Jewish writer and cultural philosopher, born in Prague, Czech Republic. A committed Zionist, he emigrated to Palestine in 1939. Previously he had worked as a civil servant and literary critic, championing the work of his friends Kafka and Werfel. His wide-ranging prose harks back to Austrian as well as Jewish traditions, and favoured subjects are history, religion, and love. His novels include the historical Tycho Brahes Weg zu Gott (1916), Die Frau, die nicht enttäuscht (1933), Der Meister (1952), and Armer Cicero (1955). Other works include the biographies H. Heine (1934) and Franz Kafka (1937), and essays Das Unzerstörbare (1968).
Brod was born in Prague, which was then part of the province of Bohemia in Austria-Hungary, and is now the capital of the Czech Republic.In 1939, as the Nazis took over Prague, Brod and his wife Elsa Taussig emigrated to what was then the Palestine, where he lived until his death December 20, 1968 in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Brod first met Kafka October 23, 1902, when both were students at the Charles University. Brod had given a lecture at the German students' hall on Arthur Schopenhauer. "He tended to participate in all the meetings, but up to then we had hardly considered each other," wrote Brod. (Max Brod: Über Franz Kafka, 45)
From then on, Brod and Kafka met frequently, often even daily, and remained close friends until Kafka's death. Kafka was a frequent guest in Brod's parents' house; there he met his future girlfriend and fiancée Felice Bauer, cousin of Brod's brother-in-law Max Friedmann. After graduating, Brod worked for a time for the post office. Brod, Kafka and Brod's close friend Felix Weltsch constituted the so-called "close Prague circle", "Der enge Prager Kreis".
Unlike Kafka, Brod rapidly became a prolific, successful published writer. This and other works made Brod a well-known personality in German-language literature. In 1913, together with Weltsch, he published the work Anschauung und Begriff which made him more famous in Berlin and also in Leipzig, where their publisher Kurt Wolff worked.
During Kafka's lifetime, Brod tried repeatedly to reassure Kafka in the latter's doubts about his own literary efforts and pushed him to publish his work. It is probably owing to Brod that Kafka began to keep a diary. Notwithstanding their inability to write in tandem—which stemmed from clashing literary and personal philosophies—they were able to publish one chapter from an attempted travelogue in May of 1912, for which Kafka wrote the introduction. Brod prodded his friend to complete the project several years later, but the effort was in vain. Even after Brod's 1913 marriage with Elsa Taussig, he and Kafka remained each other's closest friends and confidantes, assisting each other in problems and life crises.
On Kafka's death in 1924 Brod was the administrator of the estate and preserved his unpublished works from incineration despite what was stipulated in the will. ) Before even a line of Kafka's work had been published, Brod had already praised him as "the greatest poet of our time", ranking with Goethe or Tolstoy. Brod edited and later published Kafka's papers, beginning 1925–1927 with the publication of fragments of Kafka's novels and extending in the 1930s to 6 volumes of collected works; in 1937 Brod wrote the first biography of his friend: Franz Kafka, eine Biographie. He always resisted one-sided interpretation of Kafka, and hated the term "Kafkaesque", arguing that it presented a picture of the man and his work contradicted by his own intimate knowledge.
Brod's musical compositions are little known.
User Comments Add a comment…