ARTHUR A. COHEN
555
This extract might well have been a fictional fragment, one among
the many which express Kafka's sense of comic estrangement and al–
ienation for, like those others, it is grounded in a detailed registra–
tion of ambiguity . The General was, after all, right in his surmise.
Kafka was neither a German-Bohemian nor a Czech, although he
spoke Czech extremely well, read its literature, supported its nation–
al arts , and wrote it with excellence . Kafka's Prague-German accent
bore traces , we are told, of the country German which his father
spoke. Linguistically, therefore, as well as culturally, intellectually,
and emotionally, Kafka was a melange; he was above all a Jew of
Prague whose language was German , whose earthy affections were
Czech , and whose literary language transcended the formalism and
stiffness of Prague-German (itself cut off from living German
speech) .
Is it any wonder then that the General should be curious, the
colonel unsettled, the guests unnerved by this thin and severe–
looking young man with pale eyes so similar to them in speech and
so completely alien? Could it be otherwise? To be a Prague Jew at
the beginning of the twentieth century was considerably different
and more difficult than being a Jew in virtually any other contem–
porary city of Western Europe.
Czechoslovakia was part of the Hapsburg Empire until the end
of World War I, a vassal nation whose institutions and visible power
derived from the splendidly impersonal and correct bureaucracy of
Austria. But its peasant class , industrial proletariat , and
petit–
bourgeois
were Czech , animated by traditions that opposed the aristo–
cratic Austrian attitudes. It contained also a large German-speaking
minority who supplied to the Church , the army, and the civil service
their educated managers , loyal to the Emperor of Austria and the
cultural dominion of Germany. The Czechs despised the Germans
but worked their factories and lands; the Germans loathed the
Czechs, regarding their patrimony as rude and uncultivated . The
Jews formed one of the oldest enclaves in the nation, having come to
the Moldau before the tenth century , settled within medieval Prague
and the towns of Moravia and Bohemia. They became small shop–
keepers , hawkers, and tinkers who preserved their religion and cus–
toms. At the same time curious about their surroundings, the Jews
supplied the first grammarian of the Czech language and provided
the first topographic description of Czech lands .
The Jews first migrated to Prague over the Alps from the south
