Franz Kafka worked hard to remain elusive and mysterious, burning most of his unfinished manuscripts and asking for all of his writings to similarly be destroyed after his death. 

But the Czech-Austrian Jewish author’s posthumous wishes were not fully honored, and a new exhibition — “Kafka: Metamorphosis of An Author” — made up of some of his notebooks, letters and manuscripts will open on Wednesday at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, offering a personal glimpse into Kafka’s life, including his not often-discussed connection with Judaism and Zionism.

The exhibition presents a very personal and accessible Kafka behind his often-cryptic writing, revealing the man behind some of the 20th century’s greatest literary works. This includes his original last will in which he expressed the wish for all his writings to be burned after his death. There are also exercise notebooks filled with pages of Hebrew words written in childish handwriting and translated meticulously into his native German; one of the hundreds of letters Kafka wrote to his other twice-betrothed, Felice Bauer, in which he beseeches that they never write to each other again; and the original 1919 manuscript of his “Letter to His Father,” in which the young Kafka rails against his father who had forbidden his marriage to his second fiancée, Julie Wohryzek.

Marking the centenary of his death — in June 1924 — the exhibit is the conclusion of a series of exhibits around the world including in two other renowned libraries — Oxford University’s Bodleian Library and the German Literary Archive in Marbach — which also hold extensive archives of Kafka’s works. The Jerusalem exhibit was originally scheduled to open in the summer, near the anniversary of his death, but it was postponed because of Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

As the inaugural exhibition to be displayed in the library’s new Helen Diller Family Rotating Exhibitions Gallery and the Djanogly Gallery, the exhibition presents over 80 rare original items for the first time that together narrate the story of Kafka’s personal, professional and social life through his manuscripts, drawings, first editions of his novels and other papers. It includes themes revolving around his literary works, his relationships with family, friends and lovers, and his until now rarely mentioned connection to Judaism, Zionism and the Hebrew language, as well as themes of illness and death.  

Kafka, who grew up in a secular family, was part of a large and active group of Zionist Jewish friends, which also included Martin Buber. Though he never belonged to a formal Jewish organization, in 1917, Kafka began earnestly learning Hebrew. Initially, he taught himself using a course book. From 1922 and almost until his death in 1924, he studied with private tutors including native Hebrew-speaker Pua ben Tovim, who had come to Prague from then-Mandatory Palestine to study mathematics. Shortly before his death Kafka began dreaming of moving to then-Palestine and opening a restaurant.

“We want to allow our visitors here to get to know different perspectives of [Kafka’s] life, the different tracks, which were interrelated to each other. We do hope that at the end visitors are not stepping out with even more questions — but that could happen with Kafka,” said Stefan Litt, humanities curator for the National Library and director of the Kafka Archive.

Designed by Hadas Ophrat, the exhibition area brings the visitor in through a maze-like entrance reminiscent perhaps of Kafka’s mind, and which Ophrat described as also “root-like,” into exhibits highlighting the three main narratives of Kafka’s life explored in the exhibit. Though they can be approached in a linear fashion, the objective is mainly to have the visitor wander in and out of the narrative lines in a way that befits the inscrutable author, said Ophrat.

Litt noted that the Jewish narrative, the last of the three routes, can be viewed as being in the background. Kafka’s writings “express universal feelings of alienation, helplessness and frustration,” noted Litt, that some would argue are also very “Jewish” in their essence though Judaism is never mentioned in any of his stories.

“It’s not by chance that we’ve chosen to put the Jewish path a bit behind the scenes, because that wasn’t something that Kafka would really declare so openly,” Litt said. “That was his private life and a kind of intimacy that he kept and shared only with his closest friends. In Kafka research, there are scholars who would say [his Jewishness played] no importance at all because he never has a Jewish hero in any of his stories and he would never depict any Jewish circles in his stories. But on the other side, there are friends like Max Brod who was maybe the pioneer in proposing that the whole writing of Kafka is so Jewish [saying] that…a Jew reading it…will understand and feel it immediately.”

The exhibit is sponsored by Joyce and Daniel Straus in honor of Stefanie Gabel and in memory of Jack Gabel and Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus, and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Tel Aviv and will run through June 30, 2025. The more than 200 documents in the archives have all been digitized and are accessible to the public online. A series of gallery talks with the curators, cultural events and an international conference are also planned as part of the centennial.

Though Kafka, always riddled with self-doubt, had asked Brod to destroy all his writings following his death from tuberculosis at age 40, Brod in the end did the opposite and began to posthumously publish his writing. Some of Kafka’s papers were lost forever when his last lover, Dora Diamante, lied to Brod about still having them when he came to collect them, and she kept them, only to have them confiscated by the Gestapo when she was arrested and sent to the concentration camps where she died.

Brod immigrated to Palestine in 1939, leaving Prague on the last train out before the Nazi takeover with a suitcase in hand containing Kafka’s writings. The NLI show also highlights the posthumous publication of his writings by Brod. Kafka’s parents had sold publishing rights to Schocken Press in Germany in 1934, and after the publishing house moved to Israel in wake of the Nazis during the British Mandate, translations of Kafka’s writings were published in Israel. Initially they were published in German, then translated to other European languages and starting in 1945, his books and stories began to be translated into Hebrew.

The story of the acquisition of Kafka’s archives by the National Library of Israel would in itself be worthy of a Kafka story with its Kafkaesque twists and turns. Following World War II part of the archives, which had been held by Shlomo Zalman Schocken for safekeeping in Switzerland bank vaults on behalf of Brod, were returned to Kafka’s four surviving nieces in London, who donated them to Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.

When he died Brod left his entire archive, including Kafka’s papers, to his secretary, Esther Hoffe, with explicit instructions to transfer it to the National Library of Israel. However, Hoffe instead retained the archive until her death in 2007, keeping part of it in her Tel Aviv apartment, selling some of it when an arrangement with the NIL could not be reached, and storing most of it in German and Swiss bank vaults. Upon her death, Hoffe’s two daughters claimed private ownership of the materials and intended to sell the material to the German Literature Archive in Marbach, but the NLI argued that the materials were of immense historical and cultural significance, declaring them as a “national cultural asset.” They contested Hoffe’s will as no action had been taken to transfer the Max Brod Archive, including several of Kafka’s writings, to the library as stipulated in Brod’s 1961 will.

The dispute led to a prolonged legal battle over Brod’s estate including his own literary writing, in courts across Israel, Germany and Switzerland. Ultimately, the Supreme Court in Jerusalem ruled that the papers should be handed over to the National Library of Israel, which took possession of the documents between 2016-2019 from Israeli and European bank safes and the Hoffe’s Tel Aviv apartment.

Only occasionally, such as it did in the past few weeks, do some Kafka materials appear up for auction, said Litt, but the bidding prices start at six figures and are too high for the library to even put in a bid.

“Thankfully most of the manuscripts are kept in public institutions,” he said.

In a strange arrangement, the last page of the 100-page handwritten “Letter to His Father” ended up in the NIL archival material and is exhibited with three pages of the original typewritten copy. The rest of the 99 pages are held by the German Literature Archive in Marbach.

“The original copy [of the handwritten letter], which is kept in Germany, is lacking the last sheet, of course, [because] it’s here,” said Litt. “There’s only one [copy of it], and they are not too happy about that. But this is what happens to archival materials from time to time.”

The exhibition also features materials highlighting the profound impact of Kafka’s work both in Israel and globally, showcasing its adaptations across theater, film, dance and visual arts. Eight prominent Israeli illustrators — Sergey Isakov, Eitan Eloa, Nino Biniashvili, Anat Warshavsky, Addam Yekutieli, Merav Salomon, Roni Fahima, and Michel Kichka — were commissioned to create original pieces inspired by Kafka’s writings and the enigmatic figure of the author himself.

The exhibit is presented with translations of the German writing into Hebrew, English and Arabic. One audio-video exhibit presents readings of Kafka’s story “Before the Law” by various narrators in German, English, Hebrew and Arabic, and another wall contains works of different media from opera, dance, theater and animation.

Within the Helen Diller Family Rotating Exhibitions Gallery, the Djanogly Gallery has been transformed into a darkened immersive experiential space where visitors can listen to introspective excerpts from Kafka’s 1913 diary. The narration plays in Hebrew with three pairs of dual-language headphones for the recordings in German, English and Arabic.

“A lot of people are afraid to read Kafka, because they think it is too hard and not accessible,” said Neta Assaf, curator of exhibitions at the National Library of Israel. “We want to demystify the icon. What the exhibit hopes to show is how Kafka is really accessible and how even the younger generation can relate to him.”