100th birthday of Franz Kafka - Germany / Federal Republic of Germany 1983 - 80 Pfennig

On July 3, 1983, the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Franz Kafka, the son of a Jewish merchant family, was celebrated in Prague. The narrator, who today is known well beyond the German-speaking world, received comparatively little attention during his lifetime. A small circle - to him belonged u. a. However, Kasimir Edschmid, Hermann Hesse, Kurt Tucholsky, Oskar Walzel, and Ernst Weiss already paid tribute to one or the other of Kafka's poems published before 1924: the volume Contemplation (1912), the tales Der Heizer (1913), The Transfiguration "(1915)," The Judgment "(1916)," In the Penal Colony "(1919) and the volume" A Country Doctor. Little Narratives «(1920). After the poet's death, his friend, Max Brod, gradually released the writings that had been left behind, but which the author intended to destroy. First of all, there were the novels "The Trial" (1925), "The Castle" (1926), and "America," actually "Der Verschollene" (1927), which remained fragmentary. In 1931, edited by Max Brod and Hans-Joachim Schoeps, the volume »When Building the Great Wall of China. Unprinted narratives and prose from the estate ". Brod's plan to hold a complete edition of Kafka's works was to become reality in the mid-thirties. The first four of these six volumes were published in 1935-36 by Schocken Verlag Berlin, the last two in 1937 by Heinrich Mercy in Prague. Only after the Second World War Kafka became known to a large readership by new editions of his stories and novels in Germany and Austria. The special interest in the personality of the author meant that since 1952 his letters and diaries were published. The autobiographical writings - as well as the entire narrative work - have meanwhile been translated into almost all languages. There are many explanations for the poet's powerful effect: One is that hardly any other author of our century could so vividly demonstrate the experience of man's fear and existential need in a time without faith as Kafka. The special postal stamp shows the towers of the gothic Tyn Church as the landmark of Prague on the right above the poet's name (from 1913). Kafka grew up in the shadow of these towers. In his shadow, in the Kinsky Palace, lay his high school; immediately adjacent to the nave was one of his parents' apartments; opposite the Tyn Church, on the Old Town Square, was a later apartment. Kafka studied law at Charles University in Prague and worked in Prague as an employee of the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute. Only since autumn 1917, after the outbreak of pulmonary tuberculosis, did he leave the city several times for longer stays in sanatoriums. Internally, the poet of his native town remained connected throughout his life, however much he tried to escape from it. Prague - as early as 1902 he uttered the idea - "can not let go ... this little mother has claws". (Text: University of Wuppertal, Linguistics and Literature - Professor Dr. Jürgen Born)