A series of false starts, dead ends, and soul-crushing day jobs marked Franz Kafka’s early adulthood. After our exploration of “Description of a Struggle,” let’s explore the period from 1906 to 1908.
In June 1906, at 23, Franz Kafka obtained his doctorate in jurisprudence from Charles University in Prague. As with many fresh law graduates, he stood at a crossroads—what path should his life and career take now?
For a while, Kafka entertained dreams of fleeing Prague and his overbearing father. He imagined wandering through “exotic places” such as Madrid—his uncle, Alfred Löwy, who was linked to the Rothschilds and Péreires, and held a prestigious position at a Spanish railway company, might be persuaded to help him—and even contemplated travelling to America—two of his paternal cousins had ventured there and achieved a modicum of success—and possibly (why not?) becoming an Indian—a concept he explored in an experimental short story he wrote at the time, which he later published under the title “The Wish to Be An Indian” (Wunsch, Indianer zu werden), as part of his collection of short stories, Contemplation (Betrachtung). All these fantasies would eventually crystallise into his unfinished novel Amerika (aka Der Verschollene). Ah, the foolish dreams of youth! At any rate, as his friend Max Brod recounted:
Franz postulated his job should have nothing to do with literature. That he would have regarded as a debasing of literary creation. Breadwinning and the art of writing must be kept absolutely apart, a “mixture” of the two, such as journalism, for example, represents, Kafka rejected—although at the same time he never laid down dogmas, but merely withdrew, as it were, with a smile, explaining that “I just can’t do it.”1
Kafka could have said, “I would prefer not to” (though he had yet to read Melville, a relatively obscure American novelist at the time)… This dichotomy between writing and breadwinning is a curious notion, a form of purism. Indeed, many writers have held jobs as journalists without feeling that this activity was a “debasement”—think Dickens, Twain, Zola, Hemingway, García Marquez, and countless others. On the contrary, it provided them with a source of income and honed their writing skills. Ultimately, Kafka found that his legal work also demanded a significant amount of writing, a development that he eventually embraced. Moreover, while Kafka aspired to maintain the purity of his artistic practice, as every artist does to some extent, we can’t help but, in the end, acknowledge that art is never pure, that our actions in life inevitably influence our dreams and creations, and that Kafka himself was no exception to this rule, as we shall soon see.
So, what to do if you are a budding literary genius with a law degree? Kafka wasn’t sure he was cut out for the legal life either. What he really wanted was a straightforward Brotberuf, a “bread job,” something mind-numbingly dull that finished at 2 or 3 pm, freeing his afternoons and evenings for his true calling—writing. But securing one of these sought-after “single shift” roles was no easy task in Habsburg-era Prague. And even if Kafka had had more career ambitions, as Reiner Stach mentions in his biography, “on top of that, positions with real responsibility, such as a judgeship, were barred to Jews.”2
So, first stop: Kafka was thrown into the jaws of reality, and Herr Doktor found himself embarking on a year-long Rechtspraxis, an obligatory legal internship as a junior clerk in Prague’s civil and criminal courts—unpaid, mind you! This internship was a crash course into the belly of the legal beast, providing Kafka with the first-hand experience that would later inspire the nightmarish visions of his magnum opus, The Trial.
Next stop: Kafka secured a position in the Assicurazioni Generali (pet name: Imperial Regia Privilegiata Compagnia di Assicurazioni Generali Austro-Italiche), an Italian insurance company founded in 1831, closely associated with the commercial port of Trieste, and housed in Prague in a grand building on Wenceslas Square. Now known simply as Generali, the insurance company has a rich history (for more information, click here). Imagine Kafka, referred to this job by his uncle Alfred (who had pulled strings with the company’s representative in Madrid), and taking his new role in October 1907. He stood before the majestic neoclassical columns of the building, his heart dropping with each step towards the gate…
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Eight to six, six days a week. Kafka quickly discovered that this was no leisurely stroll in the park. In a letter to his then-girlfriend, Hedwig Weiler, Kafka complained about the “infinite eight to nine hours of work”3 that completely crushed him every day; “often it’s like a journey by train that lasts all day and night until you’re finally crushed.”4 The picture Kafka paints is one of a corporate cog in the machine. And overtime? Always expected. Unpaid, mind you! Perks of being a junior consultant at McKinsey, Bain, or BCG today, say.
And the patriarchal office culture only made things worse. Kafka had to comply with an array of stringent rules. According to Stach, “storing personal possessions at the workplace was prohibited, which indicated that a bit of patriarchal humiliation was standard practice. […] Kafka was also told that he would have to break his habit of using the traditional German cursive writing, known as Kurrentschrift, at once,” and use the “internationally legible Latin script” instead.5 Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!
Of course, all this weighed heavily on Kafka’s mental health. In a letter to Brod dating back to 1908, he wrote, “I have been in Prague for four days, and I am so defenceless. Nobody can stand me, and I can stand no one, but the latter is only the consequence.”6
I find it rather hilarious to stumble upon Generali’s corporate webpage and read that, owing to his proficiency in a variety of languages and the insurance company’s extensive European network, a young Kafka, fresh out of university, could have had a career that spanned the continent. Yet, Kafka’s whole struggle (whole irony, you might say) lay in this very contradiction: either to live and have a brilliant job, get married, have children… or to write and remain an old bachelor living with his parents, to toil away at his little desk every evening until the end of time. That was the question, indeed!
Kafka’s tenure at Assicurazioni Generali turned out to be short-lived. By July 1908, he had grown tired of the company’s dreary environment, where he was subjected to a “paltry salary of 80 crowns,” along with oppressive work hours, excessive demands, and a culture of bullying. Besides, Kafka still aspired to focus on his writing, which became impossible while performing his “soul-crushing” 8-to-6 job, actually often in the office until 7, 8, or 9 pm, with the exact hour off at noon, and additional working hours on weekends. “He even compared the insurance business with the ‘religion of primitive peoples, who believe they can ward off evil by using all kinds of manipulations.’”7 Under the veil of regulations and statistics, primal fears. Life insurance = fear of death. Fire insurance = fear of fire. All of them = nothing but fear of life. Just replace evil with risk, and you’ve got yourself a rather apt description of the industry, even today.
Kafka quit abruptly, armed with a “ludicrous medical note that certified him as suffering from ‘nervousness’ and ‘major cardiac irritability.’”8 A few weeks later, thanks to his former schoolmate Přibram, Kafka finally found his Brotberuf—a slightly cushier gig at the Worker’s Accident Insurance Company for the Kingdom of Bohemia (pet name: Arbeiter Unfallversicherungsanstalt für das Königreich Böhmen, let’s call it AUVA for short, still in activity in Austria, btw), where he would remain for the next 14 years.
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The Institute became his new workplace. It was a government body responsible for protecting workers’ rights to accident insurance and compensation. Although it lacked the romanticism of sugar cane fields and Mohammedan cemeteries,9 he was relieved to be rid of the Brazil-like offices of Generali. His duties as a civil servant at the AUVA involved liaising with recalcitrant factory owners who refused to pay insurance premiums or enhance safety standards and working conditions at their factories.
Despite the demanding nature of his new role, which frequently resulted in clashes with industrialists who often operated under exploitative forms of competitive capitalism, Kafka could now fulfil his literary aspirations. In fact, Stach confirms that Kafka’s writing skills were quickly put to the test when he began composing official reports for the AUVA. These reports addressed various subjects, from the “Implementation of Compulsory Insurance in the Construction Industry” to the nascent field of automobile insurance.10
As he advanced at the Institute, eventually earning the title of Concipist (legal clerk)11, Kafka remained steadfast in his unwavering commitment to his primary vocation. Burning the midnight oil, he persisted in writing letters, piecing together fragments, and crafting drafts in his cramped bedroom, much to the dismay of his parents.
His transformation into a bureaucrat, processing accident reports and preparing detailed policy papers might appear to conflict with the romantic notion of a genius at his desk, penning novels in a fit of inspiration. Nevertheless, this seemingly drab existence would eventually serve as a rich source of material for his future literary endeavours. The oppressive machinery of bureaucracy, the ceaseless paperwork, the soul-crushing monotony of a day job—all these real-life experiences bled into Kafka’s fictional world, most notably in his novels The Trial and The Castle. He turned the banalities of his daily grind into literary gold. And that, dear readers, is where I’ll try to lead you next time.
For now, a couple of curated “giveaways”:
A masterful Lacanian analysis of “Letter to His Father” by none other than
:A brilliant article by
on cancel culture and a few controversial figures, among which: Kafka, Genet, Plath (add: Sade, Wagner, Gilman, Lovecraft, Céline, Bataille, Nabokov, Rushdie, so on):Another 21 fascinating revelations about Franz Kafka, by
:
Brod, Franz Kafka, A Biography, ch. III, pp. 78-79.
Stach, The Early Years, loc. 5766.
Friends, to Hedwig W., 8 Oct. 1907, loc. 769.
Ibid., to HW, 7 Nov. 1907, loc. 802.
Stach, EY, loc. 5910.
Friends, to Max Brod, Sept. 1908, loc. 958.
Stach, EY, loc. 5920.
Ibid., loc. 5995.
Friends, to HW, 8 Oct. 1907, loc. 772.
Stach, EY, loc. 6659.
Ibid., loc. 6499.
excellent read, thanks!