Franz Kafka (1883–1924)

Franz Kafka was born in Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family spoke German at home. He studied law at the Charles Ferdinand University of Prague, (University of Prague), and went to work for an insurance company, from which he retired due to ill health in 1922. In his spare time, he wrote short stories and novels. He fell in love with Dora Dymant, and the two moved together to Berlin, where he hoped to focus on his writing. Soon afterwards, however, he had to go to Vienna to seek treatment for tuberculosis. He died in 1924 at the age of 40. He asked his friend and literary executor Max Brod, to destroy all his written work, but Brod published it instead. Kafka influenced a vast range of writers, artists, and philosophers and is regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature.