Prague: Kafka and the City With Claws

Look on the corner for the bronze bust of a thin man with large ears and a fixed stare. It is Franz Kafka. Here, in a house that no longer exists, he was born on 3 July 1883. Of the original building, only the doorway remains. The rest was demolished at the end of the nineteenth century, like much of the neighborhood. Kafka hardly ever left this patch of city. He lived in about ten houses, almost all of them a few minutes from this corner. At nineteen he wrote a friend a line still quoted today: Prague does not let go. This little mother has claws. Kafka's Prague had three worlds layered o…

You are beside the old town hall. Look at the house tucked against the corner, covered in black and white drawings scratched into the plaster. It is the House at the Minute. The Kafka family lived here from 1889 to 1896. Franz was between six and thirteen. His three sisters were born here. The drawings show biblical and mythological scenes. A boy could spend hours deciphering them from the window. Every morning, the cook walked him to school. And on the way she threatened him: she would tell the teacher how badly he had behaved at home. She never did. But Franz walked along terrified, sure…

You are facing the Kinský Palace, the pink and white rococo building on the square. On the ground floor was Hermann Kafka's shop. Hermann was the son of a village butcher. He arrived in Prague with nothing and built up a haberdashery business. He was strong, loud and successful. His son was the opposite. Thin, quiet, unsure of himself. Hermann did not understand him, and let it show. Upstairs, in this same palace, was the German grammar school where Franz studied as a teenager. He went to school in the same building where his father shouted at the staff. In 1919, as an adult, Kafka wrote h…

You are outside number 7 on Na Poříčí street. This building was the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. Today it is a hotel. Kafka started working here in 1908, as a lawyer. He stayed fourteen years. He was promoted several times. His bosses thought highly of him. His job was to review factory accidents and set risk classifications. He wrote technical reports on machines that cut off workers' fingers. He knew bureaucracy from the inside. Files passed from desk to desk, procedures no one understood, people waiting years for an answer. He worked until two in the…

Look at the bronze statue. A small man in a hat rides on the shoulders of a huge suit, headless, with no body inside. The sculptor Jaroslav Róna made it in 2003. He drew on an early Kafka story, Description of a Struggle, in which one character rides on another. It is a fitting image of Kafka's life. On the outside, a civil servant's suit. Inside, something else no one saw. Behind it is the Spanish Synagogue, its interior covered in Moorish decoration. Next to it, a Catholic church. That was this neighborhood: mixed, crammed together. Kafka was not religious as a boy. His family went to sy…

You are facing the Old-New Synagogue. It was built around 1270 and is still in use. Look at the stepped brick gable. Legend says the Golem is stored in its attic. A creature of clay that Rabbi Löw is said to have made to protect the Jews of Prague. The Golem obeyed without thinking, until it ran out of control. It is a story about creatures that escape their makers. Kafka knew it well. Now look around you. The wide streets, the elegant late nineteenth-century buildings. None of this existed when Kafka was a boy. The old ghetto was a maze of alleys, courtyards and houses crammed together, o…

You have reached the end of Pařížská avenue, by the river. Look at the bridge with columns and statues: it is the Čech Bridge, completed in 1908. On the corner, where a large hotel now stands, was the building where the Kafka family lived in 1912. From his room, Franz could see this bridge. On the night of 22 September 1912 he sat down to write and did not stop until dawn. He finished a whole story, The Judgment. In that story, a father sentences his son to death by drowning. The son runs out and throws himself off a bridge. Kafka wrote it looking at this one. Two months later, in the same…

You are on Národní avenue, outside Café Louvre. Go up to the first floor if you can. It opened in 1902 and is still running. Kafka was not the hermit we sometimes picture. He had friends, went to lectures, argued about philosophy in cafés like this one. His best friend was Max Brod, a writer and critic and Kafka's opposite: confident, sociable, successful. They met as students and never drifted apart. Kafka read his work aloud to them. According to Brod, he laughed so hard reading The Trial that at times he could not go on. That changes the picture. Kafka found humor in the absurd. To him,…

You are on Charles Bridge. Look at the thirty statues of saints lining it, blackened by time. Kafka crossed it thousands of times. It was the way between the Old Town, where he lived, and the far bank, with the castle above. He liked walking here at night. Bridges, rivers and people crossing without knowing if they will arrive appear in his diaries and stories. He liked the river too. He swam in the Vltava and rowed a boat of his own. He was quite sporty, though few picture him that way. Look up at the hill. The castle dominates the whole city, vast and distant. Kafka wrote a whole novel …

You are facing the Schönborn Palace, on a steep street in Malá Strana. Today it is the United States embassy. Notice the flag. In 1917, Kafka rented two rooms here. He wanted a place of his own, away from his family, in which to write. One August night that year, he woke up coughing blood. A lot of blood. The doctors confirmed what he feared: tuberculosis. In those days it was almost a death sentence on a timer. Kafka reacted strangely. He felt something like relief. The illness gave him an excuse to leave his job, break off his engagement and devote himself to writing. He wrote that the …

You are in Golden Lane, inside the castle grounds. Look at the colorful little houses leaning against the wall. They are tiny. Find the blue house with the number 22. In the winter of 1916, Kafka's youngest sister, Ottla, rented it. Ottla was his favorite sister. The only one who dared stand up to their father. She offered Franz this hideaway so he could write at night. He came after the office, lit the stove and wrote until late. Then he walked down the castle steps in the dark. Here he wrote several of the stories in A Country Doctor. Short, strange, perfect tales. Picture the scene: th…

You are in the New Jewish Cemetery. Follow the signs to a gray, crystal-shaped headstone. It is the grave of Franz Kafka. He died on 3 June 1924 in a sanatorium near Vienna. He was forty. Tuberculosis had reached his throat and he could hardly eat. In his last days he was correcting the proofs of a story called A Hunger Artist. The tale of a man who fasts until he dies. Earlier, he had left Max Brod a written instruction: burn all his manuscripts, diaries and letters, unread. Brod did not obey. He published The Trial, The Castle, Amerika. In 1939, when the Nazis entered Prague, he fled wit…