Prague honours Franz Kafka with 12ft sculpture
The city of Prague paid tribute to its most renowned literary son today, unveiling a monument to Franz Kafka.
The 12ft tall bronze sculpture, a walking headless figure with Kafka sitting on the shoulders, was created by a Czech artist Jaroslav Rona.
The sculpture was inspired by Kafka’s work, especially the story “Description of a Struggle.”
The monument was erected in a tiny park between the Spanish Synagogue and the Church of the Holy Spirit, on the border of Prague’s Jewish district in a place that symbolises the city’s religious and cultural diversity.
“It’s an extraordinary unique day for both Franz Kafka and the capital, Prague,” Prague Mayor Pavel Bem told a crowd of several hundred people who had gathered in the cold, grey evening to watch the ceremony. “Today we redeem a debt we owe our history and one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.”
The crowd was served bread, pate, pickled cucumbers and Riesling wine.
About a dozen young men attending the ceremony wore black suits, ties and hats - the apparel Kafka wore.
Kafka was born 120 years ago to a Jewish German speaking family in Prague, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1906, he received a law degree at the city’s German University, and later worked for two insurance companies.
He wrote in the evenings, but very little of his writings were published during his lifetime. One of his masterpieces, The Metamorphosis, is an exception.
Critical of his own work, Kafka requested that his manuscripts be destroyed after his death. A friend, Max Brod, instead published them, including The Trial and The Castle, novels that made Kafka the city’s most renowned literary symbol and one of the most influential writers of the last century.
The monument was erected by the Franz Kafka Society, which was founded shortly after the collapse of communism in 1989 to promote the legacy of Kafka and other German and Jewish writers from Prague.
