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ously and considered moving to Palestine to become a carpenter (not
very dissimilar in this respect to Walter Benjamin's contemplated
emigration to Palestine at Gershom Scholem's insistence). At the
same time he dreamt of the Berlin that would distance him from the
oppressive weight of Prague, which contained his family and his em–
ployment. He even imagined that flight would cure his illness.
On September 24, 1923, only nine months before his death,
Kafka arrived in Berlin and shortly thereafter began to live with
Dora Dymant, a 'young woman of orthodox Jewish background, in
the suburb of Charlottenburg. The privation of those postwar days
broke his health and he returned to Prague in March of 1924, spent
his last months at the sanatorium in Kierling near Vienna, and went
thence on June 3 to Prague's Strasnice cemetery, marked now by a
sign in five languages pointing out the path to the grave where, on
June 11, 1924, Franz Kafka was buried alone and then later beside,
perhaps even beneath (since he died first), his parents.
In a letter to Max Brod and Felix Weltsch written from Meran
on April 10, 1920, the form and substance of Kafka's personal drama
of cities is set forth in his description of an evening meal taken at a
countryside hotel in Bohemia:
After the first words it came out that I was from Prague; both of them,
the General (who sat opposite me) and the colonel-were acquainted
with Prague . Was I Czech? No. So now you explain to those true Ger–
man military eyes what you really are. Someone else suggested
"German-Bohemian," someone else "Kleinseite" (the so-called "Little
Quarter" in which the German bourgeoisie were settled in Prague).
Then the subject was dropped and people went on eating, but the Gen–
eral, with his sharp ears linguistically trained in the Austrian army ,
was not satisfied. After we had eaten, he once more began to wonder
about the sound of my German, perhaps more bothered by what he
saw than by what he heard. At this point I tried to clear up the matter
by saying I am a Jew . .. . At the same moment, probably by sheer
chance, for all the others could not have heard our conversation, but
perhaps there was some connection after all , the whole company rose
to leave . ... The General, too, was very restless, though from polite–
ness he brought our little chat to a sort of end before he hurried out
with long strides . That hardly satisfied my human feelings . Why must
I be a thorn in their flesh? But otherwise it is a good solution. I shall be
alone again without ridiculously sitting off by myself, provided that
they don't take any measures . . ..
