Walk with Kafka in Prague

The apartment of Max Brod’s parents

Skořepka (Shell Street) 1, Old Town

The house of Max Brod in the Skořepka StreetThe house of Max Brod in the Skořepka Street Until 1913, Kafka’s friend Max Brod lived together with his parents and his brother Otto in an apartment in the Old Town’s Shell Street. On August 13, 1912, Kafka visited Max Brod in order to select with his advice the texts for his first prose collection Meditation. On this evening a young woman from Berlin named Felice Bauer was present, with whom Kafka soon entered into conversation.

Kafka wrote in his diary: „Miss Felice Bauer. When I came to Brod’s apartment on 13/8 she was sitting at a table and seemed to me like a servant girl. And I wasn’t curious at all who she was, but accepted her presence there immediately. Bony empty face, that openly showed off its emptiness. Neck free. Blouse hastily thrown over her. Looked as if pretty homely dressed, although she was not at all homely, as became evident later on. … Almost broken-looking nose. Blonde, somewhat stiff unattractive hair, prominent chin. While I was sitting down, I took my first more precise look at her, as soon as I had sat down, I already had made an irrevocable judgment about her.“
Felice BauerFelice Bauer Kafka accompanied Felice to her hotel: „In the street I slipped immediately into one of my not very seldom semi-conscious states in which I can’t recognize anything else but my own uselessness. In the Pearl Street you asked me, perhaps to help me out of my embarrassing silence, where I lived and naturally you wanted to hear whether or not my path home coincided with the way to your hotel; but I, stupid simpleton, asked you in return whether you wanted to know my address, obviously with the presumption that you, hardly had you arrived in Berlin, would with ardent favor write to me straight off about the trip to Palestine and that you didn’t want to place yourself in the desperate position of not having my address right at your disposal.“ Then Felice drifted off into the elevator, although not without having whispered in Kafka’s ear: „Come to Berlin, leave everything and come! “

The couple exchanged hundreds of letters and postcards over next five years and they were engaged two times but never married. Felice was employed in a good position in the firm of Carl Lindström, which manufactured dictation machines and the so-called “Parlograph”. For his part Kafka complained continually that he was incapable to submit to the yoke of marriage, that he was frightened away by middle class conventions and that a marriage would be detrimental to his writing. While Felice later founded a family in a marriage with another man, Kafka stayed a bachelor until the end of his days.

 
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