive; she still loved her husband and suspected Kafka only had dominance in literature. Despite their breakup, Kafka gave her his ten-year diary during their last meeting in October 1921.

The woman who accompanied Kafka in his final days was Dora. They met in the Baltic seaside in summer 1923, when Kafka and his older sister’s family went there to rest. At the Jewish National Home there, he saw her working in the kitchen. Dora was a Polish Jew from a Hasidic family. They chose to live together in the suburbs of Berlin without plans to marry; Dora only cared for him. Kafka’s war bonds all went to waste, and they relied on Kafka’s meager pension, sometimes seeking help from his sisters.

Due to worsening health and financial hardship, Kafka moved to a sanatorium in Vienna in March 1924, after visiting his family in Prague one last time. His tuberculosis developed into laryngeal tuberculosis. Dora stayed with him. Kafka wanted to marry Dora, but her orthodox Jewish family did not agree. His final days were very painful, requiring feeding. On June 3, 1924, Kafka died.

Friends transported Kafka’s body back to Prague. Dora visited Kafka’s hometown for the first time. His family gratefully received her. A friend wrote to Kafka’s sister Ellie: “Only those who know Dora can understand what love is.”

Dora

Kafka’s relationships with women show that his mind overwhelmed his body. As the biography recounts, Hart, a recitation master, met Kafka in early 1921. Once, Hart waited for Kafka in his office. Kafka’s hat was on the desk. When Kafka apologized for being late, Hart joked, “This hat now fully represents you.” This joke not only mimicked Kafka’s literary style but also described his true position in this world.

“Attaining Universal Humanity”

Why was Kafka so obsessed with literary creation that he sacrificed a normal life? Zweig, in “The World of Yesterday,” mentioned that people believed wealth was the purpose of Jewish life—that’s a misconception. A true Jewish desire was to elevate spiritual civilization, “to enter the knowledge class and thus free oneself from the purely Jewish temperament to attain universal humanity.” Over generations, some descendants of Jewish families refused to accept their ancestors’ banks, factories, and shops, aiming instead to become intellectuals.

I think “attaining universal humanity” perhaps explains Kafka’s almost sacred attitude toward literature. He was never satisfied with his writing, constantly postponing current projects and switching to other stories. Before 1916, Kafka had published only the essay collection “Observation,” the novel “The Stove,” and the novella “The Metamorphosis,” along with “In Exile.” Therefore, apart from close friend Brod, Kafka was largely unknown to his contemporaries. Thomas Mann, Muzil, Rilke, Zweig knew him, but biographies do not mention their opinions of Kafka.

In fact, Kafka’s works were written in fragments, then collaged into chapters. Many of his major works are unfinished; they were later organized and edited by Brod. For example, his three major novels were not completed. “The Trial” was initially written with an ending, then other chapters were added, with Brod arranging their order. Brod believed Kafka thought the novel was unfinished, that a few more chapters could be added, but since “The Trial” could never be submitted to the Supreme Court, it was inherently unfinishable.

Brod, Kafka’s close friend and executor, tirelessly promoted Kafka’s works and urged him to write. But he also interpreted Kafka’s Jewishness as a theological theme—exile, alienation, family estrangement, the search for identity and redemption. While these themes are indeed Jewish dilemmas, Kafka never explained his works, and Brod’s interpretations could be misleading. For example, Brod claimed “The Metamorphosis” was Kafka’s most Jewish work.

Max Brod, Kafka’s close friend, played a significant role in publishing and promoting Kafka’s works.

So, would an interpretation based on Kafka’s life, like that of Stach, be more accurate?

Stach’s subtitle for the third volume of the biography is “The Years of Understanding,” which also marks Kafka’s golden creative period. Kafka once claimed in his diary that no one could truly understand him. Those with extreme sensitivity would never feel understood—that’s the true source of loneliness. Stach believes that “The Trial,” written in December 1914, was triggered by the “Berlin Trial,” attempting to transform his desire for intimacy into the image of a helpless defendant. Later, Czech writer Krima also interpreted it this way. Kafka’s closest sister Ottla’s falling in love was also a blow to him, directly inspiring “The Metamorphosis”: the protagonist Gregor’s sister turns to the enemy.

In autumn 1916, Kafka moved into a small hut at 22 Golden Alley in the castle district, rented by Ottla to escape family. That winter, Emperor Franz Joseph died, marking the end of peaceful prosperity at the turn of the century. Hunger began to appear in Europe, with thousands dying of malnutrition. For Kafka, this was a writing era—he sensed the collapse of the times amid daily hardships. He often spent hours in 22 Golden Alley, returning at midnight through snow and moonlight. During this period, he wrote “A Country Doctor,” “A Report to an Academy,” and “The Great Wall of China.”

According to Stach, “A Report to an Academy” depicts a monkey denying its true nature under violence—either as satire of civilization, a revelation of social domestication, or an allegory of Jewish assimilation. Brod interpreted it as a work with Jewish spirit, but Stach points out that the monkey’s original life was far from happy, and Brod’s nationalist reading ignores this.

Stach views “The Castle” as an autobiographical novel, begun in 1922 when Kafka was in Spindler-Mühle. He notes that shortly after Kafka’s last visit to a prostitute, he started writing this novel. In the novel, sexual union symbolizes deep alienation and the futile hope of rescue by another. Kafka initially used first-person narration but later switched to the land surveyor K to distance himself from explicit sex scenes. K tries every means to enter the castle but fails.

The castle official Kram controls barmaid Frida, who later mingles with K, while Kram himself dozes off in front of a beer glass. Stach sees this as symbolizing passive power—allowing strangers to conquer one’s women, with no response to attacks. Regarding character traits, “The Castle” surpasses “The Trial” and “The Missing,” and perhaps Mila, upon reading it, would think of herself.

“The Castle” is a fully conceived long novel with many characters, most of whose fates remain undeveloped. Only the beginning has been published; it has no ending. From the manuscripts, Kafka had already envisioned the ending: the land surveyor dies exhausted, surrounded by villagers, and the castle’s decision is announced—though legally he has no right to stay, certain circumstances permit him to live and work in the village.

The novella “The Burrow” also has autobiographical elements—Kafka reflecting on his inner retreat over the past decade. The animals inside the burrow do not feel safe but anxiously guard the entrance. True security requires distance; Kafka’s method was self-isolation—viewing himself from afar, participating in his own life. According to Stach, Kafka enjoyed playing with the state of “no longer being human” in life and works. This story remains unfinished; the approaching sound the animals hear is actually their own life force.

He pointed the knife at himself

Until the day before his death, Kafka was proofreading the galley of “A Hunger Artist,” a story that summarizes the cost of writing with life. Kafka’s works are multi-meaning—alienation, lonely individuals, anonymous violence—but one central theme is certain: his pursuit of absolute truth.

Kafka once quoted Flaubert in an essay: “Living in truth.” Flaubert, during a walk, saw a girl playing with children and said this phrase with emotion. Kafka liked to use “truth” as the highest praise. In a letter to Brod, he equated truth and reality as synonyms. To him, truth had moral and social dimensions. In the second half of the 20th century, Czech writers like Kundera and Havel understood this phrase differently—Kundera saw it as everyday life, Havel as truth. But both believed Kafka’s dilemma was the dilemma of modern man: losing passion for seeking truth and losing sensitivity to daily life.

From Kafka’s notes and letters, it is clear he believed that inexplicable fear was his nature. This abnormal fear attracted Mila and many readers. Kafka considered himself weak, but his relentless pursuit of perfection, purity, and truth allowed him to delve into the paradoxes of existence, turning inward as a form of “salvational comfort.” This salvation was unique—he pointed the knife at himself.

In 1922, Kafka (far right) in Spindler-Mühle.

Perhaps driven by perfectionism, Kafka wrote in his will in 1924 that, except for a few works like “The Judgment,” “The Stove,” “The Metamorphosis,” “In Exile,” “The Country Doctor,” and “A Hunger Artist,” all other unpublished novels, diaries, manuscripts, and letters should be burned. Strangely, Kafka did not give this will directly to his friend but locked it in a drawer.

Most regrettably, Kafka had once given Dora twenty notebooks he wrote in Berlin, which she regarded as her most private property. She knew Kafka would never agree to publish these notes. But when she realized this was too late— in March 1933, the Nazis searched her Berlin apartment and confiscated Kafka’s notebooks and dozens of letters he wrote to Dora. To this day, these materials remain missing—perhaps forever lost.

The world should thank Brod, who preserved Kafka’s literary legacy and organized it. And also thank the women close to Kafka, who contributed to his writing, making him feel that losing them was losing life itself.

Among all commentaries, I think Dora said it best: she said Kafka’s entire existence was for literature—“He not only wanted to explore the depths of things—he himself was in the depths.”

Kafka’s artwork.