Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy

by Benjamin Balint

Overview

Winner of the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature

"Dramatic and illuminating…[R]aises momentous questions about nationality, religion, literature, and even the Holocaust." —Adam Kirsch, The Atlantic

When Franz Kafka died in 1924, his loyal friend Max Brod could not bring himself to fulfill Kafka’s last instruction: to burn his remaining manuscripts. Instead, Brod devoted his life to championing Kafka’s work, rescuing his legacy from both obscurity and physical destruction. Nearly a century later, an international legal battle erupted to determine which country could claim ownership: the Jewish state, where Kafka dreamed of living, or Germany, where Kafka’s three sisters perished in the Holocaust? Benjamin Balint offers a gripping account of the controversial trial in Israeli courts—brimming with dilemmas legal, ethical, and political—that determined the fate of Kafka’s manuscripts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393357387
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/08/2019
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	682,824
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Benjamin Balint is the author of Bruno Schulz and Kafka’s Last Trial, awarded the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and is coauthor of Jerusalem: City of the Book. A library fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, he regularly writes on culture for The Wall Street Journal, the Jewish Review of Books, and other publications.

Table of Contents

1 The Last Appeal 3

2 "Fanatical Veneration": The First to Fall under Kafka's Spell 16

3 The First Trial 32

4 Flirting with the Promised Land 49

5 First and Second Judgments 70

6 Last Son of the Diaspora: Kafka's Jewish Afterlife 85

7 The Last Ingathering: Kafka in Israel 101

8 Kafka's Last Wish, Brod's First Betrayal 121

9 Kafka's Creator 132

10 The Last Train: From Prague to Palestine 142

11 The Last Tightrope Dancer: Kafka in Germany 155

12 Laurel & Hardy 173

13 Brod's Last Love 189

14 The Last Heiress: Selling Kafka 202

15 The Last Judgment 209

Epilogue 221

Acknowledgments 231

Notes 233

Bibliography 255

Index 269

Editorial Reviews

"A tale pitting two Goliaths against one octogenarian David, untangled in exacting, riveting detail.… [A] must-read."

Slate - Rebecca Schuman

"Absorbing.… Balint elegantly intercuts courtroom scenes with episodes from Kafka’s biography and cultural afterlife. He brings out every paradox of a judicial process that tried to tie down this most ambivalent of authors, the ultimate ‘disaffiliated pariah,’ to a fixed identity.… Balint’s scrupulous and sardonic prose makes you love Kafka, and dread the law."

The Economist

"Fascinating and forensically scrupulous."

The Guardian - John Banville

"Thrilling and profound, Kafka’s Last Trial shines new light not only on the greatest writer of the twentieth century and the fate of his work, but also on the larger question of who owns art or has a right to claim guardianship of it. Benjamin Balint combines the sharp eye of the courtroom journalist with the keen meditations of a literary and cultural thinker, and his research and lively intelligence deliver insights on every page."

Nicole Krauss

"Superb.… Beautifully crafted, with just the right ratios of empirical-legal information, intellectual history, critical awareness of Kafka and his work, and wise reflection. It is obviously the product of admirably patient research and rare dedication to quality control."

Stanley A. Corngold

"Thoughtful and provocative."

The Wall Street Journal - Ruth Franklin

"A highly entertaining story of literary friendship, epic legal battles and cultural politics centered on one of the most enigmatic writers of the 20th century.… [A]n exquisitely human drama peopled with an eccentric cast of characters that beautifully evokes the early days of Israel, the sadness of the exiles, and the long shadow cast by the Holocaust."

Financial Times - Guy Chazan

[Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy] is an unusual hybrid: part courtroom procedural, part double portrait of Kafka and Brod, part account of the postwar construction of Israeli and German national identity. As with his previous book…Balint writes most naturally in the interrogative mode, preferring the probing of difficult questions to easy resolutions.

The New York Times Book Review - Lev Mendes

04/23/2018
Balint (Running Commentary), a research fellow at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, delivers a lively and balanced account of the international battle—fought in Israeli courts—for Franz Kafka’s manuscripts, letters, and diaries. Heard in 2016, the case involved three parties: the National Library of Israel, the German Literature Archive in Marbach, and Eva Hoffe, who inherited the documents from her mother. But the story begins much earlier, in 1924, when Kafka died of tuberculosis and his close friend, Max Brod, could not bring himself to follow Kafka’s last instructions to burn his remaining papers. Instead, Brod devoted most of his life to promoting Kafka’s legacy. When Brod, who fled to Palestine during WWII, died in Tel Aviv in 1968, Kafka’s papers passed to Brod’s secretary and confidante, Esther Hoffe, Eva’s mother. In addition to relating this background, Balint thoughtfully examines the arguments brought up at the trial: what Judaism meant to Kafka, who wrote in German, “steeped himself in German literature,” and wondered, in his diary, what he had in common with other Jews, yet discovered a love of Yiddish theater and Hebrew; Israel’s ambivalence to Kafka and diaspora culture; and the ways both Israel and Germany claimed Kafka’s legacy. Well-researched and insightful, this suspenseful work illuminates the complex relationship between literature, religion, culture, and nationality. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Though Benjamin Balint’s masterful hunt for Kafka’s rightful ownership begins as a local dispute in an Israeli family court, it soon thickens into modernity’s most bitterly contentious cultural conundrum. Who should inherit Franz Kafka? The woman into whose hands his manuscripts fortuitously fell? Germany, the nation that murdered his sisters but claims his spirit? Israel, asserting a sovereign yet intimate ancestral right? Searing questions of language, of personal bequest, of friendship, of biographical evidence, of national pride, of justice, of deceit and betrayal, even of metaphysical allegiance, burn through Balint’s scrupulous trackings of Kafka’s final standing before the law."

Cynthia Ozick

"Dramatic and illuminating....raises momentous questions about nationality, religion, literature, and even the Holocaust."

The Atlantic - Adam Kirsch

"A gifted cultural historian with a scholarly sensibility."

Lev Mendes

"Kafka’s Last Trial is a fascinating inquiry into—and meditation on—the nature of artistic genius and the proprietary claims any one individual or country has on the legacy of that genius. Benjamin Balint is both a superb investigative journalist and a gifted cultural critic. This is that rarest of books: a scholarly work that is also compulsively readable."

Daphne Merkin

08/01/2018
In this scholarly and deeply moving literary history, Balint (Van Leer Inst., Jerusalem; Running Commentary) details the controversial trials that sought to establish which person (Eva Hoffe) or entities in Germany and Israel had claim to the writings of Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Chapters alternate between recent court battles and the narrative history involving the relationship between Kafka and his closest friend Max Brod, who ignored the novelist's wish that his papers be burned after his death, instead having many of them published. Brod's own career as a writer, as well as his friendships (both literary and personal) are also closely examined. Eventually, an Israeli court ruled against the Hoffe family (matriarch Esther was Brod's longtime secretary) and determined that Kafka's archive be turned over to the National Library of Israel. Balint describes the reactions of everyone involved in the legal processes, further highlighting the impact of the court's decision on contemporary Kafka studies. VERDICT Highly recommended for anyone interested in literary controversies, legal maneuvering, and, of course, admirers of one of the 20th century's greatest writers.—Morris Hounion, New York City Coll. of Technology, Brooklyn

Library Journal

Listeners will find themselves in the middle of a trial as this audiobook begins. The court struggle over the fate of Franz Kafka's manuscripts and papers involved the German and Israeli governments. It becomes a springboard for author Benjamin Balint to consider Kafka's life and faith. Narrator Gregg Rizzo's deep, clear yet soft-spoken voice emphasizes the people involved as he juggles the story of the friendship between Kafka and Max Brod and the recent legal actions. Are there hints of Zionist thought in the universal stories Kafka wrote? Who gets to manage a cultural asset? Balint asks these questions, giving listeners something to think about as he outlines the life of the great writer. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

2018-06-18
The Kafkaesque story of who owns Franz Kafka's manuscripts.Journalist and translator Balint (Research Fellow/Van Leer Institute; Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine that Transformed the Jewish Left into the Neoconservative Right, 2010) seeks to explain to literature lovers the convoluted story of what happened to Kafka's manuscripts and papers after his death in 1924. The first chapter of this legal/literary history takes place in an Israeli court, where three parties, including 82-year-old Eva Hoffe, are fighting over some Kafka manuscripts. In order to better understand the complexities of the case, Balint provides the compelling backstory. It's famous knowledge that Max Brod, who had a "fanatical veneration" for his beloved friend, was ordered by Kafka to destroy all of his writings after he died: "Everything I leave behind…is to be burned unread and to the last page." Brod, however, "preferred to act as a self-appointed literary executor rather than as literary executioner." By doing so, he twice rescued Kafka's legacy, once from fire and once from "obscurity." As World War II was breaking out, Brod, a passionate Zionist, escaped from Prague to Palestine with a "bulky, cracked-leather suitcase stuffed with loose bundles and leaves of Kafka's manuscripts." Esther Hoffe served as Brod's secretary and close friend in Israel for more than two decades. When Brod died in 1968, he had already written a will in which he "gifted [her] all the Kafka manuscripts and letters in my possession." Assuming the materials were hers, she sold some over the years, including the original manuscript of The Trial, at public auction. When she died in 2007, she willed the manuscripts to her two daughters, Eva and Ruth. During a few trials after that, an Israeli court finally awarded—fair or not—the manuscripts to Jerusalem's National Library.A fascinating tale of literary friendship, loyalty, political power, and feckless law.

Kirkus Reviews