Franz Kafka's Letters and Drawings Go Online After Legal Battle

The National Library of Israel has digitized and made publicly available a collection of approximately 120 drawings and over 200 letters by Franz Kafka, originally entrusted to his friend and biographer Max Brod. Brod defied Kafka's dying wish to destroy his writings, preserving them after Kafka's death in 1924. Fleeing Nazi-occupied Prague in 1939, Brod took the materials to Tel Aviv. Following Brod's death in 1968, a protracted international legal dispute erupted over the ownership of the documents, which were hidden in five locations, including a vault at UBS bank in Zurich. The Swiss court ruling allowed the library to recover the archive. Curator Stefan Litt revealed that among the recovered items were previously unknown drawings, including sketches of Kafka's mother and a self-portrait, as well as Kafka's blue notebook containing Hebrew exercises signed with his initial 'K'. One notebook entry from 1920 shows Kafka apologizing to his Hebrew teacher for mistakes, claiming he was 'already angry for both of us.' The collection is now fully accessible online for scholars and the public.