Why Kafka s Drawings Were Locked Away?

Why Kafka's Drawings Were Locked Away for Decades - and How They Were Rediscovered
The book 'Franz Kafka: The Drawings' reveals 150 sketches kept out of public reach for decades due to a legal dispute over his estate
October 27th, 17PM October 27th, 17PM

It is doubtful that many of the tourists crowding around the sculpture of Franz Kafka's head in the city where he was born have actually read his stories. More likely, they visit this peculiar sculpture simply because it appears on every list of must-see attractions in Prague. Even if some have read his works, it is almost certain they do not know that Kafka was also a visual artist. That ignorance is not their fault.

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Most of the drawings Kafka left behind upon his premature death in 1924 were unknown to the public for nearly a century. They were hidden in a Swiss bank vault by Max Brod's secretary, Esther Hoffe. Were it up to her, we would likely have been deprived of the privilege of seeing these drawings for another hundred years.

Only in 2019 – after a Kafkaesque legal saga that began following an expos; in Haaretz – was Kafka's estate finally opened to the public.


A drawing by Franz Kafka, featured in the book Credit: Blima Books
A drawing by Franz Kafka, featured in the book Credit: Blima Books
One outcome of these legal proceedings is the stunning book "Franz Kafka: The Drawings," which for the first time presents all of the author's extant drawings, accompanied by explanations and analysis. Originally published in German by C.H. Beck Verlag about three years ago, the book appeared in English in 2021 (Yale University Press) and has now been translated into Hebrew. It includes illuminating essays that shed new light on Kafka's legacy and artistic talent. The book was co-edited by Andreas Kilcher, a Swiss professor of literature and cultural studies.

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At the beginning of the 20th century, Kafka began experimenting with drawing around the same time he took his first steps as a writer, while studying at the university in Prague. His illustrations fill notebooks and diaries, and adorn letters. Would anyone care about these drawings if they were not made by Kafka? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. Yet Kafka has long become an international brand, and as such, there is both public and scholarly interest in the visual works he left behind, regardless of debates over their artistic merit.

His attitude toward his drawings was as self-critical as it was toward his writing. "He was more indifferent, or perhaps even better, hostile to his drawings than he was to his literary production," commented Brod in 1948. In a will that he drew up in 1921, Kafka also mentioned his drawings. "Dearest Max, my final request: whatever diaries, manuscripts, letters from myself or others, drawings, etc. you find among the things I leave behind ... please burn every bit of it without reading it…".

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In a 1913 letter to his fianc;e, Felice Bauer, Kafka presented a more complex picture. After asking for her opinion on a drawing, he wrote: "I was once a great draftsman, you know, but then I started to take academic drawing lessons with a bad woman painter and ruined my talent. Think of that! But wait, one of these days I'll send you a few of my old drawings, to give you something to laugh at. These drawings gave me greater satisfaction in those days – it's years ago – than anything else."


A self portrait, by Franz Kafka, 1911. Credit: Blima Books
A self portrait, by Franz Kafka, 1911. Credit: Blima Books
Brod, as is well-known, ignored Kafka's request to burn his works, and the rest is history.

"Anything that I didn't rescue was destroyed," Brod wrote. "I had him give me his 'scribblings,' or I rescued them from the wastebasket ... indeed I cut a number of them from the margins of the course notes from his legal studies, those illegally reproduced 'transcripts' that I always 'inherited' from him (since he was one year ahead of me)."

Brod regarded Kafka's artistic work as valuable in its own right. Even before recognizing Kafka's literary genius, he tried to draw attention to his friend's talent as an illustrator. As early as 1907, he attempted to persuade a publisher to hire Kafka to illustrate a book he himself had written. In the letter, he described Kafka as a draftsman he had discovered himself and who, until then, had remained unknown. He added that he did not believe a more refined or artistically impressive image could be found, calling it unique and one of a kind, yet still suffused with a delicate sense of Japonisme.


Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
In light of those remarks, it is difficult not to wonder how Brod – who worked so hard to preserve Kafka's drawings and literary works – ultimately left them in the hands of his secretary. This story began in March 1939, when Brod fled Czechoslovakia following the Nazi occupation. In what has since become one of literature's defining legends, he described his escape to Israel with a suitcase filled with literary treasures: "All of Kakfa's manuscripts with me in my suitcase. So they made the journey with me, first by train... then on a... ship... to Tel Aviv."

Brod deposited Kafka's literary estate in a number of places. Some of it went to the Schocken Library in Jerusalem, and some was placed in a private bank vault in Tel Aviv. In 1956, the materials were moved from Israel to bank vaults in Zurich. Later, parts of Kafka's writings were transferred to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Another batch of his papers, including Kafka's drawings, remained in the Zurich vaults.


Max Brod. Believed that his friend's artistic work had value in its own right. Credit: Imagno / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
Max Brod. Believed that his friend's artistic work had value in its own right. Credit: Imagno / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
The first of Kafka's drawings that Brod revealed appeared in his 1937 biography of the author, published in Prague. He later included several more in subsequent books. However, most of the drawings remained locked away in the vaults in Zurich.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Brod declined offers from publishers to release the drawings. Brod died in 1968. Before his death, he entrusted the drawings to his secretary, Esther Hoffe, as a gift. In the early 1980s, Michael Kr;ger, CEO of the German publishing house Carl Hanser Verlag, contacted Hoffe with an offer to publish Kafka's drawings. In 1981 he traveled to Tel Aviv to meet her, but she refused to open the door. What happened next was later described in a 2009 article in Die Zeit:


A drawing by Franz Kafka, featured in the book Credit: Blima Books
A drawing by Franz Kafka, featured in the book Credit: Blima Books
"She did not let him into the apartment; instead, they had a long conversation in the stairwell. Kr;ger wanted to speak with her about obtaining permission to reproduce drawings from Kafka's papers ... which were said to be unpublished as yet. She told him that would be very expensive. In order to find out how expensive 'very expensive' might be, he would have to call… the Zurich lawyer… [who] explained to Kr;ger on the telephone: 'It costs 100,000 marks if you want to look at the drawings.' They could discuss the cost of publication rights later…"

Hoffe's greed, driven by financial motives, reached its peak when she sold the manuscript of "The Trial" at a 1988 public auction for one million pounds sterling. Hoffe died in 2007. Following the Haaretz investigation, Israel's National Library filed a lawsuit against her daughters to prevent them from inheriting the estate. The court proceedings in the case lasted about a decade and ended in a victory for the library. In 2019, a delegation on its behalf traveled to Zurich to retrieve the contents of the bank vaults, which included Kafka's drawings.