'Kafka: Making of an Icon' opening in May 2024
Kafka: Making of an Icon
30 May – 27 October 2024
Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries
The Bodleian Libraries are pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition, Kafka: Making of an Icon, in May 2024, marking the 100th anniversary of the author’s death. The exhibition will celebrate not only Kafka's achievements and creativity but also how he continues to inspire new literary, theatrical and cinematic creations around the world.
The free exhibition will sit alongside Oxford University’s Oxford Reads Kafka campaign, which aims to encourage engagement across the city and University with Kafka’s literary masterpiece The Metamorphosis, with ‘readings’ of the text from a variety of academic perspectives.
For this special exhibition, the Bodleian will host a number of significant international loans that broaden its extensive archive, reuniting Kafka’s work in a way that has never been seen before. Items will be brought to Oxford from across all places connected to the author’s life, including loans from the National Library of Israel, the Klaus Wagenbach Archive in Germany, and the City of Prague Museum. After their stop in the UK, the items will continue their journey across the world to the USA, where the exhibition will be hosted by the Morgan Library in New York from 22 November 2024 - 13 April 2025.
Kafka: Making of an Icon will feature materials from the archives of the Bodleian Libraries, which hold the majority of Franz Kafka's papers, including literary notebooks, drawings, diaries, letters, postcards, glossaries, and photographs. Notably, the notebooks in the archive include the original manuscripts of two of Kafka’s unfinished novels, Das Schloss (The Castle) and Der Verschollene (America), as well as a number of short stories. One of the highlights of the exhibition is in fact a leaf torn out from the second notebook of The Castle, usually held in the National Library of Israel, which will be reunited for the first time with the rest of the manuscript, held in the Bodleian’s collections.
Using this expanded archive, the exhibition not only sets Kafka in the context of his life and times but also shows how his own experiences nourished his imagination, taking visitors on a journey through Kafka’s life and influences, from his relationship with his family and the people closest to him, to the places where he lived and worked, through to his last years of illness and his death on 3 June 1924, at only 40 years of age.
Items including literary notebooks, drawings, diaries, letters, postcards, glossaries, videographic materials and photographs outline the people, events and spaces that shaped the author, but also give us an insight into his personality. In a postcard to his brother-in-law, for instance, Kafka jokes about his exceptional skiing skills, despite being severely ill at the time. In another case, we find a letter to his employer, where he claims to be sick after having spent the whole night writing what will be his literary breakthrough, The Judgement. His Hebrew notebook, glossary and his letter (in Hebrew) to his teacher demonstrate his dedication to learning the language that connected him to his family roots, but we also find snippets of Czech, French and Italian, a reminder of Kafka’s keen multilingualism and interest in languages beyond German and Hebrew. His drawings and doodles allow us a glimpse into his imagination. Among them, the iconic ‘stick man slumped on desk’ (circa 1901-07), on loan from the National Library of Israel. And finally, another loan from the National Library of Israel, Kafka’s note to his friend Max Brod, instructs Brod to burn all the author’s unpublished manuscripts. As this exhibition shows, fortunately for modern audiences, this wish was never fulfilled.
A part of the display is dedicated to what is perhaps Kafka’s best-known work, The Metamorphosis. Alongside the original manuscript of the novella, the exhibition includes entomology book illustrations that explore the possibilities of what the creature that used to be Gregor Samsa might have looked like, as well as modern reinterpretations of the story. Among them, thanks to a private loan, visitors will exceptionally be able to see the original manuscript of The Cockroach, Ian McEwan’s satirical novella inspired by The Metamorphosis.
To complete the picture of Kafka’s peculiar world, the exhibition dives into the author’s travels, both real and imaginary. We see in his notebooks and travel journals how his travels in Western Europe enabled him to practise descriptive writing, while his readings, such as a book of Chinese poetry, and the stereoscopic images he had access to strengthened his fascination with remote spaces and made him aware of European colonialism. We also see examples in the exhibition of how, even after his death, Kafka continues to reach across the world, with his work translated into numerous languages.
Professor Carolin Duttlinger, co-curator of the exhibition said:
The centenary of Franz Kafka's death is a unique opportunity to celebrate his global legacy while also introducing his texts to a new generation of readers. We are very excited about the upcoming exhibition, which will tell the story of Kafka life, times and works, including how his manuscripts ended up at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian, said:
Franz Kafka is one of the most influential writers of the past century. His works have been translated into a vast number of languages, and have sold in the millions of copies. Kafka’s fame, and literary success has, however, been a phenomenon since his death in 1924. The Kafka archive is critical to explain the power of his literary genius and the trajectory of his work into its current global status. The show’s curators, drawn from the scholarly prowess of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre, have given us key insights into the life and work of this extraordinary writer.
This exhibition is curated by Professor Carolin Duttlinger, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Professor Katrin M. Kohl, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Professor Barry Murnane, Co-Director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre; Dr Meindert Peters, Leverhulme Research Fellow at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages; and Dr Karolina Watroba, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. It is supported by Malgorzata Czepiel, Curator of the Kafka Archive at the Bodleian Libraries.
The Kafka Archive
The Bodleian Library in Oxford holds the largest archive on Franz Kafka. Most of Kafka’s papers were looked after by his life-long friend and posthumous editor Max Brod, who decided to ignore the author’s request to burn all his manuscripts upon his death, but the ownership was shared among Kafka's four nieces. After being kept in a bank vault in Zurich for five years, they were placed in the safe keeping of the Bodleian Libraries, on permanent revocable loan in 1961. The acquisition was made thanks to Sir Malcolm Pasley, Fellow in German at Magdalen College Oxford, who contacted and liaised with Kafka’s surviving heirs, and brought the papers to Oxford in the boot of his Fiat on his return home from a Swiss ski holiday.
When in 2011 the descendants of Kafka’s favourite sister, Ottla, decided to sell the letters the author wrote to her, the Bodleian Libraries risked losing this precious part of the collection, as the institution could not afford to purchase it. Luckily, just when the manuscripts were about to be put for auction, the Libraries and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach reached an agreement to co-acquire them. This partnership, one of the first of its kind, has allowed countless researchers and academics to access the archive and pursue their studies.
Other Kafka papers, including the manuscript of The Trial, are held in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach, while some of the manuscripts that form part of Max Brod's archive are held by the National Library of Israel. Kafka's letters to his fiancée Felice Bauer were bought by a private collector at auction and have not been seen since.
The exhibition is part of Kafka 2024, a programme of University-wide events and activities will celebrate the literary works and enduring global legacy of Franz Kafka and mark the 100-year anniversary of his death.
For further information or to speak to Prof. Carolin Duttlinger or Prof. Barry Murnane, please contact bodleian.libraries@flint-culture.com.
