| 1846 | Fyodor Dostoevsky publishes The Double, a work that will greatly influence Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis.” |
| 1850 | Charles Dickens publishes David Copperfield; Kafka will imitate the novel’s style in “The Stoker” (1913). |
| 1870 | Leopold von Sacher-Masoch publishes Venus in Furs, which lays the foundation for masochism and has an enor mous influence on Kafka. |
| 1883 | Franz Kafka is born on July 3 in Prague to Hermann and Julie (née Löwy) Kafka. The family is Jewish and middle class, and speaks both German and Czech. Franz is the eldest of his siblings; his two brothers die in infancy. |
| 1889 | Franz begins elementary school at Fleischmarkt. His sister Elli (Gabriele) is born. |
| 1890 | His sister Valli (Valerie) is born. |
| 1892 | Franz’s sister Ottla (Ottilie) is born; of all his family, Kafka is closest with Ottla, for whom he plays the role of pro tective older brother. |
| 1893 | Kafka begins his studies at the German gymnasium in Prague, where he forms a friendship with Oskar Pollak, who will become a respected art historian and introduce Kafka to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. He also meets Czech-born poet, playwright, and novelist Franz Werfel. |
| 1899 | Kafka reads the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Darwin, Knut Hamsun, Baruch Spinoza, and Jules Verne. He forms a friendship with Hugo Bergmann, who will be come a leading thinker in the Zionist movement. Kafka begins writing, although none of this early work survives. |
| 1900 | The Germans first test the zeppelin. |
| 1902 | Kafka meets writer and editor Max Brod at Brod’s lecture on the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Brod becomes Kafka’s most intimate friend and eventually his interpreter, translator, biographer, and posthumous pub lisher. They discuss the works of Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Hermann Hesse, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Thomas Mann, and August Strindberg. Kafka’s literary circle also includes dramatist Oskar Baum, existentialist and influential Jewish thinker Martin Buber, and philosopher Felix Weltsch. |
| 1903 | Thomas Mann publishes Tonio Kröger, a favorite of Kafka’s. |
| 1904 | Kafka begins writing the surreal story “Description of a Struggle,” his earliest surviving work. |
| 1906 | Kafka receives a doctorate in law from German-speaking Karl Ferdinand University. |
| 1907 | Kafka begins writing “Wedding Preparations in the Coun try,” a novel that he will abandon but that contains the germ of “The Metamorphosis”; both involve the transfor mation of a human character into a lowly, despised crea ture. |
| 1908 | Shunning the practice of law, Kafka secures a position at the semi-governmental Workmen’s Accident Insurance Administration, where he works until his retirement in 1922. |
| 1910 | Kafka begins to keep a regular diary, a decision that lends discipline and seriousness to his writing. The perform ances of a Yiddish theater group from Poland captivate and inspire him; he later adopts a dramatic structure for “The Metamorphosis,” dividing it into three parts, like acts of a play. |
| 1911 | By night Kafka does his own writing, and by day he com piles insurance manuals and policies. He develops a friendship with Yiddish actor Isak Löwy; Kafka’s father, without knowing Löwy, compares him to vermin, a meta phor that features heavily in Kafka’s fiction, especially “The Metamorphosis.” Hitherto indifferent to his parents’ religion, Kafka studies Jewish folklore and becomes fas cinated by his Jewish heritage, an appreciation that will increase throughout his life. Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Sym phony, Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), is performed for the first time. |
| 1912 | Kafka meets Felice Bauer, from Berlin, when she visits Max Brod’s family. An extensive correspondence ensues, in which Kafka attempts to at once woo Felice and keep her at arm’s length. He feverishly composes “The Judg ment” in a single September night; of all his literary ac complishments, Kafka finds this the most satisfying. Soon after, Kafka completes “The Stoker,” the story of a young German immigrant that later becomes the first chapter of his novel Amerika, and “The Metamorphosis,” his tale of a man literally and symbolically transformed into an insect. Thomas Mann publishes Death in Venice. |
| 1913 | “The Judgment” and “The Stoker” are published. The sec ond Balkan War begins. Kafka meets Felice’s friend Grete Bloch, with whom he corresponds, writing mostly about Felice. |
| 1914 | Franz and Felice are engaged, but within a month the engagement is broken. Archduke Ferdinand is assassi nated at Sarajevo, setting in motion events that culminate in World War I. After a two-year period of creative ste rility, Kafka writes the parable “In the Penal Colony,” followed by “Before the Law,” a sketch from his novel in progress, The Trial. |
| 1915 | “The Metamorphosis” is published. Kafka receives the prestigious Fontane Prize for “The Stoker.” |
| 1916 | He writes a series of stories that will be collected and published in the volume A Country Doctor (1919). |
| 1917 | Kafka begins learning Hebrew. He becomes engaged to Felice Bauer a second time; diagnosed with tuberculosis, he ends the relationship. Kafka takes a leave of absence from his job, and his diary entries cease. The Balfour Dec laration approves the establishment of a Jewish national state in Palestine. |
| 1918 | Kafka studies the metaphysical writings of Johann Wolf gang von Goethe, Søren Kierkegaard, Arthur Schopen hauer, and Leo Tolstoy, and continues his exploration of the Old Testament and Jewish folklore. He writes apho risms based in part of these studies. |
| 1919 | A Country Doctor is published, as is “In the Penal Colony.” In the wake of the Treaty of Versailles, the Nazi party is founded in Germany, as is the Fascist party in Italy. Kafka becomes engaged to Julie Wohryzek, the daughter of a worker in a synagogue. Kafka’s father objects on social grounds and convinces Kafka to break the en gagement. This action, more than any other, precipitates Kafka’s most autobiographical work, “Letter to His Fa ther.” |
| 1920 | Kafka meets the Czech writer Milena Jesenská-Pollak, with whom he becomes romantically involved. Milena translates several of Kafka’s works into Czech. She ends the affair in August. |
| 1921 | Kafka starts writing the stories that will be collected in the volume A Hunger Artist (1924), centered on the difficul ties an artist faces in coming to terms with human society. While seeking to restore his health at the Tatra Mountains sanatorium, Kafka meets Hungarian medical student Robert Klopstock, who becomes his friend and physician. |
| 1922 | The insurance agency grants Kafka’s request for early re tirement. |
| 1923 | Kafka meets Dora Diamant, a Jewish socialist twenty years his junior. He moves to Berlin with her, hoping to devote himself fully to writing. Kafka asks Dora’s father for her hand in marriage but is rejected based on a rabbi’s coun sel, perhaps because of his deteriorating health. |
| 1924 | A Hunger Artist is published. Kafka’s rapidly declining health and his lack of money force him to return to living with his parents, a humiliating experience for him. He dies on June 3 in an advanced stage of tuberculosis of the throat in a sanatorium in Kierling, near Vienna. His last words to Robert Klopstock are “Kill me, or you are a mur derer.” Before his death, Kafka asks Max Brod to destroy all of his unpublished manuscripts. |
| 1925 | Disregarding Kafka’s request, Brod begins publishing his friend’s work, starting with the first of Kafka’s three unfin ished novels, The Trial. |
| 1926 | Brod publishes The Castle, an account of the futile efforts of a man to be recognized by the authorities. |
| 1927 | Max Brod publishes Amerika, an immigrant’s adventures in a baffling new country. |
| 1933 | The Nazis ban Kafka’s work and hold public burnings of his books. |
| 1940 | Grete Bloch, who had met Kafka in 1913, claims to be the |
| 1942 | mother of his child, a boy who died at age six and about whom Kafka had known nothing. The Nazis remove Franz Kafka’s sisters Elli and Valli and their husbands to the Lodz ghetto in Poland, where they die. |
| 1943 | Kafka’s sister Ottla, because of her marriage to an “Aryan,” is exempt from Nazi deportation. Disdaining the prefer ential treatment, she divorces her husband and chooses to be led away; she ultimately is taken to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where she dies. |
| 1944 | Grete Bloch is beaten to death by a Nazi soldier. Milena Jesenská-Pollak dies at the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück, in Germany. |
| 1952 | Dora Diamant dies in London. |
| 1960 | Felice Bauer dies in America. |