Franz Kafka to his "guardian angel"

Starting price
$ 18 000
Auction date Classic
16.10.2020 10:00 UTC +00:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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United Kingdom, London
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ID 411506
Lot 98 | Franz Kafka to his "guardian angel"
KAFKA, Franz (1883-1924). Autograph letter signed ("K") to Robert Klopstock, Prague, [December 1921 or January 1922].

In German. Two and a half pages, 195 x 123mm, pencil (minor marginal wear).

Kafka writes to the good friend he would describe shortly before his death as his "guardian angel." Robert Klopstock (1899-1972) and Kafka met in 1920 while the two were patients at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Matliary in the Tatra mountains of Czechoslovakia. They formed a close bond over their shared literary and philosophical tastes (in particular Kierkegaard), their Jewishness, their precarious financial situations, and their health similarly affected by tuberculosis. Klopstock was a penniless medical student (who would later become a pioneer in the field of lung surgery), and over the course of their friendship Kafka would do his best—as in this letter—to lend support and help him continue his schooling. When Kafka's health began to fail, Klopstock would break off his medical studies in Berlin and devote himself exclusively to caring for his friend, prompting Kafka to inform his parents shortly before his death, "I know from experience that with Klopstock one is lifted up as in the arms of a guardian angel" ("Ich weiss aus Erfahrung, daß man bei [Klopstock] aufgehoben ist wie in den Armen des Schutzengels"). Kafka died in Klopstock's arms on 3 June 1924 in a sanatorium near Vienna.

Kafka's letter concerns potential opportunities for accommodation and an assistantship, both of which unfortunately appear bleak, as well as his own battle with insomnia. "Well, Robert, it’s not much, is it? And where should you live? I will naturally investigate further, but the summer semester is beginning very soon. The visit to Münzer was even more bleak from a medical point of view. What you wrote about medical illiteracy became terribly clear during our conversation about the example of the obviously hopeless illness of that cousin. I will tell you about it before long. I have been suffering for some time now from severe insomnia and its consequences. Yours K." Münzer is Egmont Münzer (1865-1924), a professor at the German University in Prague; the sick cousin is Robert Kafka, who died on 16 March 1922. Kafka's letter remained unpublished until 2003 when it appeared in Kafkas letzter Freund. Der Nachlaß Robert Klopstock (Vienna: Inlibris). A full transcription of the original German and English translation are available upon request.

Dr. Klopstock was born in Dombovar, Hungary, and studied at the universities of Prague, Kiel, and Berlin before coming to the United States in 1938 and acquiring American citizenship a few years later. He would become the chief of thoracic service at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Brooklyn and a professor at Downstate Medical Center.
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