Kafka100
Set out in pursuit of Odradek
The outdoor game “In Search of Odradek” is based on one of Kafka’s short stories and is now ready to go! Visitors of all ages are invited to explore the Prague Jewish Quarter as it originally looked before its urban renewal at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
This game promises a journey of discovery through the streets of the Prague Jewish Quarter. You can print its instructions, download them to your phone, or just check them out online. The game is only available in the Czech language.
“In Search of Odradek” was created by Ondřej Buddeus and Hans-Gerd Koch.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF FRANZ KAFKA WITH IWALKS
Developed by USC Shoah Foundation, IWalk is an educational app that connects concrete physical sites with survivor testimony relating to historical events that took place there. Among the thematic topics explored are the role of propaganda and the danger of prejudice and racism. You can also visit “Kafka sites” – including Kafka’s grave and Karel Projsa’s apartment in Vinohrady, where relatives of deported Jews were provided with food during the Nazi occupation.
Click here to download the app:
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.illion.usc
Apple: https://apps.apple.com/cz/app/iwalk-usc-shoah-foundation/id1176057571
We are restoring a library that Franz Kafka used to visit
“A whole building of beautiful lecture halls, large library, quiet, well heated, few students and everything free of charge…” This is how Franz Kafka describes the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums” (College for the Science of Judaism) to his friend Robert Klopstock in 1923. On Thursday April 11, the Jewish Museum in Prague will be presenting the “Library of Lost Books” project, which aims to find lost books from the library of this renowned college in Berlin. The museum, in cooperation with the Leo Baeck Institute, is working with other institutions from around the world in an endeavor to virtually reconstruct this library, which was destroyed by the Nazis during the Second World War.
event Calendar
“In Search of Odradek” is based on one of Kafka’s short stories. It is an outdoor game that involves looking for a mythical creature – while getting to know the Prague Jewish Quarter as it originally looked before its urban renewal.
Throughout the year, starting on April 1, 2024. A game to be played in the streets of the Prague Jewish Quarter
The Israeli typographer Oded Ezer will be showcasing his covers for the 24 unpublished books of Gregor Samsa. However, it is not entirely clear whether these books or their alleged author, Gregor Samsa, ever existed…
June 4 – September 30, 2024, Robert Guttmann Gallery, U staré školy 153/3
Workshop for children – drawing and writing inspired by Oded Ezer and Franz Kafka
June 16, 2024, Jewish Museum in Prague workshop, Maiselova 15, Prague
Historical records
March – Kafka and his letter of ultimatum
In March 1918, Kafka was furious at the attitude of his then publisher, Kurt Wolff. He told his friend Max Brod that he had written a “letter of ultimatum” to Wolff. (This letter, unfortunately, has not been preserved). Among other things, the publisher had changed the title of his collection of short stories, The Country Doctor, without Kafka’s permission, and the proofreading was taking years to complete. The book was finally published in 1920.
March – Kafka is ill
“These infuriating doctors! Determined in the office and so ignorant of healing that, if this official determination left them, they would be standing like schoolboys before the sickbeds.”
Diary, March 5, 1912
“If a doctor is a friend, it might work, but otherwise it’s impossible to communicate with them. For example, I have three doctors, the one here, Dr. Kral, and Uncle. It isn’t odd that they give me different advice, but it is incomprehensible that they give me conflicting advice (Dr. Kral is for injections, Uncle against).
Letter to Ottla Davidová, March 16, 1921
February – Kafka is finally satisfied with his living quarters
Kafka longed very much for a peaceful, harmonious place to live. When he was living in a flat in Dlouhá Street, for instance, he wrote the following: “I have moved into a room where the noise is about ten times greater than in the previous one … Without an unobstructed view, without the possibility to see a large part of the sky from the window and perhaps even a tower in the distance … without this I am miserable…”
He was truly happy in a tiny little house at Golden Lane No. 22 in the Prague Castle complex, where his sister Ottla provided him refuge. He wrote the following about this: “Today it suits me perfectly and completely. In every way: the beautiful path leading up to it, the silence there; only a thin wall separates me from a neighbor, but that neighbor is quiet enough … then the advantage of the way home …” In the spring of 1917, however, the lease was up, so he then moved to an apartment in Schoenborn Palace (where the U.S. Embassy is now based) in the Malá Strana district.