Prague Walking Tour - In the Footsteps of Franz Kafka

Hello everyone and welcome to the virtual tour of Franz Kafka's Prague with me, Valerie, a real Prague guy. Little disclaimer, this tour isn't going to be done chronologically, but we're going to link all the places that we're going to visit down below so you can follow along or create your own route. And we're starting here at the statue of Franz Kafka, which is standing on the border between the Old Town and the Jewish Quarter, with a street where Franz Kafka's family had one of their many temporary residences behind the statue. And let's look closer at the statue. So as you can see, the statue is an empty suit with a person sitting on top of it, and you might recognize this person because this is Franz Kafka himself. This statue was installed in 2003 and created by very talented artist sculptor Jaroslav Rona, and he drew the inspiration for the statue from one of the first ever stories Franz Kafka wrote called Description of a Struggle. And in that story he talks about a man who jumped on his acquaintance's back and rode him like a horse. Quite a bizarre thing, I know, but you're probably used to these sudden plot twists if you are a reader of Franz Kafka's books. What I find bizarre about the statue is the feet of Franz Kafka, because look at how shiny they are, how golden. It's because many people touch his feet. Sounds weird, but there's no hidden meaning behind it, and we also don't know how to find out who came up with it. But if you're that person by any chance, please let us know in the comments. And we'll continue in the meantime, because we have a lot to see today. Now we arrive to the place where the house where Franz Kafka was born used to stand. Used to because from the original house we only maybe have the baroque portal. Here he was born on the 3rd of July 1883, the oldest of the six kids in the family of Hermann and Julie Kafka. As I said, Kafka family moved quite a lot, especially in the first six years of Franz's life, and most of their houses did not survive till today. But on this one we at least have the memorial plaque dedicated to him, and this whole little square is named after Franz Kafka. But let's go to our next stop, which is not so far from here. We haven't even walked one minute and we already arrived to the house at the minute. This is a very famous renaissance house with a beautiful graffiti on it, and probably the first proper home of Franz Kafka, because this is where his family settled down for seven whole years, basically throughout his elementary school and secondary school. His father had a shop where he and his wife worked most days. In the evening they just preferred to chill and play cards, so they didn't pay attention to Franz Kafka much. His family relationships were very complicated, so we are not gonna get much into that in this video, but we will tell you this. His parents actually met not so far from here, in the house on the corner of Jelezna street. Just a stone throw away we have the house at the Three Kings, originally a gothic building with baroque facade. This is where Kafka lived throughout his high school and university years. He had his own room there, a narrow space with a bed, few decorations, and a table where he attempted writing his first stories. This is also where he had one of his first dates with a girl who worked just across the street in a clothing store. It was a pretty weird date, because she actually brought another guy there, but don't worry, they figured it out in the end. Another place on the Old Town Square that Franz Kafka would visit quite a lot was the beautiful baroque Goldskinski Palace. Franz Kafka would come here for two occasions. First of all, his German gymnasium, his high school was located here. He was in general a pretty good student, even though he wouldn't regard himself as such. In one letter, for example, he wrote that while he was preparing for the final exams at the gymnasium, he felt like he could fail them at any point and then, quote, surprise the rest of the world with his unprecedented incompetence, end of quote. Very self-critical. The second reason why he would visit this place quite a lot was because his family had their shop here, and you can visit it today, because today this whole building is part of the National Gallery, and they have their bookstore there. And you won't believe it, but there's another place on the Old Town Square where Franz Kafka used to live. It's the house on the corner of the Paris street, and to be more specific, the apartment where he lived is gone now, because this house was damaged during the Second World War, during the national uprising against Nazi Germany in 1945. So, if you look at the historical picture, the top floor is gone now, but this is where the apartment used to be located. Once Franz Kafka was visited there by his teacher of Hebrew, he brought him to the window, showed him the view of the Old Town Square from there, and famously said that this circle bounds his whole life. And he really lived everywhere around here. There are not so many photos of Franz Kafka that survive till today. This one seems to be real, and it was taken here on the Old Town Square, so if you're in Prague, you can participate in our Like Franz Kafka challenge and take a photo in the same exact pose as Franz Kafka and I did. Post it on Instagram, tag us there, Real Prague Guides, and we'll like your pictures, guys. Now we are at the house at the Golden Pike. This was a temporary residence of Franz Kafka. He only lived here for a couple of years towards the end of his life, and it was not his most favorite place, because his apartment wasn't soundproof, so he could actually hear all the noise from the street and couldn't concentrate on writing. Luckily, he and his sister Otla rented a teeny tiny house up there in the Prague Castle at the Golden Lane. It's the house number 22, the blue one, you might know it because if you type to the search bar Franz Kafka house, that's actually the first one that comes up. But it was not a place where he would live all the time, he would just come here towards the end of the day, have a little writing session, and leave back home to here at like midnight or even early in the morning. It was very peaceful, very quiet back then, it was not touristy at all. We arrived to the place of Franz Kafka's nightmares, his elementary school. His family insisted that every morning he's walked to the elementary school by their cook, who was a grumpy old lady that threatened Kafka that she would complain to his teacher about him misbehaving at home. In general, the school was pretty good, their staff was pretty multicultural, Czech, German, and Jewish, which actually was a reflection of Franz Kafka himself. We get that question quite a lot on tours. What was the nationality of Franz Kafka? It's pretty hard to explain, but I will try. Franz Kafka was born in Prague and lived here most of his life, so we could say that he was Czech. But his family was of Jewish heritage, they were Ashkenazi Jews, so they spoke Yiddish, which was highly influenced by German. And his father insisted that he received all of his formal education in German language, which was the vehicle of social mobility. Some people say though that Franz Kafka spoke German with Czech accent, which is weird, because he wrote that he wasn't fluent in Czech, which I don't believe because he studied it for eight years in high school. Ha, you see how complicated it was? I think you're more confused now than you were before. Now we're gonna visit the place where Franz Kafka spent a lot of his time, and believe it or not, it's not five minutes away from here, it's six minutes. Let's go. Here it is, Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia, a place where Franz Kafka worked for 14 years. Actually, back then it was pretty difficult for a Jewish person to find a job at a state-owned institution due to latent anti-Semitism, but Franz Kafka was lucky because he had an acquaintance that pulled some strings and he was able to get a job here. He proved to be a valuable worker, he was promoted many, many times, and even during the mass layoff of all German speakers when Czechoslovakia became independent in 1918 and all of them were replaced by Czech speakers, he was allowed to stay and work here. If you're wondering what his job was, he was representing the insurance at court, he was keeping correspondence, creating statistics, and taking care of the injury prevention. More specifically, he was looking at pretty grim stuff every day. Imagine, Workers' Accident Insurance Institute, it's people falling on the scaffolding, being crushed by heavy machinery in factories, so yeah. From time to time, Franz Kafka needed some breath of fresh air, some little break, so he would go for coffee or lunch somewhere nearby, and we will go there as well now. As a true Prager, Franz Kafka spent a lot of his time in coffee places, which were many all around the Old Town and the New Town of Prague. He went to Café Louvre, for example, you might have heard of it before, and to this one, Café Arco. It is a lesser known one, so we thought we could visit it today and show it to you. How was your pasta? It's super great, so great I can't even describe how great it is. A daily ritual for Franz Kafka would be meeting his best friend Max Broth in front of the powder gate, right after finishing their shifts at 2 p.m. Max Broth later wrote that Franz Kafka was late quite often, so he would hang out here, study the buildings, up until he would see his stall figure in a crowd, with one hand on his heart, sort of apologizing for not being on time. Short stop here, we're in front of the civil court, where Franz Kafka spent six months of his life working as a clerk, as part of his compulsory legal practice, and we actually haven't mentioned it yet, but he studied to be a lawyer. He studied in a law school in nowadays Charles University, which is very conveniently located on the opposite side of this square, so let's go check it out. Here we are in front of the Charles University, one of the oldest universities in Europe, founded in 14th century by King Charles IV. At the time of Franz Kafka's life, though, this university was split into German and Czech parts, so as you might remember, Franz Kafka preferred German language, so when he would come here for lectures, he would not actually enter through the main entrance here, because that's where the Czech students would go, he would go around the corner. So this is where the German students would enter the university from Żelazna street. Kafka settled for studying law, it was a safe career choice for him back then, a lot of Jewish people picked either law or medicine to study, but he also tried studying chemistry and attended lectures for art, philosophy, and history. But of course, his passion was writing. Many of you are familiar with the term Kafkaesque, having nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality. This term was used to describe Kafka's literature, but the actual building that contributed to Kafka's Kafkaesque-ness was this one. It was a former insurance company where he worked, called Ascursioni Generali, and it was a terrible place to work at, actually. He was working there just under a year, they had horrible conditions for their employees, a really long shift, only two weeks off every two years, and a very low salary. One of the few people who could appreciate Franz Kafka's literary genius during his lifetime lived in this house, her name was Milena Jasenska, and she was one of his lovers. They were introduced to each other by her fiancé. She came from a very well-respected Prague family, but always challenged the societal norms and traditions, so much so that her dad decided to lock her up in the insane asylum on the grounds of moral indecency. Back then, it could have been anything though. She ended up getting engaged to Ernst Pollack, moving to Vienna, and starting her career as a translator. She's the one who translated Kafka's The Stoker from German into Czech. They began a letter correspondence that eventually turned into an epistolary novel that Milena decided to publish. I think Franz Kafka would have been mortified. Imagine you die and somebody else publishes all of your Facebook conversations. But it's thanks to Milena that we know so much about France today, and it's also thanks to her that we could make this video today. And we arrive to the second statue of Franz Kafka, or to be precise to the statue of his head, because it's a rotating head of Franz Kafka. It was created by David Czerny, it's a kinetic statue, it has 42 layers that rotate every first quarter of an hour. And I think if Franz Kafka would find out that there is a statue like that dedicated to him in Prague, he would be blown away. As you could probably tell from our today's video, Franz Kafka really spent a big chunk of his life only on this side of the river. There are a few places that are connected to him outside of the Old Town and the New Town, like the Golden Lane, that you can also visit, but we really try to focus on the most important ones in this area. Thank you guys for watching, if you enjoyed this video please leave us a like, and comment if you have any questions about Franz Kafka, or about your future trip to Prague. And if you're a company that is about to steal this tour from us, at least give us some credit. Most likely you will not. Alright guys, see you in our next video. Bye!