Franz Kafka’s Home Page

«Von einem gewissen Punkt an gibt es keine Rückkehr. Dieser Punkt ist zu erreichen»

(The Kafka Project – Other texts: essays, manuscript scans and translations – Links, newsgroups and ICQ – Email me!)

 
Thank you for visiting this page! In the next three steps you'll find texts, links and information about the genius of Prague. The page was updated on 15^th february 1998 and is in permanent construction. The site is rapidly growing, and new stuff comes at least every week! So please bookmark this page, and come back soon!

 A great problem with the Kafka texts on the net is that they all originate from the Brod edition; this procedure should now be regarded as archaic as a critical edition (by Jürgen Born et al., since 1982) is available. So, it would be an idea to collect on this site all Kafka texts in the original form according to the manuscripts (for more details read please the Kafka Project), and their translations from the critical edition - with all variants.

Since 1996, a new Kafka edition ("Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe", or HKA, Stroemfeld Verlag) was undertaken by Roland Reuß and Peter Staengle, with all manuscripts and arranged according to radically scientific criteries. Only "Der Process" was published until now. This new edition is in my opinion so important, that I devoted an entire page to it. You’ll find there practical information and comments.

Scanning of the manuscripts, though in limited form, could find a place here too, in the future. (If you find errors of any kind in the texts, please email me, and you’ll be included in my list of cooperating fellows!).

In addiction to that, a lot of copies of the shorter prosa are to be found on the net (as you can see in Detlef's collection), but to my knowledge among the three major novels only "Der Process" is available in german, and in the Brod form. Since of course a text analysis is more relevant for the longer works, it would be important to make Kafka's major works available for ever on the net. That’s why they’re put into the Project first.

So, I've collected here texts you cannot find on other sites – at least not in the manuscript form:

• The critical edition in german of "Der Verschollene", first published by Brod under the title "Amerika";
• The critical edition in german of "Der Proceß" ;
• The critical edition in german of "Das Schloß";
• The critical edition in german of "Betrachtung", Kafka's first collection of short prosa;
• The critical edition in german of "Das Urteil", Kafka's preferred tale;
• The critical edition in german of the unpublished manuscripts 1897-1915 , including the long tales "Hochzeitsvorbereitungen auf dem Lande" and "Beschreibung eines Kampfes", each one in all versions;
• The critical edition in german of the unpublished manuscripts 1916-1918, including the octavo books, the essay about the jewish theatre and the aphorisms;
• The critical edition in german of the unpublished manuscript 1917/8-1922, including the "Brief an den Vater".
• The critical edition in german of the unpublished manuscript 1922-1924 (in progress).

The 9 items above are the beginning of the Kafka Project.

• two important essays in pdf-format by Roland Reuß about a philologic point of view about Kafka, which are also a radical new interpretation of his writing: "Lesen, was gestrichen wurde. Für eine historisch-kritische Kafka-Ausgabe". (Aus: Einleitungsband. Franz Kafka, Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe sämtlicher Handschriften, Drucke und Typoskripte, herausgegeben von Roland Reuß und Peter Staengle. ISBN 3-87877-492-3. Copyright (c) 1995 by Stroemfeld Verlag, Basel/Frankfurt am Main. All rights reserved) and " Zur Kritischen Edition von "Der Process" im Rahmen der Historisch-Kritischen Franz Kafka-Ausgabe". Aus: (Franz Kafka-Hefte 1, Beiheft zu F. K., Der Process, Hrsg. von Roland Reuß in Zusammenarbeit mit Peter Staengle, Basel/Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-87877-673-X, Copyright (c) 1997 by Stroemfeld Verlag, Basel/Frankfurt am Main. All rights reserved). Both articles can be downloaded by courtesy of Dr. Roland Reuß and read by Acrobat Reader (free for download);
• the scanned manuscript of the chapter "Im Dom", from "Der Proceß" (source: F. KAFKA, Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe, herausgegeben von ROLAND REUß und PETER STAENGLE, Einleitungsband, Stroemfeld Verlag, Basel und Frankfurt am Main, 1995);
• an italian translation of the critical edition of "Der Proceß", with all major variants (Word format, zipped, 166K);
• an italian translation of the critical edition of "Jäger Gracchus" and other related fragments , with all major variants (Word format, zipped, 45,3K).

• Dutch Franz Kafka Circle
• The Franz Kafka Homepage
• Constructing Franz Kafka
• Franz Kafka Photo Album by Yacov Eckel