A hot summer evening in July. A very slender man with expressive, dark eyes looks down from the balcony of a holiday guesthouse. Below him is a group of noisy children playing. The man doesn't seem to mind, he smiles. The next day he is seen on the beach. With him are a woman, a boy and a girl. He swims, he walks, he sits in a beach chair. His gaze sweeps over the people, the pier, the sea. Who is this mysterious-looking man, what is he doing here and who is he with?
In the summer of 1923, hyperinflation is raging in German cities, but here in the small Baltic seaside resort of Graal-Müritz, the world still seems to be largely in order. Holidaymakers enjoy the warm weather, the sea and the good climate for which the spa town is famous. In July of that year, a writer from Prague travels here to take advantage of this. He is 40 years old and suffers from progressive pulmonary tuberculosis. The spa guest is none other than Franz Kafka, accompanied by his sister Elli and her children Felix and Gerti.
Two young women have already noticed Kafka: Tile Rössler and Dora Diamant*, who both work at the Jewish People's Home, which is right next door to his boarding house. Tile, who is only 16 years old and works in a bookshop in Berlin for the rest of the year, already fancies the writer, whom she knows from his story The Stoker, and wants to make friends with him straight away. The 25-year-old Dora also takes a liking to him, but it is another week before the lively Tile is finally able to invite Kafka to the Sabbath at the Volksheim and Dora is officially introduced to him.
When Kafka and Dora meet for the first time, she is busy gutting fish in the kitchen. He notices her delicate hands, which have to do such bloody work. Although Kafka is actually Tile's guest, the writer can hardly take his eyes off Dora for the rest of the evening. The two hit it off straight away, even though there are several years between them. He will write about her a little later: Dora is a marvellous creature.
From then on, they see each other regularly, visit each other, go for walks. The young, vivacious woman impresses Kafka in many ways; she is educated, speaks fluent Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew and German. Having grown up with a strictly religious father, she emancipated herself from him at a young age due to their different views, something the writer, who is 15 years older, had not yet managed to do. When Kafka has to leave at the end of August, they are certain that they want to live together in Berlin.
Living together with a woman and so far away from his home in Prague - a bold move for Kafka. Especially because his tuberculosis soon took a turn for the worse. The disease had been with him for several years, and finally got so bad that he had to give up his job at the Insurance Institute and retire. However, early retirement also has its advantages. The daily office routine, which had always taken up so much of the precious time of the day that Kafka desperately needed to write, was finally a thing of the past. The pension he now receives is modest, but it is enough that he begins to imagine a life as a freelance writer. Together with Dora, this dream can now become a reality. Kafka has only one city in mind for his new life (and fortunately Dora already lives there): Berlin.
Unfortunately, the timing of Kafka's move to Berlin could not be worse. Hyperinflation is still the order of the day, food is scarce and the housing market is also highly competitive. However, a furnished room is found in Steglitz, a slightly outlying rural neighbourhood with many gardens and forests, which has only been part of the capital for a few years. On 23 September, Kafka boards the train to Berlin. It almost didn't happen, however, because the night before his departure, the writer was beset by all kinds of fears and doubts, which he confided to his sister Ottla in a letter three days later:
"[...] the night before had been one of the very worst, about three parts, first an assault by all the fears I have, and no army in the history of the world is as great as this one, then I got up [...] and dozed for a quarter of an hour, but then it was over and I spent the rest of the night composing the cancellation telegram to the landlord in Berlin and despairing about it."
But Kafka's desire for the new life he had dreamed of for so long finally outweighed his fears and doubts, and at the end of the month he moves into his first flat in Berlin at Miquelstraße 8.
Life in Berlin could be so wonderful for the two newly in love if it weren't for the daily price rises, which necessitate donations of food and goods from Kafka's family to make ends meet, and the landlady, who never misses an opportunity to make the couple's stay as uncomfortable as possible. When she is not raising the rent (which in the end amounts to half a trillion Reichsmarks), she makes disparaging remarks about the "wild marriage" between the writer and Dora. The situation soon becomes so unpleasant that the two of them look for a new place to live. At the end of November, they move within Steglitz to Grunewaldstraße. Dora has to do the move alone, as Kafka has already become too weak for such physical exertion due to his tuberculosis. Fortunately, they don't have many belongings, so everything can be moved to the new flat in one day.
But the initial joy over the new flat is short-lived, and after just 10 weeks the couple is forced to move again. For financial reasons, the landlady now wants to rent out three rooms together instead of the previous two, but this is beyond Kafka and Dora's means. The search for a flat starts all over again. They eventually find a new home in the Zehlendorf district, where they move into in February 1924. Meanwhile, Kafka's health is deteriorating, so friends and family try to persuade him to move back to Prague. This is unthinkable for the writer, he is too attached to his newly won freedom to give it up so quickly. He writes to his friend Max Brod:
"You're right to remember the 'warm, saturated Bohemia', but it doesn't work well, one is a bit stuck [...], besides, I've had warmth and saturation for 40 years and the result is not appealing for further attempts. "***
In March, his condition becomes so critical that he finally agrees to go to a sanatorium. Accompanied by his friends Max Brod and Robert Klopstock, he first travels back to Prague and from there on to Austria a few weeks later. His agonising battle against tuberculosis, which has now also affected his larynx, will continue until June. Kafka becomes weaker and weaker and is barely able to swallow or speak towards the end. On his deathbed, he proposes marriage to Dora, who is devotedly caring for him the whole time. But the marriage never materialises. Dora's father, whom Kafka asks in writing for his daughter's hand in marriage, refuses to give his consent. One month before his 41st birthday, the writer dies in the presence of Dora and his friend Robert.
As tragic as the circumstances of the last year of Kafka's life may seem, a completely different side of his character is revealed at the same time, which contradicts the well-known portrayal of the depressed and neurotic artist, whose life was dominated by his difficult relationship with his father and his unhappy involvements with women. In Dora's memoirs, we get to know a different Kafka, a loving, cheerful, joking person. This side was also known in his wider circle. His best friend Max Brod even talks about comedies, which the writer always enjoyed playing.
"We can conclude from Kafka's short comedies that he was, at least at times, not only in good spirits, but relaxed, even happy. Max Brod remarked that he only saw Kafka 'truly happy' in the last year of his life, when he was together with Dora.****
If you would like to find out more about the story of Franz Kafka and Dora Diamant, I recommend the novel The Glory of Life (Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens) by Michael Kumpfmüller, or the film version of it (release in Germany: 14 March 2024).
*sometimes also Dymant
** Dieter Lamping, Anders Leben – Franz Kafka und Dora Diamant, Berlin 2023
*** ebd.
**** ebd.