Prague is Kafka´s native city. He was born here in 1883. He spent almost all his
life here, here he was laid to rest. Prague with its specific preconditions,
Prague with its history and fast-going transformations at the beginning of the
20th century marked his soul, destiny and work.
Franz Kafka was Prague & Prague was Franz Kafka.
4 HOUR TOUR
GUIDE & VEHICLE
or GUIDE ONLY
Tickets to attractions are not included in the tour price.
Come and see with us the places that influenced him, where he lived and wrote,
the New Jewish Cemetery, where he is buried.
It is a 4 hour city tour , a walking tour or a combination of walking and driving.
Optional:
In case you want to see the village that inspired Franz Kafka to write "The
Castle", i.e. Franz Kafka´s village , the tour will take 4 hours more, it is about 1,5 hour to drive
outside Prague on the way to the spa Karlovy Vary.
"It is a trap and it doesn´t release its people easily." The Jew Franz Kafka characterized Prague with these words, and Max Brod, his friend, also a Jew, confirmed them. Brod, who organized Kafka´s estate after Kafka´s death, almost paid with his life for his love of Prague. He left the city before Hitler´s invading army and took a train to the Polish border on March 15th 1939. In the morning on the border he watched from his coupe window as the Wehrmacht seized the station, as his train pulled out.
"What a tremendous world I have in my head! But how to free myself and free it,
without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times better it would be to be
torn to pieces than keep it inside me or burry it. That, indeed, is why I am
here, that is quite clear to me."
Franz Kafka - "Diaries"
" I so wish to explain the feeling of happiness which, like now, I have in me
from time to time. It is really something effervescent that fills me completely
with a light, pleasant quiver and that persuades me of the existence of
abilities of whose non-existence I can convince myself with complete certainty
at any moment, even now."
Franz Kafka - "Diaries"
"It would appear that the street - the main street of the village - did not
lead up to the Castle Hill, it only made towards it and than, as if
deliberately, turned aside, and though it did not lead away from the Castle, it
led no nearer to it either."
Franz Kafka - "The Castle"
"You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you are not
anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something, a stranger, a man who is
not wanted and is in everybody´s way, a man who is always causing
trouble......"
Franz Kafka - "The Castle"
"At the beginning of the 20th century Prague was a gloomy place, aging monarch Franz Joseph II had a reserved and suspicious view of new technological social ideas and philosophical directions, and blanched at anything which hinted of change.
The city was strewn with police informers ready to report anything unusual to bureaucrats of the monarchy, who in turn were expected to keep everything under control.
Under such oppressive watch only a few sites were able to retain an air of independence, and one such place was the house AT THE UNICORN.
Max and Berta Fanta owned an apartment on its second floor which served as a stimulating meeting place for German-speaking scientific and artistic eliteseven before World War I.
Max Brod, writer, composer, and aclose friend of Franz Kafka, described the wonderful atmosphere at the Fanta´s in his autobiography.
German physicist Albert Einstein was also a member of the looselyknit intellectual group, and it was at the Fanta´s that he hinted at the first aspects of his revolutionary Theory of Relativity. He also played Mozart´s Violin Sonata in a duet accompanied by Max Brod on piano.
On the whole, the house at The Unicorn was the stage for many extraordinary meetings, and even Sigmund Freud lectured there, revealingthe new directions that 20th century psychology and psychiatry were taking.
Philosopher Franz Brentan, who taught at Prague´s German University, whose work preceded Husserl´s theories of phenomenology, was largely responsible for organising many meetings at The Unicorn.
Max Brod (1884-1968) was one of the most important figures in Prague´s spiritual and intellectual scene, he befriended Franz Kafka in 1902 and their friendship lasted up until the Kafka´s death in 1924. Brod later became editor of all of Kafka´s work, and it is to his immeasurable credit that he published Kafka´s "Diaries" in Berlin in the years 1935 and 1937, as well as a revised edition in the United States after World War II.
Brod, who was Jewish, lived in Prague until 1939, and escaped just before the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. He spent the rest of his life in Israel."
