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Full Description
Franz Kafka: The Office Writings brings together, for the first time in English, Kafka's most interesting professional writings, composed during his years as a high-ranking lawyer with the largest Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute in the Czech Lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is commonly recognized as the greatest German prose writer of the twentieth century. It is less well known that he had an established legal career. Kafka's briefs reveal him to be a canny bureaucrat, sharp litigator, and innovative thinker on the social, political, and legal issues of his time. His official preoccupations inspired many of the themes and strategies of the novels and stories he wrote at night. These documents include articles on workmen's compensation and workplace safety; appeals for the founding of a psychiatric hospital for shell-shocked veterans; and letters arguing relentlessly for a salary adequate to his merit.
In adjudicating disputes, promoting legislative programs, and investigating workplace sites, Kafka's writings teem with details about the bureaucracy and technology of his day, such as spa elevators in Marienbad, the challenge of the automobile, and the perils of excavating in quarries while drunk. Beautifully translated, with valuable commentary by two of the world's leading Kafka scholars and one of America's most eminent civil rights lawyers, the documents cast rich light on the man and the writer and offer new insights to lovers of Kafka's novels and stories.
Contents
Preface ix Abbreviations for Kafka Citations xix Kafka and the Ministry of Writing by Stanley Corngold 1 Kafka's Offi ce Writings: Historical Background and Institutional Setting by Benno Wagner 19 DOCUMENTS Chapter 1: Speech on the Occasion of the Inauguration of the Institute's New Director (1909) 51 Commentary Chapter 2: The Scope of Compulsory Insurance for the Building Trades (1908) 54 Commentary Chapter 3: Fixed- Rate Insurance Premiums for Small Farms Using Machinery (1909) 74 Commentary Chapter 4: Inclusion of Private Automobile "Firms" in the Compulsory Insurance Program (1909) 80 Commentary Chapter 5: Appeal against Risk Classifi cation of Christian Geipel & Sohn, Mechanical Weaving Mill in Asch (1910) 90 Commentary Chapter 6: Mea sures for Preventing Accidents from Wood- Planing Machines (1910) 109 Commentary Chapter 7: On the Examination of Firms by Trade Inspectors (1911) 120 Commentary Chapter 8: Workmen's Insurance and Employers: Two Articles in the Tetschen- Bodenbacher Zeitung (1911) 145 Commentary Chapter 9: Petition of the Toy Producers' Association in Katharinaberg, Erzgebirge (1912) 170 Commentary Chapter 10: Risk Classifi cation Appeal by Norbert Hochsieder, Boarding House Own er in Marienbad (1912) 194 Commentary Chapter 11: Letters to the Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute in Prague (1912-15) 213 Commentary Chapter 12: Criminal Charge against Josef Renelt for the Illegal Withholding of Insurance Fees (1913) 225 Commentary Chapter 13: Second International Congress on Accident Prevention and First Aid in Vienna (1913) 249 Commentary Chapter 14: Accident Prevention in Quarries (1914) 273 Commentary Chapter 15: Jubilee Report: Twenty- Five Years of the Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute (1914) 301 Commentary Chapter 16: Risk Classifi cation and Accident Prevention in War time (1915) 322 Commentary Chapter 17: A Public Psychiatric Hospital for German- Bohemia (1916) 336 Commentary Chapter 18: "Help Disabled Veterans! An Urgent Appeal to the Public" (1916/1917) 346 Commentary Wraparound:From Kafka to Kafkaesque 355by Jack Greenberg Chronology 373 Notes 379 About the Editors 393 Index 395
