Franz Kafka’s Papers: Property of an Israeli Archive or a Family?

The fate of Franz Kafka’s personal papers is up in the air over 85 years after his death.

• Kafka, an influential writer of the 20th century, died in 1924.
• Kafka requested that his papers be burned, but the executor of his estate, Max Brod, kept the papers and eventually settled in Israel.
• Brod died in 1968, leaving the papers to a longtime friend named Ester Hoffe, who left them to her daughters when she died two years ago.
• The Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany would like to purchase the papers from the Hoffe family.
• The Isreali government, however, asserts that Brod intended for Hoffe to transfer the papers to a public archive, presumably one in Israel.
• The Hoffe daughters assert that the papers are family property.
• An Israeli judge has recently ordered that the papers, which are contained in a safe deposit box in Israel and Switzerland, be reviewed.

See Howard Schneider, In Israel, a tangled battle over the papers of Franz Kafka, Wash. Post, Jan. 6, 2010.

Special thanks to Joel Dobris (Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law) for bringing this article to my attention.