Max Brod

Max Brod (מקס ברוד; 27 May 1884 – 20 December 1968) was a Bohemian-born Israeli author, composer, and journalist.

Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is best remembered as the friend and biographer of writer Franz Kafka.

Kafka named Brod as his literary executor, instructing Brod to burn his unpublished work upon his death.

Brod refused and had Kafka's works published instead.

Brod first met Kafka on 23 October 1902, when they were students at Charles University.

Brod had given a lecture on Arthur Schopenhauer at the German students' hall.

Kafka, one year older, addressed him after the lecture and accompanied him home.

"He tended to participate in all the meetings, but up to then we had hardly considered each other," wrote Brod.

The quiet Kafka "would have been... hard to notice... even his elegant, usually dark-blue, suits were inconspicuous and reserved like him. At that time, however, something seems to have attracted him to me, he was more open than usual, filling the endless walk home by disagreeing strongly with my all too rough formulations."

From then on, Brod and Kafka met frequently, often even daily, and remained close friends until Kafka's death.

Kafka was a frequent guest in Brod's parents' house.

There he met his future girlfriend and fiancée Felice Bauer, cousin of Brod's brother-in-law Max Friedmann.

After graduating, Brod worked for some time at the post office.

The relatively short working hours gave him time to begin a career as an art critic and freelance writer.

For similar reasons, Kafka took a job at an insurance agency involved in workmen's accident insurance.

Brod, Kafka, and Brod's close friend Felix Weltsch constituted the so-called "enge Prager Kreis" or "close Prague circle".

A German-speaking Jew, he attended the Piarist school together with his lifelong friend Felix Weltsch, later attended the Stephans Gymnasium, then studied law at the German Charles-Ferdinand University (which at the time was divided into a German and a Czech language university; he attended the German-speaking institution) and graduated in 1907 to work in the civil service.

His first novel and fourth book overall, Schloss Nornepygge (Nornepygge Castle), published in 1908 when he was only 24, was celebrated in Berlin literary circles as a masterpiece of expressionism.

This and other works made Brod a well-known personality in German-language literature.

From 1912, he was a pronounced Zionist (which he attributed to the influence of Martin Buber) and when Czechoslovakia became independent in 1918, he briefly served as vice-president of the Jüdischer Nationalrat.

In 1913, together with Weltsch, he published the work Anschauung und Begriff which made him better known in Berlin and also in Leipzig, where their publisher Kurt Wolff worked.

Brod was supportive of other writers and musicians.

Among his protégés was Franz Werfel, whom he would later fall out with as Werfel abandoned Judaism for Christianity.

He would also write at various times both for and against Karl Kraus, a convert from Judaism to Roman Catholicism.

His critical endorsement would be crucial to the success of Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Svejk, and he played a crucial role in the diffusion of Leoš Janáček's operas.

From 1924, already an established writer, he worked as a critic for the Prager Tagblatt.

In 1939, as the Nazis occupied Prague, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, taking with him a suitcase of Kafka's papers, many of them unpublished notes, diaries, and sketches.

Max Brod was born in Prague, then part of the province of Bohemia in Austria-Hungary, now the capital of the Czech Republic.

At the age of four, Brod was diagnosed with a severe spinal curvature and spent a year in corrective harness; despite this he would be a hunchback his entire life.

In 1939, as the Nazis took over Prague, Brod and his secretary Elsa Taussig fled to Mandatory Palestine.

He settled in Tel Aviv, where he continued to write and worked as a dramaturg for Habimah, later the Israeli national theatre, for 30 years.

For a period following the death of his wife in 1942, Brod published very few works.

He became very close to a couple named Otto and Esther Hoffe, regularly taking vacations with the couple and employed Esther as a secretary for many years; it is often presumed that their relationship had a romantic dimension.

He would later pass stewardship of the Kafka materials in his possession to Esther in his will.

Another close companion was Felix Weltsch.

Their friendship lasted 75 years, from the elementary school of the Piarists in Prague to Weltsch's death in 1964.

He increasingly devoted himself to music, traveling to Europe to give lectures and to encourage young artists.

Brod was also close to Israeli author Aharon Megged, with whom he had many philosophical discussions as they walked along the beachfront in Tel Aviv.

Brod died on 20 December 1968 in Tel Aviv, his final resting place is the Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv.

Unlike Kafka, Brod rapidly became a prolific author who eventually published 83 titles.