Malcolm Pasley

The only son of Sir Rodney Pasley, 4th Bt (1899–1982), and Aldyth née Hamber (1898–1983), he was born at Rajkot in British India, where his father was Vice-Principal of Rajkumar College, before becoming Headmaster of Barnstaple Grammar School (1936–43), then of Birmingham Central Grammar School (1943–59); his father edited the Private Sea Journals (publ. 1931) of his senior lineal ancestor, Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley, who distinguished himself in the French Revolutionary Wars and was created a baronet in 1794.

Sir John Malcolm Sabine Pasley, 5th Baronet, FBA (5 April 1926 – 4 March 2004), also known as Malcolm Pasley, was an eminent British philologist and literary scholar.

At University of Oxford, Pasley became the foremost authority of his generation on German literature, particularly well known for his dedication to and publication of the works of Franz Kafka.

Educated at Sherborne, Pasley was commissioned in the Royal Navy, serving from 1944 until 1946.

He then went up to Trinity College, Oxford, where he read Modern Languages, graduating with a first-class degree in 1949 (BA, proceeding MA).

Pursuing an academic career, Pasley was named Laming Travelling Fellow (1949/50) by The Queen's College, Oxford, before appointment as a Lecturer at Oxford University in German.

He taught at Brasenose and Magdalen from 1950 until 1958, when he was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

Fascinated by Franz Kafka and his works, Pasley rapidly became a leading figure in the editing of his texts.

In 1956, Salman Schocken and Max Brod placed Kafka's works in a Swiss bank vault due to concerns surrounding unrest in the Middle East and the safety of the manuscripts, which were with Brod in Tel Aviv.

After significant negotiation, Pasley took personal possession of Kafka's works that were in Brod's possession.

In 1961, charged with collecting Kafka's manuscripts from Zurich Cantonal Bank's vault, he carefully transported them by car from Switzerland to Oxford and deposited them with the Bodleian Library, which became the centre of textual scholarship on Kafka.

In 1961, Pasley transported them by car from Switzerland to Oxford.

Pasley reflected on the adventure as one that "made his own hair stand on end".

The papers, except The Trial, were deposited in Oxford's Bodleian Library.

Pasley married, in 1965, Virginia née Wait (1937–2011), only daughter of Peter Lothian Killigrew Wait (1908–92), whose maternal grandfather was General Sir Lothian Nicholson.

Sir Malcolm and Lady Pasley had two sons:

Lady Pasley was a sister-in-law of the 9th Duke of Leinster (by the marriage of her brother, Mark Killigrew Wait, to Lady Rosemary FitzGerald).

Pasley's work in this area was pioneering; his book Germany: A Companion to German Studies, first published in 1972, is still in heavy demand.

Pasley is best known for his scholarship of the Kafka writings.

He began studying Kafka in the early part of his career and was introduced to Marianne Steiner, Kafka's niece and daughter of his sister Valli, by her son Michael, who was a student at Oxford.

Through this friendship Pasley became the key adviser to Kafka's heirs.

Pasley regarded Kafka as "a younger brother".

Vice-President of Magdalen College for 1979/80, Pasley was elected in 1983 to the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, before retiring from academia in 1986.

Pasley wrote about many German authors, with his initial studies of the German language, Nietzsche in particular, gaining him much fame.

At Oxford, Pasley headed a team of scholars (Gerhard Neumann, Jost Schillemeit, and Jürgen Born) that recompiled the text, removed Max Brod's edits and changes, and began publishing the works in 1982.

This team restored the original German text to its full (and in some cases incomplete) state, with special attention paid to the unique Kafka punctuation, considered to be critical to his style.

Subsequent to the publication of the Kafka works, Pasley began receiving criticism about the completeness of their German publication.

To that end, Stroemfeld Verlag has requested permission to scan the manuscripts to produce a facsimile edition and CD-ROM.

Aside from completeness, they cited a concern for the preservation of the works; some were written in pencil, and many were fading and crumbling.

The Trial remained in the possession of Brod heiress Esther Hoffe, and in November 1988 the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach purchased the manuscript for £1.1 million at an auction conducted by Sotheby's.

Pasley refused their requests, joined by Marianne Steiner, who in 1998, told The Observer "I cannot forgive them for [the terrible things they had said about Pasley. I do not want them to have anything to do with the manuscripts."

In April 1998, Stroemfeld published a facsimile version of The Trial.

This manuscript, being owned by the German government, was accessible to them.

In this publication the manuscript and transcription are listed side by side.

Scholars in favour of the Stroemfeld editions comprise Jeremy Adler, professor of German at King's College London, American writers Louis Begley and Harold Bloom, professor of Humanities at Yale.