Marriage and the Devil: The Literary Exchange, Values, and Power Structures of Franz Kafka and Milena Jesenská

Abstract

The article examines the inspiring relationship between the well-known Prague journalist Milena Jesenská and the world-famous writer Franz Kafka—authors of different genres who shared reflections on being human, the world, religion, and prose. It elaborates on the commonalities and the divisions, the mutual admiration as well as the irreconcilable differences, which can also be mapped onto selected works by both authors. In her articles, Jesenská criticizes social and political issues, elaborating a normative position, in the sense of describing the stance, attitudes, and politics that are needed for change. Kafka’s position, as if complementary to Jesenská’s, shows only this human world. On the basis of some of their letters, articles, and prose works, this article examines the relationship between the two authors and the textuality of their relationship, as well as their shared and different values in the contexts of various power relations.

1. Introduction

Franz Kafka is one of the most famous authors of the 20th century, with an enormous body of scholarship focusing on his work and biographical material. The journalist Milena Jesenská1 was well known in the Prague cultural scene of the 1920s and 1930s. Today, her name is highly recognized in Prague and in the Czech Republic and is even known in certain intellectual circles in Germany and other countries. Several books and articles pertaining to her biography (Wagnerová 1995), as well as the anthologies of her articles2 (Jesenská 2016; Jesenská 1996a; Jesenská 2021g) and (the preserved) letters (Jesenská 1996d) have been published. Two biographical analyses focus on Jesenská’s resistance to Nazi occupiers (Jirásková 1996; Darowska 2012). The relationship between Milena Jesenská and Franz Kafka is a decades-long topic that entered the literary scene’s consciousness with the publication of Kafka’s letters to Jesenská by Willy Haas in 1952. Jesenská and Kafka shared encounters that were both delightful and painful. While Jesenská is often featured in biographical works on Kafka, to my knowledge, there are no works elaborating on the relationship between these two authors in terms of their values and mutual inspiration nor particularly focusing on their differing responses to external and internal structures of power in the lives and works of both intellectuals.

This paper3 does not aim to provide new insights into Kafka’s biography or literary works but rather to shed light on the relationship between Kafka and Jesenská. I argue that this relationship has not been sufficiently assessed in the scholarly literature (cf. also Wagnerová 2021, pp. 14–17). Even Reiner Stach, Kafka’s acclaimed biographer, fails to recognize the intellectual significance of Jesenská’s work (cf. Darowska 2016). Moreover, in a 2024 German-Austrian television film directed by David Schalko (Screenplay: Kehlmann and Schalko), Jesenská is, in a certain way, depicted as a caricature rather than portrayed as the intellectual she was, with meaningful contributions of her own. This depiction stands in contrast to Kafka’s recognition of her biographical, literary, and personal strengths, which played a decisive role in their relationship. Thus, this article highlights some aspects of Jesenská’s and Kafka’s relationship, which have not yet been adequately evaluated, particularly in terms of their (shared) values and their responses and/or resistance to unequal power dynamics. In my view, the analysis of these dimensions of their relationship should be included in works on the Prague Circles because it could broaden our understanding of them.

Even though Milena Jesenská was not considered a “member” of the Prague Circles (Brod 2016), reading her work—in conjunction with Kafka’s—highlights an interesting kind of intertextuality. Max Brod’s valuable delineations of the narrow and more remote Prague Circles consist mainly of fellow men. According to Brod, the narrow Prague Circle included, besides himself, Franz Kafka, Felix Weltsch, Oscar Baum, and, after Kafka’s death, also Ludwig Winder (Brod 2016, p. 54). At the same time, Brod, who strongly affirmed the literary quality of Jesenská’s work (Brod 1974), also recalled her in the company of other literary luminaries:

Ich kannte ja Milena von früher her, war ihr, allerdings nur flüchtig, öfters begegnet, in der Gesellschaft Werfels, auch des Dichters Paul Kornfeld

(Brod 1974, p. 195).

(I knew Milena from earlier, but I had only met her fleetingly, often in the company of Werfel and the poet Paul Kornfeld).4

Of the two authors mentioned, Franz Werfel was highly regarded by Brod, who described him as a “wichtige Bereicherung”5 for the Circle (Brod 2016, p. 220). In contrast, Brod dismissed Paul Kornfeld’s literary work, denying it any recognition, which indicates Brod’s subjective judgments (cf. Höhne 2016, p. 330). And although women are scarcely mentioned in Brod’s (2016) monograph, Brod does highlight, in his discussion of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, the intensity “von slawischen Einflüssen”6 in her work (Brod 2016, p. 16). Brod reflected further on various influences, considering that they “pflanzen sich ja auch indirekt, atmosphärisch, nicht bloß im Wachbewußtsein fort”7 (Brod 2016, p. 16). These influences go far beyond the ethnic ones, and it was relevant for Brod, referring to von Ebner-Eschenbach and Bertha von Suttner to stress that both women “sich […] gegen Inhumanität jeglicher Art energisch zur Wehr setzten”8 (Brod 2016, p. 17), that they were not only “sympathisch” but also “kämpferish, aufrichtig und aufrecht”9 (Brod 2016, p. 18).

Though Brod did not specifically refer to her with the above terms, these characteristics could also be applied to Milena Jesenská in a number of ways, for example, in her commitment to journalistic themes that focus on misery, inequality, and injustice, in her fight against the racist political criminal NS-regime, or in her battle for equal rights as a woman in the professional world. Based on selected letters, biographical events, and selected works, this analysis focuses on the relationship between Kafka and Jesenská to explore the concept of humanity that both protagonists developed. Moreover, it examines their experience of inhumanity and pain, as well as the diverse ways in which each responded to these experiences. The values that are associated with “humanity” are, among others, justice, honesty, altruism, empathy, goodness (benevolence), commitment, as well as readiness to help, and tolerance (cf. Values Academy n.d.). Jesenská significantly influenced Kafka in his emotional life, particularly in 1920 and, to a certain extent, in the years that followed. Though I do not claim that their relationship was the sole reason, in an interesting coincidence, it was after their first encounter in Vienna that Kafka experienced some of the emotionally highest points10 in his life, and after he realized that Jesenská would not choose a life together with him, that he experienced a deeply critical and depressive period in his life11 (Brod 1974, p. 190). These experiences inspired Kafka to create the parable of a “Jewish angel” and the woman character in “Das Schloss” (The Castle). Through several examples, I will illustrate how Kafka not only acknowledges Jesenská’s literary qualities—her direct, committed, and pointed language, as well as her courage, which he contrasted with his own fears—but also how he responded to his experiences with Jesenská in his literary work.

Though Kafka hardly needs an introduction, a little context on Jesenská’s life and work will certainly be helpful. Born in 1896, Jesenská grew up as the only child12 in a middle-class Czech family. Her father, Jan Jesenský, was a dentist who also taught at the university, but her mother did not have a career outside the home. Jesenská was the first woman in her family to receive a grammar school education and even though she started her university studies, she did not complete them. Her educational profile included literature, culture, music, and other subjects considered typical in the humanities. Jesenská was active in Prague’s literary circles, taking part in coffeehouse discussions.

Beginning in 1919, Jesenská’s articles were published in the Prague journal Tribuna, and later her work was printed in other magazines, primarily in the newspaper Národní listy, as well as in the Communist Party periodicals and after 1937 in Přítomnost, a journal with a cultural and political profile. Like many women of her time, she started contributing to the fashion column, as there were hardly any other employment opportunities for women in professional journalism. However, Jesenská’s interests were varied, and she was particularly interested in cultural issues, interpersonal relations, the life of the cities and on the streets (see Capovilla 2004, p. 30), as well as social and political issues, particularly social inequality. Her writing style was expressive, using repetitions, rhythm, and sometimes humor. For instance, in the “Kino” (Cinema) feuilleton [Tribuna, 15 January 1920] she utilizes repetitions of words or phrases to begin sentences: “Spricht man beim Theater von Kunst […]. Spricht man beim Kino vom Künstlerischen […]”13 (Jesenská [1920] 2021e, p. 47). “[…] Viele von ihnen sind ganz hervorragende Künstler […]. Viele gehen auch einer bürgerlichen Beschäftigung nach […].”14 And we hear the rhythm created by enumeration, as exemplified in phrases such as “ob Fotografie, Regisseur, Schauspieler, Sujet […]”15 (Jesenská [1920] 2021e, p. 47). “Frauen, die sich Wäsche nähen, Bücher lesen, Klavier spielen […]”16 (Jesenská [1920] 2021e, p. 48). “Beamte, Kaufleute, Minister, Schauspieler […]”17 (Jesenská [1920] 2021e, p. 49).

With rich and dynamic language, Jesenská presented critical views on social and political questions, which were often followed by her suggestions on how the situation could be changed. Thus, criticism followed by solution or vision were distinguishing characteristics of her contributions in the journals. Admirably, Jesenská was consistent in this approach even at the cost of her personal safety. During the Nazi occupation, Jesenská was active in the underground newspaper ‘V boj’ and in rescue operations for threatened people in Prague. Her activities in connection with underground journalism led to her arrest and imprisonment in 1939. Although her resistance activities could not be proven at her court trial in Dresden (Jirásková 1996), Jesenská was sent to the concentration camp Ravensbrück, where she died on 17 May 1944.

To return to 1918, after Jesenská married Ernst Pollak, a literary critic, both moved to Vienna. Thus, a part of her journalistic work, published in Prague, was carried out in Vienna. During this time period, she decided to translate Kafka’s short story, “Der Heizer” (Kafka [1913] 1920) (The Stoker). As one of several women journalists of her generation, she also translated literary pieces from authors writing in French, English, and German into Czech for the Prague periodicals (see Wagnerová 2021, p. 20).

On her visit to Prague with her husband Pollak, probably in February 1920, (Binder 2013, p. 335), she met Kafka18 in Café Arco; her translation of “Der Heizer” was first published in Czech in 1920 in the journal “Kmen”. Kafka’s letter dated April 1920 from Merano (Italy), Pension Ottoburg, where he was recuperating from pulmonary tuberculosis, starts as a poem (cf. Safranski 2024, p. 183) and marks the beginning of their literary letter exchange, which itself constitutes a specific genre.19 This letter exchange can be understood as a complement to their respective journalistic and literary endeavors. In addition to announcements and reports for the respective recipient, their correspondence also included literary elements, such as poetic expressions and the use of metaphorical or allegorical imagery. In his letter from Merano dated April 1920, Kafka writes the following:

Liebe Frau Milena, eben hat der zwei Tage und eine Nacht dauernde Regen aufgehört, wahrscheinlich zwar nur vorübergehend, immerhin ein Ereignis wert gefeiert zu werden und das tue ich indem ich ihnen schreibe.

(Kafka 1995, p. 3)

(Dear Madame Milena, the rain that lasted two days and one night has just stopped, probably only temporarily, but it is still an event worth celebrating and I am doing so by writing to you.)

The beginning of the relationship between Kafka and Jesenská shows the great tenderness of the connection between them, as well as the power of their affection, with all its excitement, curiosity, and devotion. Later, themes of destruction, fear, and disappointment surfaced in their letters, which in turn served as inspiration for both authors’ literary compositions. Jesenská and Kafka met twice during this very intensive stage of their relationship in 1920: from 29 June to 4 July in Vienna and from 14 August to 15 in the border city of Gmünd. Brod, Kafka’s closest friend, assisted him in his office in Prague during the afternoons as Kafka eagerly awaited the telegrams from Jesenská (Brod 1974, p. 195f.). When Jesenská commented on Brod’s book, Kafka was excited by her comment because it provided him an opportunity to discuss the issue with Brod, who frequently inquired about her (Kafka 1995, p. 139 [23 July 1920]). Despite the end of their relationship and the pain experienced by both parties, their connection was remarkably deep and persisted until Kafka’s death on 3 June 1924, as if Kafka’s expressed commitment to her in 1920 was, at the same time, the anticipated future:

Du gehörst zu mir, selbst wenn ich Dich nie mehr sehen würde.

(Kafka 1995, p. 57 penned in Merano on 12 June 1920)

(You belong to me, even if I would never see you again.)

But what was the basis for and the frame of this belonging?

2. Marriage, the Devil, and the Castle

2.1. Marriage

Shared life as a married couple was an integral part of the social structure during the early 20th century. However, the avant-garde—the intellectuals and artists—were in the process of liberating themselves from the constraints of their middle-class parents’ generation. In this section, I explore the intertextual exchange between Jesenská and Kafka regarding the issue of marriage, which is embedded in their personal biographical experiences. For both Jesenská and Kafka, a conventional marriage was desirable and at the same time burdensome, as this aspirational model became decreasingly aligned with their subjective needs and desires. Kafka was engaged three times—twice to Felice Bauer and once (later) to Julie Wohryzek (his relationships prior to Jesenská)—all of which he ultimately broke off. Jesenská was married twice (first to Ernst Pollak and later to Jaromír Krejcar), separating from both husbands. Later she lived together with Evžen Klinger during the turbulent years preceding the Nazi occupation. She maintained significant relationships with other men, including Kafka and Willi Schlamm, and close contacts with several women, such as Staša Jílovská (Černá 1985; Wagnerová 1995; Buber-Neumann 1996), Alice Rühle Gerstel (Marková 2007; Capovilla 2004), and Margarete Buber-Neumann (Buber-Neumann 1996). While Kafka was ambivalent with regard to his sexuality and his emotional attachments to women, his feelings towards Jesenská seem less ambiguous after their encounter in Vienna. Kafka’s contradictory desires are well known: the yearning for family life with a wife and children, respected work, and societal standing, on the one hand, and the need for total freedom for his literary activities marked by intensive periods of work on the other hand (Safranski 2024, p. 99f.). Jesenská was raised in a middle-class environment and socialized to its conventions, but she belonged to the rebellious generation, striving for new norms, and at the top of her list was the demand for freedom as a woman to pursue professional career in the field of her choosing.

Jesenská and Kafka navigated the restrictive societal norms in distinct ways, although both encountered difficulties stemming from these restrictions as well as the newly gained liberties. Like Kafka, Jesenská viewed human beings from a critical perspective, but in contrast to him, she openly criticized social conditions or simply looked (more) for pragmatic ways to cope with the real world.20 And unlike Kafka, she showed little hesitation to commit, thereby risking complicated constellations, as in her marriage to Ernst Pollak. Here, she must have been aware of his relationships with other women before she married him, yet she chose to live with him for several years afterward. In this vein, Pollak’s behavior reflected the spirit of the times. Having multiple relationships was not only common among men, for example, Willy Haas (Kafka 1995, p. 58), Franz Werfel, Hermann Broch, Otto Gross, or Franz Blei, but also among women (Kaus 1979), and it was the expression of this generation’s newfound freedom. Apart from emotional bonds, marriage granted a certain dimension of support and status, although Jesenská had to earn her own living. Later in life (back in Prague), Jesenská married Jaromír Krejcar, whom she loved deeply. She suffered when this relationship dissolved—likely in part due to her illness after the birth of their daughter, Jana (Honza), and her struggle with morphine addiction. Jesenská’s life seems to be guided by an unconscious principle: to decide, to live, and, when life becomes unbearable, to make a new decision and change her circumstances. However, to live one’s life, one must be ready to risk suffering. Her attitude is poignantly captured in her words from “Der Teufel am Herd” (The Devil on the Stove) in Národní listy, 18 January 1923:

Mein Gott, wozu dieses bisschen Leid fürchten, dieses bisschen Schmerz und Unglück.

(Jesenská [1923] 2021b, p. 128)

(My God, why fear this little bit of suffering, this little bit of pain and unhappiness.)

Or in her feuilleton “Das Fenster” (The Window) in Národní listy from 27 September 1921:

Wie oft sind Sie in einem Moment seelischen Erstickens ans Fenster getreten und haben es aufgerissen? Wie oft haben Sie sich hinausgelehnt und in vollen Zügen den sich breitenden Raum geatmet, um Kraft für die nächste Sekunde zu schöpfen?

(Jesenská [1921] 2021a, p. 116)

(How often have you stepped to the window in a moment in which your soul is suffocating and torn it open? How many times have you leaned out and breathed in the expanding space to draw strength for the next second?)

Yet, Jesenská’s relationship with Kafka reveals that she, too, was ambivalent in her decisions, driven by conflicting emotions. Still, it seems that it was more difficult for Kafka—who hesitated time and again—to make decisions and to act upon them; rather, he frequently changed his mind before acting. This pattern might be due to his strong involvement in his family and family ties, living at his parents’ house, as well as his emotional and psychological dependency on his father:

[…] meine Angst wird doch immer größer, denn sie bedeutet ja ein Zurückweichen vor der Welt, daher Vergrößerung ihres Drucks, daher weiterhin Vergrößerung der Angst […]

(Kafka 1995, p. 60 [13 June 1920]).

([…] my fear is getting bigger and bigger, because it means a retreat from the world, therefore increasing its pressure, therefore further increasing the fear […].)

The constraints shaping Kafka were of different types. His well-documented search for identity and for the right place to live, including his plans to immigrate to Palestine, was multi-layered and must be seen in the context of interactions with and the influences of the persons and groups from his social environment throughout his life. These include his father Hermann Kafka, Max Brod, and the rising tide of antisemitism in society but also the women with whom he formed close relationships. In one of his letters, Kafka used the word “Gefängnisordnung” (prison rules) to describe his existence (Kafka 1995, p. 294), reflecting his intense struggle with power dynamics. However, his struggle for power begins already with the relationship between the body and the spirit. He idealized the notion of acquiring control over his body, particularly over his sexual drive, associating this control with the purity of the human being. Although he engaged in casual sexual encounters with women at hotels or brothels, and Brod recalled: “Wie viele Abende verbrachten wir gemeinsam in Theatern, Kabaretts, ferner auch in Weinstuben bei schönen Mädchen”21 (Brod 1974, p. 103), Brod also emphasized Kafka’s yearning for purity: “Sein ganzes Wesen war Sehnsucht nach Reinheit”22 (Brod 1974, p. 103). For Kafka, physical desire was only admissible when it was accompanied by emotional and spiritual desire. Sexual desire was something to be overcome or just released in the act of sexual intercourse so that he “endlich Ruhe hatte vor dem ewig jammernden Körper”23 (Kafka 1995, p. 197; see also Stach 2011, p. 382).

In contrast, Jesenská was eager to live life intensively in the dimensions it offered. Eroticism and sexuality were not separate from emotional and spiritual ties. After Kafka broke off their relationship (end of 1920), she wrote to Brod:

[…] und vielleicht war ich zu sehr Weib, um die Kraft zu haben, mich diesem Leben zu unterwerfen, von dem ich wußte, daß es strengste Askese bedeuten würde, auf Lebenszeit.

(Jesenská, not dated, translated by Max Brod24, in Brod 1974, p. 203)

([…], and perhaps I was too much of a woman to have the strength to submit to this life, which I knew would mean the strictest asceticism for life.)

Besides the power struggle between the body and the spirit, as well as between their parents’ (particularly fathers’)25 generation and themselves, there was a power struggle between men and women that manifested itself within romantic relationships. Jesenská was not a feminist; however, in her published feuilleton article “Der Teufel am Herd” (The Devil on the Stove) (in Národní listy on 18 January 1923), she took a closer and critical look at marriage as a middle-class institution.

A subjective experience could become a social issue if discussed in the media. That is the task Jesenská performed when she discussed her reflections and observations with the public. The difficulties in her marriage and the problems of her generation in relationships became the content of her article “Der Teufel am Herd”. At the time she was experiencing her closest relationship with Kafka ([1913] 1920), Jesenská herself was trapped in a marital relationship with Pollak, and she was not able at that time to gain enough power to break her dependency and leave the destructive bond (see, e.g., Kafka 1995, p. 365). In this article, she puts forward the thesis that the common expectations towards marriage were unrealistic and false. She argues that it is not the much-invoked happiness that makes up the substance of marriage. Indeed, the expectation of such an abstract state as happiness spoils the everyday lives of two people who fail in their daily lives to create a shared safe space of closeness, understanding, belonging, and trust. Instead, the space is increasingly filled with interactions that result in disappointment, alienation, and helplessness. Shifting from a critique to the normative perspective on marriage, in “Der Teufel am Herd” she elaborates on a participative and sensitive relationship between two partners in which one should participate emotionally and spiritually in the life of one’s partner, be truly interested in the fate of the other, and be eager to appear attractive. The biggest promise that partners who seek to live together can give each other is the following:

Dich geb ich nicht her. […] Da drin ist alles. Anstand gegenüber dem anderen, Wahrhaftigkeit, Geborgenheit, Treue, Zugehörigkeit Entschluss, Freundschaft.

(Jesenská [1923] 2021b, p. 127)

(I will not give you away. […] It’s all in there. Decency towards the other, truthfulness, security, loyalty, belonging determination, friendship.)

The final part of Jesenská’s feuilleton article offers a critique, here on hesitation and indecisiveness, that can apply to Pollak as well as to her generation’s search for an adequate way of living and breaking free from conventional norms. However, it can also be read as a personal allusion to Kafka’s attempts to live his life while controlling his spirit and mind, avoiding errors, and searching for the “right” way to live. Hartmut Binder’s comment on Kafka’s way of living strengthens this interpretation: “Kafkas Lebenszeugnisse zeigen, daß Unentschlossenheit zu seinen Persönlichkeitsmerkmalen gehörte, daß jeder Entscheidung ein langer […] entnervender Kampf vorherging, in dem das Für und Wider erwogen wurde […]”26 (Binder 2013, p. 336). Jesenská wrote in Národní listy am 18 January 1923 the following:

Es gibt zwei Möglichkeiten des Lebens: entweder sein Schicksal annehmen, sich dafür entscheiden und darauf einstellen, es erkennen und sich zu Vorzügen und Nachteilen, zu Glück und Unglück verpflichten, tapfer, ehrlich, ohne um einen Kreuzer zu feilschen, großmütig und demütig. Oder sein Schicksal suchen; aber mit der Suche verliert man nicht nur Kraft, Zeit, Illusionen, richtige und gute Blindheit und das sichere Gespür für die Dinge, mit der Suche verliert man auch den eigenen Wert. Man wird ständig ärmer. Was kommt, ist immer schlechter als das, was war. Und dann: zur Suche braucht man Glauben, und zum Glauben gehört vielleicht mehr Kraft als zum Leben.

(Jesenská [1923] 1996b, p. 85)

(There are two possibilities in life: either accept your destiny, decide on it and adjust to it, recognize it and commit yourself to its advantages and disadvantages, to happiness and misfortune, bravely, honestly, without haggling for a penny, magnanimously and humbly. Or seek your destiny; but with the search one not only loses strength, time, illusions, right and good blindness and a sure sense of things, with the search one also loses one’s own value. You become poorer and poorer. What comes is always worse than what was. And then: you need faith to search, and to have faith perhaps requires more strength than to live.)

Within the broader discussion of marriage in the media, a personal intertextual exchange emerged between Jesenská and Kafka. Kafka read and commented on Jesenská’s “Der Teufel am Herd”. He was amazed by its quality as well as by the lightning-like manner of Jesenská’s thinking and writing. His affirmation was expressed in a letter to Jesenská in January/February 1923, which itself is a literary parable. He referred to her feuilleton piece as a “marvelous, exciting essay” (Kafka 1995, p. 312). As Stach (2011, pp. 120, 130, 553–55) interprets, referring to Kafka’s letters to Felice Bauer, Jesenská’s conviction that marriage should be based on an intimate and profound connection between two people must have resonated with Kafka. His perceived ideal of not making unrealistic demands on his partner, whether sexual or otherwise possessive, was articulated here. For Kafka, the liberation from “prison rules” (Kafka 1995, p. 294), that is, from the cage of the confines of the middle-class family, and the promise of autonomy as a couple must have resounded in these words. Interesting is therefore the way he commented on Jesenská’s views. On the one hand, admiring her sharp analysis, he attributed incomprehensible courage to Jesenská and, referring directly to the conclusions of her article, he admired her as a “Menschen, der […] noch von andern Dingen weiß als von Mut und der dennoch mutig ist”27 (Kafka 1995, p. 309). On the other hand, he turned to subtle irony. Kafka summed up Jesenská’s theses, showing that she actually refers to the immaturity of individuals entering adult life.

Ein wunderbarer aufregender Aufsatz, aus dem besonders das Blitzartige Ihres28 Denkens trifft und schlägt. Wer nicht schon geschlagen ist–und das sind freilich die meisten–duckt sich, wer schon erschlagen ist, dehnt sich noch einmal im Traum. Und im Traum sagt er sich: So irdisch diese Forderungen sind, sie sind nicht genug irdisch. Es gibt keine unglücklichen Ehen, es gibt nur unfertige, und unfertig sind sie, weil unfertige Menschen sie geschlossen haben, in der Entwicklung steckengebliebene Menschen, Menschen, die vor der Ernte aus dem Felde ausgerissen werden sollen. Solche Menschen in die Ehe zu schicken, ist so, wie der ersten Volksschulklasse Algebra aufgeben.

(Kafka 1995, p. 312)

(Marvelous, exciting essay from which the lightning-like nature of your thinking hits and strikes. Those who are not already beaten—and certainly the most of them are—crouch down, who is already beaten to death stretches himself once again in his dreams. And in the dream he says to himself: as earthly as these demands are, they are not earthly enough. There are no unhappy marriages, there are only unfinished ones, and they are unfinished because unfinished people have entered into them, people who are stuck in their development, people who are to be uprooted from the field before the harvest. Sending such people into marriage is like giving up algebra to the first year of primary school.)

Jesenská’s normative and educative suggestions for the repair of human beings, in particular, men entering into marriage, are based on her experiences, observations, and reflections. Her aim is to develop a clear diagnosis in regard to the breakdown of marriages and suggestions for their improvement. Kafka, for his part, seems much too aware of the complexity of human relationships and the limited agency of individuals, as he would have easily accepted Jesenská’s approach. He sharpened Jesenská’s thesis, making it more “irdisch” (earthly). People are not able to live together because they are “unfertig(e)” (unfinished). In his comparison, he downgraded adults entering into marriages to students in primary school or to the crops ripped out before the harvest. This is a comparison that Jesenská certainly does not intend to make. Whereas Jesenská calls for reflection on expectations towards marriage and the loved person as well as one’s behavior in this relationship, Kafka plays ironically with this tendency to provide educational advice and seemingly “reveals” the real reason for these demands: unfinished education and unattained maturity of the individuals entering into the marriage. The radical immaturity of the people getting married manifests itself in the comparison with schooling “wie der ersten Volksschulklasse Algebra aufgeben” or with the immature plants “vor der Ernte aus dem Felde ausgerissen” (Kafka 1995, p. 312). The wording “in die Ehe zu schicken” (Kafka 1995, p. 312) enhances the childish condition and points to a superior power responsible for education and decisions.

As Max Brod has pointed to Kafka’s use of “sokratischer Ironie” (Socratic irony) (Brod 2016, p. 136), this dialogue-based form of critique defies unambiguity. It is not obvious where the affirmation is and where the reader finds contradiction and critique. Accordingly, my interpretation differs from that of Binder, who understands Kafka’s words verbatim (Binder 2013, pp. 400f. and 404). Manfred Engel’s statement about the interpretation of Kafka’s prose, that is, “Man kann Kafkas Texte nicht wörtlich verstehen”29 (Engel 2010, p. 411), also applies to this letter. I argue that Kafka’s remarks directly before the passage about marriage already contain an ironic and metaphorical tone: “duckt sich” (crouches down), “wer schon erschlagen ist, dehnt sich noch einmal im Traum” (he who is already beaten to death stretches himself once again in his dream). Therefore, it can be assumed that his further sentences are in keeping with this literary style. The discussion above is now followed by the image of the “Jewish angel”.

2.2. The Devil

Kafka’s parable of the “Jewish angel”, which I discuss in the following section, can be seen as a part of an intertextual exchange with Jesenská’s feuilleton. It illustrates how his personal experience in the relationship with Jesenská could have inspired his creative writing. In the same letter to Jesenská cited above, Kafka expressed the mélange of respect, admiration, and inability to actualize a life together as a couple in his marvelous parable about the angel and “Judentum” (January/February 1923 in Kafka 1995, pp. 309–13). This letter contains a longer narrative comment on Jesenská’s “Der Teufel am Herd”. In it, he applied the metaphor of a rescuer that he had already used in previous letters, for example, Jesenská as his rescuer (Kafka 1995, p. 165f. [31 July 1920] or he himself as her rescuer from her relationship with Pollak (Kafka 1995, p. 135 [21 July 1920]). In another example, while reconstructing his return travel from Vienna to Prague after their four-day encounter in Vienna, he had already created an image of Jesenská as an angel, as a “Jewish angel” (Kafka 1995, p. 87). In this previous humorous narration, written on 5 July 1920, he recounted how he had been stopped at the border because he had forgotten to obtain the Austrian visa in Vienna, describing also the border procedure and the risk of travel complications. Kafka composed the narrative around the secret intervention of an angel, resulting in the sudden decision of the border staff to let Kafka and a Romanian Jewish woman, also without a visa, to continue their journey. Due to her supernatural power, Jesenská achieved the release of the two Jewish persons, thus she was regarded as a celestial being with a high position, next to God, who rescues the Jews—a “Jewish angel” (Kafka 1995, p. 85f.).

Kafka picked up the same metaphor commenting on “Der Teufel am Herd” (Jesenská [1923] 2021b). He then proposed understanding her article itself as a marriage or—better yet—as a child of a marriage between Judaism30, which he considered very near to its own self-destruction, and the angel who, just at the right moment, grasped him with a strong hand. Kafka marvelously fabulated his letter narrative referring to experiences in his relationship with Jesenská. The angel, though “von der Ehe irdish getrübt[en]”31 (Kafka 1995, p. 310)—in other words, the angel who is no longer just angelic—loves Judaism too much and, in order to prevent it from perishing, marries it. He writes that a child was born to this couple.

Und nun steht es hier, das Kind dieser Ehe und sieht sich um und das erste was es sieht, ist der Teufel auf dem Herd, eine schreckliche Erscheinung und doch etwas was vor der Geburt dieses Kindes überhaupt nicht vorhanden war. Die Eltern kannten es jedenfalls nicht.

(Kafka 1995, p. 310)

(And now here it stands, the child of this marriage and looks around and the first thing it sees is the devil on the stove, a terrible apparition and yet something that was not there at all before this child was born. In any case, the parents weren’t familiar with it.)

The devil is described as a “terrible” (Kafka 1995, p. 310) but also new appearance; the parents had not been familiar with this devil. Judaism did not know it because it no longer possessed the ability “in teuflischen Dingen zu differenzieren”32, thus perceiving the whole world as the devil.33 At the same time, he wrote, it was not clear what the angel shared with the devil, as long as the angel had not fallen (Kafka 1995, p. 310). The child, however, looked very precisely at the devil on the stove, and the fight between the parents, arguing about the right way of handling the devil, broke out in the child. Kafka inserted his rescue metaphor in the narrative showing the angel dragging Judaism upwards, where it should resist.34 Instead, Judaism fell, and the angel descended and picked it up again and again.

Immer wieder schleppt der Engel das Judentum in die Höhe, dorthin wo es Widerstand leisten soll und immer wieder fällt das Judentum zurück und der Engel muß mit zurück wenn er es nicht ganz versinken lassen will. Und keinem von beiden kann man einen Vorwurf machen, beide sind, wie sie sind, der jüdisch, der engelhaft.

(Kafka 1995, p. 310)

(Again and again the angel drags Judaism up to where it is supposed to resist and again and again Judaism falls back and the angel has to go back with it if he does not want it to sink completely. And neither of them can be blamed, both are as they are, the one Jewish, the one angelic.)

In the course of Kafka’s narration, the essence of the two protagonists began to change: The angel slowly forgot its celestial origin, and Judaism became overconfident. In Kafka’s scene, the parents discussed the problem of marital breakdown with each other, quoting some sentences from Jesenská’s article, slightly modified and presented by Kafka in the form of a dialogue between Judaism and the angel. Finally, the angel dropped Judaism and freed itself: “Jetzt endlich, endlich, lieber Himmel, stößt der Engel das Judentum zurück und befreit sich”35 (Kafka 1995, p. 312).

Kafka wrote this parable in Januar/Februar 1923, over two years after the end of his relationship with Jesenská and one year before his death in 1924 from tuberculosis.36 The imaginary child of this tragic relationship inherited the fight between the two perspectives: the one requiring an active, life-oriented commitment to the loved person, risking the disadvantages, and the other one, hesitating, searching for and losing the connection to real life, and losing power. However, there are more layers in this literary parable. In relation to the previous intensive exchange of their letters in 1920 (Kafka 1995), the roles seem to have reversed, and after their Vienna encounter, Kafka appeared committed to the relationship with Jesenská, whereas Jesenská could neither decide to live with Kafka nor was she ready to leave Ernst Pollak and dissolve the marriage with him (see also Capovilla 2004, pp. 27–29). Kafka grasped this shift—from the diffuse fear and anxiety felt by him before the encounter in Vienna to a more trusting and revelatory attitude37 in the relationship with Jesenská and the practically reverse development by Jesenská herself—as a kind of metamorphosis.38 This transformation of the angel’s essence was already revealed in his comment on the unclear relationship between the devil and the angel mentioned above. Thus, the parable expresses the impossibility of continuing a close relationship between a man (or this man) and a woman (or this woman) due to their complex and ambivalent structures. In the subsequent imaginary dispute in his parable39 between both protagonists on how to deal with the devil,40 which actually attempts to grasp the reason for the marital breakdown (or their relationship), the protagonists cannot arrive at a shared perspective, as Kafka and Jesenská are not able to return to the previous structure of their personal encounter in Vienna.41

The end of the parable might refer to Jesenská’s efforts to help Kafka overcome his fears42 (mainly referring to the encounter with her in Vienna), encouraging him “to resist”, an effort in which she was successful.43 However, in order to develop such a solution, to overcome the destructive fear, one needs to figure out the inner structure of a person. And this understanding weakened Jesenská’s devotion and strengthened her retreat from the imagined possibility of a shared life with Kafka (see citation from Jesenská’s letter to Brod, below, on her inner struggle and consideration of a shared life with Kafka and separation from Pollak; Kafka 1995, p. 371). In her letter to Max Brod (January/February 1921),44 Jesenská wrote the following:

Wäre ich damals mit ihm nach Prag gefahren, so wäre ich ihm die geblieben, die ich ihm war. Aber ich war mit beiden Füßen unendlich fest mit dieser Erde hier zusammengewachsen, ich war nicht imstande, meinen Mann zu verlassen […]. Dann ist dieser Kampf in mir zu deutlich sichtbar geworden.

(Jesenská [1921] 1995b, p. 371)

(If I had traveled to Prague with him then, I would have remained who I was to him. But I had both feet firmly planted on this earth, I was unable to leave my husband […]. Then this struggle has become too clearly visible in me.)

Nevertheless, the question arises as to why Kafka uses the Judaism metaphor in the parable. Kafka, who was particularly interested in human beings (see also Stach 2011, p. 134), places the problem of the incompatibility of two persons’ perspectives on the failure of their marriage in the context of the religious collective(s). Kafka, who wrote in 1914, “Was habe ich mit Juden gemeinsam?”45 (Kafka 2016b, p. 289 [8 January 1914]), interprets the marriage problems in 1923 in terms of Judaism. Jesenská’s affirmative attitude towards the Jews and his distancing himself (despite his enthusiasm) from Judaism as well as from any other collective body (see Stach 2011, p. 133f.) did not prevent him from depicting her as a Christian angel and himself or Ernst Pollak as a dependent Jew. In addition to the individual dimension, the anchoring in different religious–ethnic traditions, that is, the Christian–Czech and the Jewish–German, proves to be significant. They come very close to each other, but then, devilishly, they cannot merge and must ultimately return to their respective spheres.

Both literary pieces, Jesenská’s feuilleton article and Kafka’s letter parable, are masterpieces of their genres. They offer literary forms that emerge from the dialogue between the biographies and encounters of two persons who, searching for a common way of life and understanding, fail and transfer their experiences to literary works. In so doing, they fail not because of the differences in regard to humanistic values—both are empathetic,46 supportive, mindful, respectful, hearty, responsible, and as just and honest as possible. But they reach the limits where fear is at stake, be it anxiety in regard to sexuality or lacking sexuality or the ethical dilemma regarding sexuality with a married woman, or the fear of not being able to cope with the “weaknesses” of the other person, or simply the fear of not fulfilling one’s own other desires besides love. Having no confidence or trust in their shared future could explain the shift from the potential struggle in their future life together to the struggle depicted in the letters and, at the same time, the sublimated source of their literary creativity.

2.3. The Castle

One could see another reflection of Kafka’s experiences with Milena Jesenská in “Das Schloss” (The Castle). Though I will not use this section to complete a detailed analysis of “Das Schloss”, I use it as an example to demonstrate the intensity of their relationship. According to some scholars (Brod 1974; Binder 1976), Kafka’s relationship with Milena Jesenská served as the source of inspiration for the figure of Frieda in his novel, “Das Schloß”47 (The Castle) and the impossibility of the marriage between the two protagonists. This serves to provide further evidence of the likelihood that Kafka sublimated his experiences with Jesenská into prose. Frieda was very eager to gain K.’s affection; with ease, she showed him the way to abandon his hesitations and fears so that K. dared to transgress his experienced-based secure space and showed readiness to follow Frieda. Yet his commitment resulted in the opposite of the promised bond: Frieda began to withdraw from the close, shared space of the relationship, and her other bonds—particularly with Klamm—gained increasing significance.

Max Brod (1974, p. 191f.) perceived “Das Schloß” essentially as a literary deformation of Kafka’s relationship with Jesenská. In Brod’s interpretation of the novel, “[d]ie Parallele zwischen Roman und Erlebnis”48 (Brod 1974, p. 192) is particularly visible in several “Entsprechungen in der Wirklichkeit”49 (Brod 1974, p. 192). The protagonist Frieda endeavors to rescue K., like in Kafka’s parable. She does this with determination and at the same time with great ease. As soon as K. turns to her, “melden sich die früheren Bindungen, die die Frau beeinflussen (das “Schloß”, das Volkstum, die Gesellschaft, vor allem aber der geheimnisvolle Herr Klamm, in dem man ein übersteigertes und dämonisiertes Schreckbild des legalen Gatten zu sehen hat, von dem Milena innerlich nicht loskam), das erträumte Glück findet ein rasches Ende […]”50 (Brod 1974, p. 192).

Brod seems irritated by the deformation of the events in the novel. However, the literary figure of Frieda unfolds her own character. Frieda is not Milena, but Kafka’s experience of her and his experience of himself resulted in this literary, intricate, and intangible woman character. However, Frieda undergoes a metamorphosis in “Das Schloß”, similar to Milena Jesenská as seen by Kafka in their relationship. Peter-André Alt (2018) points out that “Metamorphosen bestimmen zahlreiche Figuren des Textes”51 (Alt 2018, p. 608), among others, Klamm and Barnabas. Frieda slips away as does K. and the castle52—both are not available for clear rationality—and precisely this inaccessibility of clear truths (which, for example, his father and his father’s generation represent) is Kafka’s great accomplishment.

As is well known, Kafka probed the deepest dimensions of the human soul without giving any instructions on how a human being can be a better human being or have a better life. Irony abounds in “In der Strafkolonie” (In the Penal Colony) (Kafka [1919] 2023b), for example, as the officer whose life’s work it is to torture people to death is in the end himself tortured to death in his machine. One cannot call this an act of justice; rather, it is an accidental turn of events, a sudden reversal of the situation. The protagonists are not in charge of their lives, they are at the mercy of forces they cannot control or an accidental situational development. Life happens to them in all its unpredictability. Why must Georg Bendemann in “Das Urteil” (The Judgment) (Kafka [1916] 2023a) drown himself after his father handed down his verdict? Why must the protagonist in “Der plötzliche Spaziergang” (The Sudden Walk) (Kafka [1912] 2022) change his mind and “trotz alledem”53 (Kafka [1912] 2022, p. 27) go out on the street when he was on his way to bed for the evening? Or why must the women in “Das Schloß” (The Castle) (Kafka [1926] 2012) be in bondage to their masters? There are no explanations for the protagonists’ behavior, but there are power relations at play that remain opaque to both protagonists and readers.

Brod, though, does not fail to distinguish between biographical experience and literary works (Brod 1974, p. 193), yet he rightly suggests the following: “daß erst durch die Bekanntschaft mit Milena all die in der Seele des Dichters präformierten Gefäße mit dem brausenden Inhalt erfüllt wurden, der ihn trunken machte und zur Inspiration des ‚Schloß‘-Romans hinriß”54 (Brod 1974, p. 193). Brod’s explicit reference to Jesenská in this context in addition to the close reading of Kafka’s parable supports my suggestion that Kafka drew inspiration from his experiences with Jesenská.

3. Jews, Czechs, Germans, and Others

In this section, I analyze how Kafka and Jesenská positioned themselves in relation to the oppressive and discriminatory political structures of the day in order to highlight the textual manifestation of their respective values. Again, this potential connection between these two authors has been not sufficiently explored in the scholarly literature on the Prague German Circle. This exploration draws on Kafka’s letters, Jesenská’s journalistic work, and her political activism. Both Max Brod and Franz Kafka were emotionally, intellectually, and practically engaged in contemporary debates about ethnicity, religion, and belonging. This was also the case with Milena Jesenská, who responded in her articles to the political events and the social and political situation of minority groups. These debates intensified with the radicalization of the political situation and social climate. Whether they wanted to be or not, each was sucked into unequal power relations, such as between the ethnic and religious majority and minority in their society, and this was against the backdrop of increasing nationalism and antisemitism in the Czech Republic and the rise of National Socialism in Germany and fascism in Austria. In the metaphoric passages cited above, Kafka clearly applied the collective term “Judaism” to himself, revealing a growing attraction to Judaism. He understood himself to be a subject belonging to Western Jews. However, in this social group, he also felt a distinction from others (Kafka 1995, p. 294 [November 1920]), and in contrast to his father, an assimilated Jewish Prague merchant, he was drawn to Eastern Judaism:

[…] wenn man mir freigestellt hätte, ich könnte sein was ich will, dann hätte ich ein kleiner ostjüdischer Junge sein wollen, im Winkel des Saales, ohne eine Spur von Sorgen […].

(Kafka 1995, p. 258)

([…] If I had been given the freedom to be whatever I wanted, I would have wanted to be a little East Jewish boy, in the corner of the hall, without a trace of worry […].)

Under Brod’s influence, Kafka’s interest in Jewish culture and religion grew. Already during his relationship with Felice Bauer, he began learning Hebrew and even considered immigrating to Palestine with her. Still, as Stach (2011, pp. 133–35) emphasizes, Kafka was not an individual who was absorbed into the collective, the one for whom a community, a people, represented a fixed identification factor, like Zionism for Max Brod. Antisemitism, however, forced him, like many other Jews in the new state of Czechoslovakia, to reflect on his Jewish identity and to observe the collective position of Jews in society. The political climate in the 1920s was gradually becoming dangerous, reinforced by the developments in neighboring countries. As a reminder, Hitler (who was six years younger than Kafka and seven years older than Jesenská) became chairman of the NSDAP55 in 1921. Although Hitler’s 1923 coup attempt failed, the social and political instability in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia (as in other European states) fueled the growing antisemitic sentiment. Kafka made several observations about the socio-political position imposed on him as a Jew in Czech society and in Prague. He also witnessed the plight of the Russian Jews gathered at the Jewish Town Hall in Prague, awaiting their visas to immigrate to the U.S. (Kafka 1995, p. 257f. [7 September 1920]).

Jesenská was involved in this struggle between the Czech majority and the Jews. Personally, she defended (1917/1918) her relationship with the Jewish Ernst Pollak against her father’s objections56, and after her release from the psychiatric clinic, where she had been brought by her father because of her resistant and unstable behavior, she married Pollak in 1918. Kafka commented on Jesenský’s nationalistic and antisemitic attitudes in a letter to Milena Jesenská on 4 August 1920:

Natürlich, daran ist kein Zweifel, zwischen Deinem Mann und mir ist vor Deinem Vater gar kein Unterschied, für den Europäer haben wir das gleiche Negergesicht […].

(Kafka 1995, p. 182)

(Of course, there’s no doubt about it, there’s no difference between your husband and me in front of your father, for the Europeans we have the same Negro face […].)

In the autumn of 1920, antisemitic riots took place in the streets of Prague. It seems that Jesenská attempted to increase the presence of topics focusing on Jewish issues in Tribuna. As can be seen from Kafka’s letter dated 7 September 1920, she asked him to persuade Brod to write “etwas Jüdisches” (something Jewish) (Kafka 1995, p. 257) for Tribuna, but, due to the political profile of the journal57, he was not willing to do this (Kafka 1995, pp. 254, 256 [6 September 1920]).

In his letter to Jesenská in November 1920, Kafka commented on the social position of the Jews after the “hunt for Jews” in the Eisengasse in Prague:

[…] Und am Ende stößt er noch in der Eisengasse auf einen Volkshaufen, welcher auf Juden Jagd macht.

(Kafka 1995, p. 295)

([…] And in the end he comes across a mob hunting Jews in the Eisengasse.)

And mid-November 1920 he wrote the following:

Die ganzen Nachmittage bin ich jetzt auf den Gassen und bade im Judenhaß. “Prašivé plemeno” habe ich jetzt einmal die Juden nennen hören. Ist das nicht das Selbstverständliche, daß man von dort weggeht, wo man so gehaßt wird (Zionismus oder Volksgefühl ist dafür gar nicht nötig)? Das Heldentum, das darin besteht doch zu bleiben, ist jenes der Schaben, die auch nicht aus dem Badezimmer auszurotten sind.

(Kafka 1995, p. 288)

(All afternoons now I have been on the streets, bathing in Jew hatred. “Prašivé plemeno”58 I once heard people call the Jews. Isn’t that the obvious, to leave the place where you are so hated (Zionism or national sentiment is not necessary)? The heroism that consists of staying after all is that of the cockroaches that cannot be eradicated from the bathroom.)

Despite his interest in Hasidism, it is ultimately not his identification with Zionism that led Kafka to contemplate emigration. Instead, he also gives expression to his self-destructive, half-joking fantasies59, referring to the hatred of the Jews as a collective, including Pollak and himself, certainly frustrated about Jesenská’s continuation of her destructive marriage to Pollak:

[…] eher könnte ich Dir den Vorwurf machen, daß Du von den Juden die Du kennst (mich eingeschlossen)—es gibt andere!—eine viel zu gute Meinung hast, manchmal möchte ich sie eben als Juden (mich eingeschlossen) alle etwa in die Schublade des Wäschekastens dort stopfen, dann warten, dann die Schublade ein wenig herausziehn, um nachzusehn, ob sie schon alle erstickt sind, wenn nicht, die Lade wieder hineinschieben und es so fortsetzen bis zum Ende.

(Kafka 1995, p. 61 [13 June 1920])

([…] I could rather reproach you for having a much too good opinion of the Jews you know (including myself)—there are others!—sometimes I would like to stuff them all as Jews (myself included) into the drawer of the laundry box, then wait, then pull the drawer out a little to see if they have all suffocated, if not, push the drawer back in and continue like this until the end.)

From today’s perspective, Kafka’s words could be read as a terrible prophecy, foreshadowing the most catastrophic chapter in modern European history, the Shoah. As Reiner Stach (2011, pp. 124–27) discusses, Kafka, despite his interest in and emotional connection with Eastern Judaism, maintained a critical relationship with the authoritarian traditions of Hasidism. Such violent fantasies are frightening. Can they be understood? Perhaps they can be explained in part. Kafka repeatedly gave voice to violent fantasies in his writing, for example, in “In der Strafkolonie” or in his letters to Jesenská, where the fantasies relate to himself. Furthermore, it can be assumed that the omnipresent antisemitism in his environment ultimately left its mark on all individuals in one form or another, even if the ways in which they internalized it and where they opposed it are individual. Stach (2011, p. 369)60 also references an antisemitic statement made by Jesenská in a conversation with Max Brod, as later recounted by Brod.

The fact is, however, that with the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, after the Munich Treaty (1938), Jesenská organized together with German student, Joachim Graf von Zedtwitz, the rescue actions for prominent persons in Prague, mostly from cultural and media circles or the business sector. These actions enabled both Czechs and Jews to leave Prague and the Protectorate, crossing the country border into Poland.61 Among the rescued persons were Rudolf Keller, the editor of the famous newspaper Prager Tagblatt62 (on R. Keller, see Brod [1957] 2014), Julius Hollosch, the chief editor of the Prager Mittag63, a Jewish friend of Zedtwitz, Willi Kraus, further Rabel, the Jewish factory owner, and Walter Tschuppik, the publisher of the Prager Montag, as well as Anna Petschek, the niece of the Prague banker, Petschek, with her child (cf. Darowska 2012, pp. 373–78, see also there citations from unpublished interviews with Zedtwitz 2000 and Jirásková 2000).

By transcending the specific timeframe of Kafka and Jesenská’s relationship, I argue that one can gain via his comments, deeper insight into Jesenská’s individual development as well as her later activities and journalistic work after Kafka’s death in 1924 as if Kafka’s prescience about the political situation could have given him deeper insight into Jesenská’s humanity. While this claim remains speculative, by 1939, Jesenská had demonstrated exceptional clarity and courage in her political actions. She transgressed a natural impulse for self-protection and became, in fact, “a rescuer” for Jews and Czechs, fulfilling Kafka’s earlier description of her. Her clear political stance for a peaceful coexistence between Czechs, Jews, and Germans (including Czech Jews and German Jews) and her fight against antisemitic attitudes were already evident during her relationships with Ernst Pollak and Franz Kafka. Thus, Kafka’s metaphor of the “Jewish angel” rescuing the Jews likely referred, most probably, both to her personal relationships as well as her personal convictions. This political dimension intensified in the politically tense situation on the eve of the Second World War and afterward, in which Jesenská’s commitment was decisive in terms of rescuing the lives of others. She helped her Jewish ex-husband, Ernst Pollak, to emigrate, by providing him with a confirmation of his contract as a reporter for the cultural journal Přítomnost, where she worked (Jirásková 1996; Wagnerová 1995). She also opposed, as mentioned above, the Nazi regime with her underground activities as a journalist at the (underground) journal V boj (In den Kampf) (Jirásková 1996). Even after her deportation to Ravensbrück, despite the inhumanity of this environment, the absolute lack of freedom, and the unrestrained violence, she maintained a standard of human dignity and her ability to contradict and help, even under the conditions of absolute brutality (Buber-Neumann 1996; Darowska 2012). As far as possible, Jesenská’s actions remained congruent with her values, values which she articulated in her articles written during the particularly turbulent 1930s. This alignment of her actions with her values does not exclude moments of ambivalence and doubt.

Throughout this turbulent time, that is, from 1937 to 1939, Jesenská regularly displayed “lightning-like” thinking in her political analyses and commentaries on the dramatic developments in Europe, Czechoslovakia, the German Reich, and Austria. Perfectly researched and well thought out, most of her analyses hold up even today, and I mention a few now as examples. My focus is on the interplay between ethnic, religious, and political groups in the context of political events—the most strikingly unifying social dimension that emerged in the relationship between Kafka and Jesenská. Again and again, she called for solidarity with non-Nazi Germans in the Sudetenland and with the German refugees from Nazi Germany in Prague. Her appeal to the subjective responsibility of each human being (e.g., in “Lynchjustiz in Europa” (Lynching Justice in Europe) in Přítomnost [30 March 1938], (Jesenská [1938] 2021f, p. 263) beyond the political decisions of the European governments, was something she had also internalized. She did not avail herself of the opportunity to emigrate; instead, she remained and sought to mobilize society with her journalism.

The fate of the Jews was one of the central issues in her writing during this period. In her article “Es wird keinen Anschluß geben (II)” (There will be no annexation (II)), published on 1 June 1938, in Přítomnost, Jesenská described the situation of the non-Nazi versus Nazi Germans in the Sudetenland border region, that is, the former consisting mostly of social democrats and the later of the “Henlein Germans”. Whereas the social democrats—both men and women—were isolated, stigmatized, and insulted, their children at schools even being incited against them, the Henlein Germans (the supporters or members of the Nazi party) were in the majority and enjoyed privileges in terms of jobs, positions, status, and overall life conditions. Moreover, she also drew attention to the situation of the Jews, of whom there were not many in the North, but who suffered tremendously, particularly under antisemitism and the accompanying isolation (Jesenská [1938] 1996c, p. 190f.).

In her article “Hunderttausende auf der Suche nach Niemandsland” (Hundreds of thousands in search of no man’s land) (published on 27 July 1938), Jesenská reports on the Jewish refugees from Austria. She describes how refugees without documents wander from border to border, pushed back by the border security guards, or stopped on the streets of Prague. But the refugees without valid documents were not allowed to enter Austria and, as they were not allowed to stay in Czechoslovakia, they were again confronted with pushbacks. She wrote about one person who had been chased away from various borders sixteen times. Jesenská was appalled that many workers in Vienna were indifferent to the fate of the Jews. She perceived this as proof that “der Hass auf die Juden auch in den Besten schlummert und dass nichts so leicht ist, wie ihn zu wecken.”64 (Jesenská [1938] 2021d, p. 302).

With their high standards of research and analysis, Jesenská’s articles were clearly intended to contribute to the education of civil society. She attempted to lay bare complex interrelationships, which were certainly not obvious to all readers. For example, she explored the reasons behind the significant achievements such as high social positions held by Jewish people, namely a striving for emancipation achievable through education and prestigious professions as well as emancipation from the state power through careers in business. She pointed out the superficial and erroneous association between modern capitalism and the “‘Werk der Juden’” (work of the Jews) and its misuse (Jesenská [1938] 2021d, p. 303 [27 July 1938]).

Jesenská also referred to Zionism without explicitly using this word; however, she did not offer it as a solution for so many human beings in this disastrous situation. It was more than understandable that the Jews needed shelter and protection. Still, she was skeptical about the Palestine solution due to the impossibility of providing refuge for the global Jewish population of 15 million (Jesenská [1938] 2021d, p. 313 [27 July 1938]). One year later, Max Brod fortunately escaped to Palestine on the last possible train out of Prague.

The following words, written by Jesenská in 1938, clearly anticipate the coming times. She wrote in Přítomnost on 27 July 1938 the following:

Es scheint, als gäbe es für die Wiener Juden nur noch einen einzigen Weg: vom Westbahnhof nach Dachau. Jede Woche steht in den frühen Morgenstunden ein Zug bereit, der Wiener Juden ins Konzentrationslager bringt. […] Allerdings: Dieses Schicksal trifft nicht nur Juden, auch deutsche Arier, die dem Regime unbequem sind. Und ebenso wenig beneidenswert ist das Schicksal nichtdeutscher Arier. Die Verhaftungen in den vergangenen Tagen betrafen zum Beispiel–Tschechien in Wien.

(Jesenská [1938] 2021d, p. 312f.)

(It seems as if there is only one way left for the Viennese Jews: from the Westbahnhof to Dachau. Every week in the early hours of the morning, a train is ready to take Viennese Jews to the concentration camp. […] However: this fate does not only affect Jews, but also German Aryans who are inconvenient to the regime. And the fate of non-German Aryans is equally unenviable. Affected by the arrests in the past few days, for example, were—Czechs in Vienna.)

At the same time, her articles show her understanding of the collective mistakes, group interests, and an insight into the limits of her own power. While Jesenská wrote these articles, the machinery of the persecution of the Jews, as well as the persecution of all individuals and groups who resisted was already in motion. Jesenská described the situation of the deprivation and persecution of Austrian Jews of that time clearly as singular in its assault on human dignity, applying the term “das kalte Pogrom” (cold pogrom) (Jesenská [1938] 2021d, p. 306) in the sense that, while they were still alive, the Jews were deprived of all human dignity.

In these political analyses and commentaries, Jesenská’s language is empathetic, urgent, and compelling. Her articles portray the dramatic political situation through close-up depictions of individuals or groups, giving the political issues a human face. Much like her feuilletons written during her time in Vienna, her descriptions are rich in details, e.g.,

Acht Waggons, Mann an Mann. Sie sitzen nebeneinander, Schulter an Schulter, den Kopf zurückgelehnt, die Hände reglos im Schoß, das Gesicht wie gemeißelt.

(Jesenská [1938] 2021d, p. 312)

(Eight wagons, man to man. They sit side by side, shoulder to shoulder, their heads thrown back, their hands motionless in their laps, their faces carved in stone.)

She again employs repetitions, yet her texts are more thoughtful, with a slower and quieter rhythm. The contrasting images she creates are radical, e.g.,

Einige Menschen sind viel zu müde und wollen einfach nicht weiter. Ich denke, es gibt viele Juden, die gar nicht so sehr die Schläge fürchten wie die Demütigungen (…). Sie sterben freiwillig. (…) Allein in Wien sind 8000 Seelen aus dem Leben geschieden. (…) In der Praterstraße hat sich ein jüdischer Kaufmann mit seiner Frau, dem Sohn, der Schwiegertochter und dem fünfjährigen Enkel das Leben genommen. Am nächsten Tag haben SS-Männer an das geschlossene Geschäft ein Schild gehängt: Zur Nachahmung dringend empfohlen!

(Jesenská [1938] 2021d, p. 312)

(Some people are far too tired and just don’t want to go on. I think there are many Jews who don’t fear the beatings as much as the humiliation (…). They die voluntarily. (…) In Vienna alone 8000 souls have died. (…) In Praterstrasse, a Jewish merchant committed suicide with his wife, son, daughter-in-law, and five-year-old grandson. The next day SS men hung a sign on the closed shop: Strongly recommended for imitation!)

Again, as in the early stages of her journalistic work, Jesenská focuses on situations from everyday life, whether in the city (Vienna or Prague), the street, the railway station, or in a specific region (Sudetenland, border region). And again, the subject of her writing remains the tragic fate of ordinary human beings, embedded in the broader political context. Thus, the political is itself a strong focus, and her work is filled with her sharp and clear analyses, critiques, and urgent appeals. Her narrations unveil the extremely narrow space for agency and helplessness in the face of arbitrary violence, while also exposing unimaginable immorality in the context of the totality of power. Central in Jesenská’s writing is that, even in this situation of extremely restricted agency, Jews can regain their final potentiality to act: They commit suicide and maintain their human dignity. Alena Wagnerová convincingly describes Jesenská’s writing methods as “ein scharfer, kritischer, aber mitfühlender Blick, genaue Beobachtung, Unmittelbarkeit im Erfassen des Themas, Spontaneität der Wahrnehmung verbunden mit der Liebe zu den Menschen, die aber ohne Illusionen und Idealisierung auskam”65 (Wagnerová 2021, p. 16).

Returning to the relationship between Kafka and Jesenská, it cannot be determined precisely whether, and if so, to what extent their relationship influenced Jesenská’s active stance on thematizing and condemning antisemitism in her journalistic work; thus, this fascinating intertextual claim must remain somewhat speculative and open to further research. This assertion applies also to the relationship between Jesenská and Pollak. From a biographical research perspective, several factors were constitutive for her interest in political issues: her early political socialization (shaped largely by her father’s Czech patriotism but also her rebellion against him), her simultaneous entry into the literary circles and engagement with the Jewish literary scene, as well as her empathy, reflected in the wide range of social issues she addressed in her articles. Additionally, Jesenská’s politicization was shaped by the broader political developments in Europe as well as through her professional position (1937–1939) as an editor of an influential cultural and political journal Přítomnost (Darowska 2012). Her literary connection with Kafka was one of mutual recognition and support—an invaluable experience for a woman in the early stages of her journalistic career in the 1920s—and for Kafka, a young author still relatively unknown, certainly invigorating. The personal relationship and reciprocal literary recognition between Kafka and Jesenská, despite differing approaches to societal power structures, can perhaps be understood as an attempt at an underlying normalization of Jewish–Czech relations, which were fraught with challenges. Jesenská’s question in one of her letters to Kafka in the early stage of their relationship, repeated by Kafka in his letter to her from Merano in addition to his comment on it, reflects the interweaving of the two individuals within the harsh social reality:

“Sie fragen mich ob ich Jude bin, vielleicht ist das nur Scherz, vielleicht fragen Sie nur ob ich zu jenem ängstlichen Judentum gehöre, jedenfalls können Sie als Pragerin in dieser Hinsicht nicht so harmlos sein wie etwa Mathilde66, Heines Frau.”

(Kafka 1995, p. 24 [30 May 1920]).

(You ask me if I’m Jewish, maybe it is only a joke, maybe you’re just asking if I belong to that fearful form of Judaism, but in any case, as a native of Prague, you can’t be as naïve in this respect as, say, Mathilde, Heine’s wife.)

Kafka also recognized Jesenská’s attitude toward Jews in this initial period of their relationship through her past decisions—her break with her father and insistence on marrying Pollak (and the move to Vienna):

“Jedenfalls scheinen Sie keine Angst vor dem Judentum zu haben. Das ist auf das letzte oder vorletzte Judentum unserer Städte bezogen etwas Heldenhaftes und—alle Scherze weit weg!—wenn ein reines Mädchen zu Ihren Verwandten sagt: ‚Laßt mich‘ und dorthin auszieht, dann ist es mehr als der Auszug der Jungfrau von Orleans aus ihrem Dorfe.”

(Kafka 1995, p. 25 [30 May 1920])

(In any case, you do not seem to be afraid of Judaism. This is something heroic in relation to the waning Jewish presence in our cities and—all jokes aside!—when a pure girl says to her relatives: ‘Let me go’ and moves away, it is more than the Maid of Orleans leaving her village.)

Thus, antisemitism was a recurring theme in Kafka’s and Jesenská’s correspondence and formed a political dimension of their exchange. Jesenská was directly confronted with Kafka’s deeply personal accounts of antisemitism in Czech society. This experience of antisemitism by a close personal friend and, above that, a person who Jesenská admired for his moral integrity, certainly had a positive effect on her already strong opposition to antisemitism.

4. This (In)Human World

By the time Jesenská published her articles in Přítomnost, Franz Kafka had been dead for well more than a decade. Later, his sisters Gabriele Hermannová (née Kafka), Valerie Pollaková (née Kafka), and Ottilie Davidová (née Kafka) were murdered in Nazi concentration camps. With all her knowledge and the strength of her judgment, Jesenská attempted to use her position and power in society to combat the development of the increasingly oppressive political and social situation. In her writings, she propagated a devotion to seemingly no longer modern universal human values in an increasingly disoriented world, in which millions of people swore their allegiance to a dictator committing horrific crimes against humanity. More importantly, perhaps, is the contention that the value system to which Jesenská adhered was not a sudden development. Rather, it was a development evident in previous experiences, some of which she shared with Kafka.

Franz Kafka, the central figure of the narrow Prague Circle, was a significant person in Jesenská’s life. He himself experienced with Jesenská a deep emotional connection, and an interesting but also painful exchange that inspired some of his most poetic letters as well as literary pieces, as discussed above. As evidenced in quotations gathered for this article, they both expressed directly or indirectly their moral position in reference to humanistic values. As we have seen in their texts, freedom was of extreme importance to both of them, even though they both experienced dependent relationships. However, Kafka was more concerned with the prevention of freedom—specifically, fear. He made the constraints that severely limited his own liberation into the subject of shared reflection. Jesenská admired Kafka’s moral integrity, viewing it as exceptional and perfect. At the same time, she was aware that these moral standards made him unable to live in the real world. She wrote to Max Brod (presumably at the end of 1920):

Und dabei gibt es auf der ganzen Welt keinen zweiten Menschen, der seine ungeheuere Kraft hätte: diese absolute unumstößliche Notwendigkeit zur Vollkommenheit hin, zur Reinheit und zur Wahrheit67

(Brod 1974, p. 204).

(And yet there is no other person in the whole world who has his immense power: this absolute, irrefutable compulsion for perfection, purity, and truth.)

Kafka, in turn, admired Jesenská’s decisiveness and courage. As demonstrated above, these traits were most apparent at a later stage in her life, between the late 1930s and her death in 1944, which does not mean that ambivalence and fear were not also involved. However, courage reveals itself in each of these two human beings in different ways. Acting and taking risks was a constant red thread throughout Jesenská’s life, despite periods of stagnation. Kafka’s courage was manifest in his almost unprecedented ability to look at human beings and to depict the living conditions that they create in deeply complex ways. Just as Kafka recognized Jesenská’s radicalism in her judgment, Jesenská recognized Kafka’s radicalism and uncompromising stance in his ethical demands and in his perception of the world. On 6 June 1924, Jesenská wrote an obituary for Kafka (published in Národní listy), characterizing him as someone who has a “fast übernatürlich feines Sensorium”68 and an “erschreckend kompromisslose intellektuelle Verfeinerung”69 (Jesenská [1924] 2021c, p. 132). She wrote the following:

Er kannte die Welt in tiefer, außergewöhnlicher Weise, und er selbst war eine außergewöhnliche und tiefe Welt.

(Jesenská [1924] 2021c, p. 134)

(He knew the world in a deep, extraordinary way, and he himself was an extraordinary and deep world.)

Both Kafka and Jesenská acted in relation to the hierarchical structures of power in their immediate environment, in society, and in the world. Just as Franz Kafka was able to see these complex power structures and the human beings trapped within them, Jesenská was able to actively perform in order to fight back. She pursued freedom both individually and collectively, and here, in the form of political engagement. Certainly, the fact that Ferdinand Peroutka offered her a position at the prestigious journal Přítomnost provided her the opportunity to wield a certain amount of social power. She shared her value of freedom and the commitment to human dignity with the public in her writing and in her resistance activities, which ultimately cost Milena Jesenská her life.

Jesenská and Kafka admired each other for their respective literary work as well. Jesenská recognized Kafka’s literary achievements, which motivated her to translate his prose. In her obituary for Kafka, she offered high praise for his prose:

Seine Bücher gehören zu den bedeutendsten der jungen deutschen Literatur; in ihnen ist der Kampf der heutigen Weltgeneration, freilich ohne ein tendenziöses Wort. Sie sind wahr, nackt und schmerzhaft, und zwar so, dass sie auch da, wo sie sich symbolisch ausdrücken, geradezu naturalistisch sind.

(Jesenská [1924] 2021c, p. 134) [Národní listy, 6 June 1924]

(His books are among the most important of the young German literature; in them is the struggle of today’s world generation, admittedly without a tendentious word. They are true, naked, and painful, in such a way that even where they express themselves symbolically, they are almost naturalistic.)

Jesenská’s perception of Kafka’s prose as “geradezu naturalistisch” might be understood as her recognition of the deep “truth” about the human world, behind his calm observations and sparingly applied means. For his part, Kafka admired Jesenská’s writing style, appreciating her sharp analytic approach and expressiveness. She used exaggeration and embellishment to bring out the comical (see Darowska 2025), being much more explicit in her expression than Kafka, who used subtle irony (see above). She used repetitions of words and phrases, creating a characteristic rhythm and dynamism in her writing (cf. also Darowska 2025), whereas repetitions in Kafka’s work are composed of similar but distinct scenes, sliding into each other. Jesenská’s metaphor of “Politik” (the political), which “hat sich […] unters Dach der kleinen Leute gedrängt” and “an den Tischen […] niedergelassen70” (Jesenská [1938] 2021f, p. 257), like a layer of the air, might be seen as analogous to Kafka’s image of the devil on the stove. Thus, for both Jesenská and Kafka, their written works reflect their experience and their responses to the real world with its social and moral questions. For example, what does it mean for a woman and a man to live together? How does one deal with conventional norms, with prejudices (e.g., antisemitism), collective identities (e.g., religion, a people, and a nation), and with political power? Furthermore, the elements of their mutual inspiration and admiration are reflected in their work and can be traced on multiple levels, beginning with the most basic. On this question, I will let Max Brod have the last word:

Und man sollte sich bemühen, diese journalistischen Arbeiten Milenas aufzufinden, zu sammeln; denn Kafkas literarische Hochschätzung war gewiß nicht bloß in seiner Liebe, sondern auch in einer objektiven Wertung der schriftstellerischen Qualitäten Milenas gegründet.

(Brod 1974, p. 194)

(And one should endeavor to find and collect these journalistic works by Milena, for Kafka’s literary esteem was certainly not only based on his love, but also on an objective evaluation of Milena’s literary qualities.)