Was Franz Kafka a Jewish Writer? An Israeli Court Said Yes

When Franz Kafka died in 1924, his best friend, the writer and Zionist publicist Max Brod, found a note on his desk asking that his manuscripts be burned. Brod instead ensured that Kafka’s stories were published, thus preserving his friend’s literary legacy. When Brod left Prague for Palestine in 1939—escaping the Nazis by the skin of his teeth—he brought with him a suitcase stuffed with Kafka’s papers. The papers, following Brod’s own death, eventually became the property of Eva Hoffe, who wanted to sell them to the German Literature Archive in Marbach. It was then that the Israeli government stepped in to keep them in the country, leading to a lawsuit that lasted nearly a decade. Reviewing Kafka’s Last Trial, a book by Benjamin Balint on the case, Adam Kirsch writes: