Solving a Literary Mystery
The Kafka Project is the third official search to recover the last writings of Franz Kafka, working on behalf of the Kafka Estate of London, England. Under the auspices of San Diego State University's College of Arts and Letters since 1998, the Kafka Project has worked with the German government for the discovery and return of Kafka's unpublished letters and notebooks. Building on the results of the last search conducted by Max Brod and Klaus Wagenbach in the mid-1950s, the Kafka Project is a non-profit volunteer organization, funded by donations, pooling resources, skills and knowledge to resolve a literary mystery.
On June 3, 1924, Franz Kafka died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Austria, in the arms of Dora Diamant, his last love and companion. Before his death and at his insistence, Dora burned his work. But she saved much more, including 35 letters and 20 notebooks, which were confiscated from her apartment in Berlin in 1933. The first attempt to recover this literary treasure was conducted by Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor. Since all parties were Jewish, the search was short-lived. After WWII, Brod enlisted Klaus Wagenbach in Berlin, and the second search ended with the closing of Eastern Europe under the Soviets. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of archives made it possible to rejoin the search in 1997. WIth a letter of permission from the Kafka Estate in London, England, the Kafka Project began in Berlin in 1998. Three decades on, the process continues there today.
Who is Kafka?
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is considered a 20th Century literary genius, credited as the father of the modern novel. His short stories include “The Metamorphosis” and the posthumously published novels, The Castle, and The Trial. Kafka was born in Prague, wrote in German, and died penniless of tuberculosis at the age of 40. According to his 1000-page bibliography, a new book has been written on Kafka every 10 days for the past 14 years. Dozens of Kafka biographies have been written, from the first by Max Brod in 1937 to the most detailed by Reiner Stach.
Who is Dora Diamant?
Born into a Hassidic family in Poland in 1898, Dora Diamant (Dymant-Lask) was the only woman with whom Franz Kafka ever lived. Known as the woman who burned his work, Dora secretly kept most of Kafka’s last writings until they were confiscated by the Gestapo. Dora is universally recognized as the single person responsible for making Kafka's last year his happiest. He died in her arms, and she never stopped loving him. In 1934, she gave birth to a daughter, named Franziska Marianne. In 1936, Dora and daughter escaped Berlin for Russia. They miraculously escaped Russia in 1938, arriving in England in August 1939. Interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man, Dora returned to London, and she survived the bombing of her flat. Before her death in 1952, Dora worked as an actress, writer and Yiddish remembrancer. Visit Wikipedia to learn more about Dora.
What do Kafka’s lost papers consist of?
The papers confiscated during the August 8, 1933 Gestapo raid on Dora Diamant’s flat in Berlin include 35 letters Kafka wrote to Dora in 1923-1924 and some 20 notebook journals. The Kafka Project builds on the first search for Kafka’s lost work by Max Brod and Klaus Wagenbach in the 1950s, and is conducted on behalf of the Kafka Estate of London, England.
Why is the Kafka Project important?
Franz Kafka died mostly unpublished and unknown. Since his death, he has risen to become one of the most important literary figures of the 20th and 21st centuries. Everything Kafka wrote--his letters, diaries, notes, even his doodles--has been published in every major world language. New biographies, translations and/or new editions of his work appear every year. Kafka's missing writings will provide new information about the last year of his life, when he achieved an unprecedented level of peace and acceptance. As long as the fate of the missing material is unknown, Kafka's literary legacy remains incomplete.
Who is involved?
The Kafka Project is based in the Department of European Studies, College of Arts & Letters at San Diego State University. Dr. Christoph Geis is the current lead of the Kafka Project in Germany. Kafka Project administrative support in San Diego is provided by DeNae Steele. Previous leads include Dr. Hans-Gerd Koch and Dr. Peter-Andre Alt. The project was started in 1997 by SDSU adjunct professor Kathi Diamant, author of “Kafka’s Last Love: The Mystery of Dora Diamant,” The Kafka Project Advisory Committee consists of Kafka scholars, historians, researchers, academics, archivists, and curators. Volunteers work on the Kafka Project in a variety of areas, including translation, administrative tasks and grant writing. Learn more how you can get involved.
How will the Kafka Project find the papers?
In 1998, Kafka Project research team members from the US, England and Germany conducted a four-month intensive investigation of Nazi and SED files of government archives in Berlin. In 2008, the Kafka Project expanded the search to include Nazi-era deposits in Eastern and Central Europe. Working with the US Consulate, Polish National Archives, Library of Silesia and University of Silesia, an informational kit in English, German, Polish and Czech, identifying the missing Kafka material, was delivered to regional and national archives and libraries in Poland. In 2012, following a residency at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, research efforts were redirected from Eastern Europe to archives captured by the Red Army, taken to Moscow, and since returned to GDR. One such archive 9/11 is in Berlin and is the focus of our research. Since 2015, Kafka scholars in Germany have been working with the Ministry of Culture and the Federal and State Archives to identify and open closed and uncataloged archives of confiscated property of German citizens in the 1930s. Currently the research is being conducted in Koblenz.
The Latest from the Project
Digitization of Kafka Project Archive 
In April 2024, Dillon Lerach started as the coordinator of archive digitization for the Kafka Project. Before he enters law school this fall, Dillon will be organizing the digitization of the Kafka Project archive, now contained in 25 binders. With support from SDSU College of Arts and Letters, the Kafka Project Archive will be scanned and hosted by SDSU Digital Library Collection. Searchable documents will include diaries, correspondence, archival files and records, as well as photographs and video/audio interviews.
Dillon Lerach of New York City is the latest volunteer to lend his considerable talents to the Kafka Project. A 2017 graduate of Columbia with a BA in Comparative Literature, he studied at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and is fluent in spoken and written German, including Sütterlin and Fratkur scripts, as well as Russian and French. He studied the history of the German Nazi Period under Carole Gluck and Volker Berghahn at Columbia University and is familiar with the operations of the Geheime Staatspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst.
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Dillon has extensive archival experience with early 20th-century original correspondence, reports, and records and is familiar with archive procedures and operations. He has used online archives of 19th-century Austro-Hungarian and German correspondence and records and has read scores of 19th-century letters and official state censuses. In 2016, he worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art doing provenance research for objects in the permanent collection of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas and for museum exhibitions. Since 2020, he has worked on an independent research project chronicling the bankruptcy of the Pennsylvania Railroad and its impact on the American Railroad industry.
The digitization process of the Kafka Project Archive should be completed by the end of 2024.
Red Carpet Premiere
The Glory of Life, a new film about the last year of Franz Kafka’s life and its surprising love story will open in German theaters on March 14, 2024. Starring Henreitte Confurius as Dora Diamant and Sabin Tambrea as Kafka, The Glory of Life (Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens) will have a red carpet premiere at the famed Delphi Theatre in Berlin on March 6, 2024. The film is produced by Tempest Films, directed by Judith Kaufmann and Georg Maas, and written by Michael Gutmann, based on “The Glory of Life” by Michael Kumpfmüller. Watch the trailer.
Kafka’s Doll Screens at Comic Con in San Diego
Inspired by a true story, Kafka’s Doll is an animated short film that blends factual factual research, fiction, fantasy and myth into a single heart-warming story about loss. The film is produced by Studio Kimchi. Kafka's Doll screens Saturday, July 22 12:30 pm Grand Ballroom 6 (San Diego Marriott Marquis). Learn more about the animated film. Watch the film's trailer.
News from Berlin: Geis Joins Kafka Project
The Kafka Project is back in business after a three-year COVID hiatus. In February 2023, Dr. Christoph Geis took the lead for the Kafka Project research in Berlin, taking the reins from Dr. Hans-Gerd Koch, who, in 2015, with Dr. Peter Andre Alt, assumed the leadership and had worked with the Ministry of Culture to gain support and funding at the federal level to uncover and catalog an unopened archive in Berlin. In 2019, Dr. Koch wrote an article for Suddeutsche Zeitung, reporting that the still-secret archive, known as Section IX-ll, contains papers and other documents confiscated from German communists, and possibly could be the repository of the papers taken from the Pariser Strasse apartment of Dora Diamant (Dymant-Lask) in 1933. While Dr. Koch has stepped down to complete the final volume of the critical edition of Kafka’s letters, he remains an essential advisor to Dr. Geis and the Project. Read Dr. Koch’s article Mountain's of Files.
A retired psychologist and psychotherapist specializing in trauma, Dr. Geis’ scientific approach to Kafka led him to complete a Ph.D., Franz Kafka and the World Approaches in the 21st Century; Reading Kafka as an aid to regain language and reflexivity in times of destructive life-world experiences, from the University of Koblenz-Landau in 2022. Dr. Geis is uniquely qualified to continue the research in Germany, and is interfacing with the German federal and state archives in the search for the missing writings of Franz Kafka, confiscated from Dora Diamant (Dymant-Lask) by the Gestapo in 1933. We are enormously grateful for his skill, time, and efforts.
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