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Franz Kafka: The Office Writings
Franz The Office Writings brings together, for the first time in English, Kafka's most interesting professional writings, composed during his years as a high-ranking lawyer with the largest Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute in the Czech Lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is commonly recognized as the greatest German prose writer of the twentieth century. It is less well known that he had an established legal career. Kafka's briefs reveal him to be a canny bureaucrat, sharp litigator, and innovative thinker on the social, political, and legal issues of his time. His official preoccupations inspired many of the themes and strategies of the novels and stories he wrote at night. These documents include articles on workmen's compensation and workplace safety; appeals for the founding of a psychiatric hospital for shell-shocked veterans; and letters arguing relentlessly for a salary adequate to his merit. In adjudicating disputes, promo
424 pages, Hardcover
First published October 19, 2008
6 people are currently reading
186 people want to read
About the author
Franz Kafka
3,262 books37.9k followersPrague-born writer Franz Kafka wrote in German, and his stories, such as "
The Metamorphosis
" (1916), and posthumously published novels, including
The Trial
(1925), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world.
Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature.
His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and " In the Penal Colony " (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).
Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.
Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short "The Metamorphosis." Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard.
Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera.
Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.
Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature.
His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and " In the Penal Colony " (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).
Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.
Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.
Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short "The Metamorphosis." Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard.
Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera.
Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 7, 2021
I am an insurance professional and loved every page of the work particularly where it relates to workers compensation. Highly recommend it.
February 13, 2009
i don't think there's ever been a book so perfectly suited to my particular aesthetic: literature + jargon. The introductions are deeply informative, and Kafka's writing is crisp and dense and fundamentally tied to actual circumstances. the combination is riveting, and also amazing. the issue of how legal language determines the facts of life is dramatized and underscored to such an extent that you can even see a 'chicken and the egg' scenario develop, confusing the intricacies of law and language as a prioris before the lives they are supposed to account for.
technical language, whoever the author, has always held poetic evocations for me, so it's no surprise that kafka's language shows how rich this kind of writing can be.
technical language, whoever the author, has always held poetic evocations for me, so it's no surprise that kafka's language shows how rich this kind of writing can be.
Want to read
June 28, 2008The allure of office memos written by Kafka? I don't know. I think it would be no small comedy to read his requests for a bigger paycheck - also, each and every word would thrum with sweaty-palmed paranoia. Mostly undeserved.
But this is it for the truly hardcore Kafka scholars - unless you find some Post-It notes or laundry lists, Kafka's every written word is out there, you...you vultures.
From Franz Kafka: Bitchy Notes Tacked to the Refrigerator
To Whom It May Concern: You left the coffee pot on over night. The pot is scorched and the coffee itself is an unfriendly hybrid of roadtar and ipecac. I poured the goop down the sink, slowly, but when I saw my reflection in the slow black liquid, I was filled with a deep remorse. Where Hercules triumphs, mankind struggles. Where Hercules struggles, we fail. But when Hercules dies, we shall become immortal. The gods' line of succession favors the zero.
But this is it for the truly hardcore Kafka scholars - unless you find some Post-It notes or laundry lists, Kafka's every written word is out there, you...you vultures.
From Franz Kafka: Bitchy Notes Tacked to the Refrigerator
To Whom It May Concern: You left the coffee pot on over night. The pot is scorched and the coffee itself is an unfriendly hybrid of roadtar and ipecac. I poured the goop down the sink, slowly, but when I saw my reflection in the slow black liquid, I was filled with a deep remorse. Where Hercules triumphs, mankind struggles. Where Hercules struggles, we fail. But when Hercules dies, we shall become immortal. The gods' line of succession favors the zero.
December 4, 2024
Kafka'nın, işçi kaza sigortası kurumunda icra ettiği günlük işinde karşılaştığı insanların, mekanların ve olayların, onun edebi yazılarına nasıl ismiyle müsemma, 'kafkaesk' olarak tanımlanan kavramı kattığına şahit oluyoruz.
Elbette herkes gibi Kafka'nın da mesleğinden pek hoşnut olduğu söylenemez. Edebi tutkusunu engellediğini düşündüğü mesleği; ofis yazıları, kurum içi yazışmaları ve denetleme gezileri esasında büyük edebi metinlerinin temel kaynağı olmuş. Bu ilginç ve hoş bir nüans.
Elbette herkes gibi Kafka'nın da mesleğinden pek hoşnut olduğu söylenemez. Edebi tutkusunu engellediğini düşündüğü mesleği; ofis yazıları, kurum içi yazışmaları ve denetleme gezileri esasında büyük edebi metinlerinin temel kaynağı olmuş. Bu ilginç ve hoş bir nüans.
June 3, 2018
For what it attempts to do, this book is quite good. Whether what the book is attempting to do is worth pursuing in great detail is another matter, but I hope it is and I will see as I go back to reading some more Kafka.
The point to note here is that Kafka had a day job. It was not just any day job however, but a specialized and relatively high level position as what we would today call an actuary for an Institute concerned with the implementation of mandatory workman’s insurance in the pre-WW1 Austrian Empire. This involves formadible legal, economic, statistical, and political skills in situations of great conflict at a time when the Empire and the entire European world appeared to be going to hell. The question is then whether Kafka’s office writings might shed some light on his mysterious and influential fiction writing which has established a distinct and troubling perspective for viewing the bureaucratic soul killing view of modernity that seems as relevant today as when Kafka wrote.
For anyone who has spent time reading, writing, and generally working through bureaucratic memos, legal briefs, or academic papers, it will not be surprising to learning that this book is not an easy read, or even an easy slog. Still, the world of insurance regulation in pre-WW1 Austria seems primed to provide the conflicts, tensions, and paradoxes that have been associated with Kafka. To start with, there is the contrast between the “real world” of particular situations and cases and the regulatory world of categories and statistical likelihoods. Employers and employees work in the real world while regulation and adjudication occurs in the abstract world of bureaucratic regulations and court cases. Then there is the world of politics versus administration. On the one hand, bureaucracies are meant to be “rational” (goal directed in a variety of ways) while at the top one finds battles over conflicting goals and scarce resources - “rational” perhaps in some sense but not obviously to an observer or someone adversely affected. Then you have the various other boxes to which individuals may be assigned to bureaucratic processes - economic (labor or management) or various ethnic and linguistic categories (German, Czech, Slovak, Jewish, Polish). In a polyglot empire, how does one get everyone involved to even speak the same language? One can even sense the inroads of technological change, as mention is provided of new office equipment or new machines like elevators or automobiles (how does one insure those things?). I have not event mentioned that the Empire is going to be subjected to the trauma of WW1 and eventually disintegrate as the war drew to a close.
If this was all that the book provided, it would be a lot of work to come to the conclusion that the organizational world in which Kafka worked and about which he wrote when he went home was quite complex. OK, but this would be hardly surprising. The editors of the collection do a good job in pointing out how Kafkaesque situations arise in these situations because they are highly contested by parties pursuing different objectives and who see the world in very different ways. Some employers do not want to pay their fair share in insurance premia. Complaints and court cases are contested and the parties involved come up with their own stories to support their positions for a common set of “facts” that support a situation. Distorting the world becomes a part of the game in which words become weapons and in which the consequences of losing are catastrophic. Get caught in the middle of such a multi-party contest and none of the stories at issue will necessarily match “the real world” and the person in the middle will be lost and confused and start looking to Kafka for guidance.
This is all well and good, but do any of these documents relate directly to Kafka’s works? My fear was that the linkages would be indirect at best, but the editors were extremely helpful at pointing the reader to various Kafka short stories and to key elements of his larger works (the Castle, the Trial, America). This is very helpful for following up. That is what I hope to do now - start the third volume of the Stach biography and look harder at The Trial and Amerika.
I think this collection will prove helpful.
The point to note here is that Kafka had a day job. It was not just any day job however, but a specialized and relatively high level position as what we would today call an actuary for an Institute concerned with the implementation of mandatory workman’s insurance in the pre-WW1 Austrian Empire. This involves formadible legal, economic, statistical, and political skills in situations of great conflict at a time when the Empire and the entire European world appeared to be going to hell. The question is then whether Kafka’s office writings might shed some light on his mysterious and influential fiction writing which has established a distinct and troubling perspective for viewing the bureaucratic soul killing view of modernity that seems as relevant today as when Kafka wrote.
For anyone who has spent time reading, writing, and generally working through bureaucratic memos, legal briefs, or academic papers, it will not be surprising to learning that this book is not an easy read, or even an easy slog. Still, the world of insurance regulation in pre-WW1 Austria seems primed to provide the conflicts, tensions, and paradoxes that have been associated with Kafka. To start with, there is the contrast between the “real world” of particular situations and cases and the regulatory world of categories and statistical likelihoods. Employers and employees work in the real world while regulation and adjudication occurs in the abstract world of bureaucratic regulations and court cases. Then there is the world of politics versus administration. On the one hand, bureaucracies are meant to be “rational” (goal directed in a variety of ways) while at the top one finds battles over conflicting goals and scarce resources - “rational” perhaps in some sense but not obviously to an observer or someone adversely affected. Then you have the various other boxes to which individuals may be assigned to bureaucratic processes - economic (labor or management) or various ethnic and linguistic categories (German, Czech, Slovak, Jewish, Polish). In a polyglot empire, how does one get everyone involved to even speak the same language? One can even sense the inroads of technological change, as mention is provided of new office equipment or new machines like elevators or automobiles (how does one insure those things?). I have not event mentioned that the Empire is going to be subjected to the trauma of WW1 and eventually disintegrate as the war drew to a close.
If this was all that the book provided, it would be a lot of work to come to the conclusion that the organizational world in which Kafka worked and about which he wrote when he went home was quite complex. OK, but this would be hardly surprising. The editors of the collection do a good job in pointing out how Kafkaesque situations arise in these situations because they are highly contested by parties pursuing different objectives and who see the world in very different ways. Some employers do not want to pay their fair share in insurance premia. Complaints and court cases are contested and the parties involved come up with their own stories to support their positions for a common set of “facts” that support a situation. Distorting the world becomes a part of the game in which words become weapons and in which the consequences of losing are catastrophic. Get caught in the middle of such a multi-party contest and none of the stories at issue will necessarily match “the real world” and the person in the middle will be lost and confused and start looking to Kafka for guidance.
This is all well and good, but do any of these documents relate directly to Kafka’s works? My fear was that the linkages would be indirect at best, but the editors were extremely helpful at pointing the reader to various Kafka short stories and to key elements of his larger works (the Castle, the Trial, America). This is very helpful for following up. That is what I hope to do now - start the third volume of the Stach biography and look harder at The Trial and Amerika.
I think this collection will prove helpful.
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July 27, 2013Kafka på kontoret - villy sørensen
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews