ID 411508
Lot 100 | Preserving Kafka's legacy
Estimate value
$ 30 000 – 50 000
In German, Hungarian and English. 11 letters and manuscripts and one postcard, c.1930s-1946, various sizes, 295 x 220mm and smaller.
A rich collection of correspondence and manuscripts documenting the efforts of Robert Klopstock, Franz Kafka’s “guardian angel,” to preserve the writer’s legacy. The archive spans several years of Klopstock’s life, from the 1930s when he and his wife, Giselle Deutsch Klopstock, labored to translate of The Trial into Hungarian, to the start of his professional medical career in the United States after emigrating in 1938, and his collaboration with Salman Schocken and Max Brod in preparing the first edition of Kafka’s works in the 1940s. Klopstock and Kafka first met in 1920 while the two were patients at a tuberculosis sanatorium Matliary in the Tatra mountains of Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia). Over the next two years, Klopstock’s friendship with Kafka deepened into a “fiercely possessive devotion” (Pawel). The ravages of tuberculosis remained a constant concern for both, to the point that Klopstock was caring for Kafka when he died in a sanatorium near Vienna on June 3, 1924. See Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka (1984), pp. 414-420, 441-447.
A native of Dombovar in Hungary, Klopstock studied medicine at the universities of Prague, Kiel, and Berlin before emigrating to the United States in 1938. He would become the chief of thoracic services at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Brooklyn and a professor at Downstate Medical Center.
This collection includes a typescript for the opening of Kafka’s The Trial, in an early Hungarian translation by Giselle KLOPSTOCK, with autograph notes in Hungarian by Robert KLOPSTOCK in pencil and ink, undated [c.1930s]; 2 pages, 207 x 153mm. The typescript includes one page with the name “Franz Kafka” and a title for the work (“Per Regény”) in Hungarian, and most of the first paragraph of the first chapter of the novel on the second page. Kafka’s works, first known only within small circles of Czech, Jewish and German-speaking aficionados, were only gradually translated into other languages in the late 1920s and 1930s. The initiative to translate Kafka's texts into Hungarian came very early: in 1921, "The Metamorphosis," "The Judgment," and "A Fratricide" were published in magazines in unauthorized Hungarian versions by the writer Sándor Márai. When Kafka learned of this, in July 1922 he asked his publisher Kurt Wolff to reserve Hungarian translation rights to his friend Robert Klopstock. Klopstock, fluent in Hungarian, had introduced Kafka to Hungarian authors such as Endre Ady and Frigyes Karinthy, whose short stories Klopstock published in German translation. In crafting these translations, Klopstock frequently sought Kafka’s advice on points of language and style. Klopstock continued this literary translation work, from Hungarian to German and vice-versa, after Kafka’s death, both alone and in collaboration with his fiancée and then wife, Giselle Deutsch Klopstock. The document is a perfect example of the literary collaboration between the Klopstocks, and a tribute to the memory and genius of Franz Kafka.
In addition to this typescript translation, the archive also includes the following:
—Typed letter signed by Franz WERFEL to Robert Klopstock, Vienna, 2 December 1934; 1 page, 295 x 194mm (long closed tear at center fold, and small marginal tears; light dampstain at center). The Austrian-Bohemian novelist Franz Werfel first met Kafka in 1909 through their mutual friend Max Brod (Pawel, pp. 196-197). In one of the most beautiful memorials of Kafka by his friends and acquaintances, Werfel recalls: “When I saw Franz Kafka’s face for the first time a quarter of a century ago, I knew immediately that he was ‘a messenger from the king.’ I never lost this feeling in his presence. There was always a strange shiver mixed in with my feelings of admiration and love for him ... In me, however, there was a premonition that this was not entirely a question of a human being, but of a being who, tragically, had received too much of the supernatural. F.K. is a messenger, a great chosen one, and only the epoch and the circumstances have enabled him to pour his otherworldly knowledge and his inexpressible experience into poetic parables. I was always aware of this distance between him and me, as I am only a poet.” This celebrated letter was first published in 1937 by Klaus Mann in an article in Die neue Weltbühne, a weekly magazine in Prague.
—Postcard signed by Albert SCHWEITZER to Robert Klopstock, in German, no place, undated [c.1935]; 90 x 140mm (small marginal ink stain on picture side); three lines on recto and three lines on verso in ink, with a photographic illustration of the hospital that Dr. Schweizer established in Lambaréné, Gabon in 1913. Schweitzer sends greetings to Klopstock and addresses him as “The translator of Zwischen Wasser und Urwald,” as Klopstock and his wife Giselle were responsible for translating Schweitzer’s book into Hungarian in 1935 (it first appeared in German in 1921).
—Typed letter signed by Thomas MANN to Dr. Edgar Mayer, in English, Princeton, N.J., 31 October 1938; one page, 280 x 215mm (mail folds, a few marginal nicks and tears). Mann met Klopstock in Europe before fleeing Germany in 1933 and seeking refuge in the United States. In this letter addressed to Dr. Edgar Mayer (1889-1975), pulmonary specialist at Cornell University School of Medicine in New York City, he heartily recommends Klopstock for employment in the same field: “Dr. Robert Klopstock who is introduced by these lines, is a dear friend of mine. In Germany Dr. Klopstock was known as one of the most talented and promising physicians ... I was told there are very few physicians who are able to perform pulmonary operations and internal treatment of t.b. [tuberculosis] as well, and who are doing independent research work in this line as successfully ... Dr. Klopstock is an exceptionally cultivated and brilliant person and I am sure he would be very successful as a scientific lecturer ... If necessary, professor Einstein is willing to join in my efforts...”
—Typed letter signed by Albert EINSTEIN, with four autograph corrections, to Dr. Edgar Mayer, in English, Princeton, N.J., undated [c.1938]; one page, 295 x 208mm (mail folds, small marginal tears at bottom). In his recommendation letter, also addressed to pulmonary specialist Dr. Edgar Mayer of Cornell University School of Medicine, Einstein endorses Klopstock’s skills as a researcher and teacher: “I have heard from professor Thomas Mann of the friendly way in which you have interested yourself in the case of our common friend, Dr. Klopstock. For my part I would ask if you would use your great influence in behalf of Dr. Klopstock, and if you would help him in his effort to obtain a position at a university where he could continue his clinical and theoretical research work. Dr. Klopstock has, in all his research hitherto, treated such essential and important problems, and ... worked along such original lines, and has shown such incontestable ability for scientific and instructional work, that it would certainly be in the interest of any university to avail itself of this opportunity...”
—Three letters by publishers addressed to Thomas MANN and to Giselle KLOPSTOCK regarding the manuscript of her novel, Der Mann ohne Schicksal, that she was submitting for publication, Zurich and New York, 1939-1940; one-page each on company letterhead, 296 x 210mm and smaller (mails folds, small marginal nicks). The Swiss publisher Emil Oprecht of Verlag Oprecht accepted it (Zurich, 18 September 1939), but he was unable to see it through because of the breakout of war. Paul Hoffman of Alfred A. Knopf turned down the manuscript in two letters (New York, 8 March and 15 March 1940), the former addressed to Thomas Mann, who had recommended its publication, and the latter addressed to Giselle Klopstock. The novel does not appear to have ever been published.
—Two typed letters signed by Salman SCHOCKEN to Klopstock, in German, Jerusalem, 1 January and 13 November 1946, the former with a five-line autograph postscript in German signed by Max BROD; two pages, 206 x 157mm, and three pages, 288 x 217mm, respectively (mail folds, small marginal nicks). Salman Schocken (1877-1959), German-Jewish department store mogul and publisher, acquired the rights to publish Kafka’s writings and worked with Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and literary executor, to issue a German edition in the 1930s. Schocken emigrated to Palestine in 1934 after the rise of the Nazis and remained there until his departure in 1940 for the United States. In these letters, Schocken writes to Robert Klopstock about the progress of the new edition of Kafka’s works, and he asks Klopstock to communicate letters that he received from the author and to share his recollections (which would appear as “Mit Kafka in Matliary” in «Als Kafka mir entgegenkam»: Erinnerungen an Franz Kafka, edited by Hans-Gerd Koch and first published by Schocken in 1949). One letter includes Max Brod’s warm handwritten postscript in German: “Dear Dr. Klopstock. I have sorted through so many of your old letters! I have not heard from you in a long time. Mr. Schocken told me a lot about you. Please contact me! I remember you fondly. Yours always, Max Brod.”
—Autograph manuscript by Robert KLOPSTOCK, undated [c.1930s?]; three pages, 284 x 224mm, bifolium (folds, small marginal nicks, some browning and light soiling). Robert Klopstock transcribes verses by Goethe from his play Pandora (“Wer von der Schönen zu scheiden verdammt ist...”) and from Tefkir Nameh: Buch der Betrachtungen (“Behandelt die Frauen mit Nachsicht!”).
Transcriptions of the above and English translations are available upon request.
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