Scholars await Kafka papers

TEL AVIV, Israel — Franz Kafka's final wish before his death in 1924 — that his papers be burned — was famously defied by his friend, the writer Max Brod. The world got "The Trial," "The Castle" and the adjective Kafkaesque; Brod got the papers.

When Brod fled to Tel Aviv from Prague in 1939, he took a suitcase full of Kafka's documents.

Here, he took up with his secretary, and when he died in 1968, he bequeathed to her the remaining Kafka papers, as well as his own.

For nearly 40 years, the secretary, Esther Hoffe, held the world of Kafka scholarship on tenterhooks, keeping the documents in her ground-floor apartment, some of them piled high on her desk (it was originally Brod's), where she typed all day and took her meals.

The last time a scholar was permitted into the apartment was in the 1980s. Later, Hoffe sold the manuscript for "The Trial" for $2 million. No one knows what remains.

Since her death last year at age 101, her 74-year-old daughter, Hava, has indicated a decision about the coveted papers will be made in the coming months. While most of the Kafka estate already is in archives in the Czech Republic, Britain and Germany, some may still be inside Hoffe's apartment.

As her mother did, Hava Hoffe is keeping scholars and archivists up at night wondering about the condition of what they believe are letters, diaries, photographs and perhaps unpublished works of the two Czech Jewish authors, with Kafka one of the best-known authors of the 20th century.

"Brod was an extremely versatile, fertile, even obsessive writer who kept a diary," noted Nurit Pagi, who is writing her doctoral dissertation on Brod at the University of Haifa.

"What we believe Hoffe must have is the diary he kept from the day he arrived in Tel Aviv in 1939, filled with observations. For researchers, it would be very significant."

The question preoccupying Israeli scholars is not only whether or when Hoffe will sell or donate the literary estate to which she and her older sister, Ruth, are heirs, sharing it with the world. It is also whether a way can be found to keep the trove in Israel, which many here consider its rightful home, as the stronghold of Jewish national and historic heritage.

Hava Hoffe took care of her mother in the apartment for years and seems to be in charge of the issue. She is not well loved by most of her neighbors because of the scores of cats she adopted over the decades, giving them free rein of the apartment and front yard.

She shuns publicity, declining all interview requests. But encountered on the street one recent morning, Hoffe spoke for about 10 minutes.

A former ground hostess at Ben Gurion Airport, Hoffe described herself as a Holocaust survivor (she arrived at age 10 from Prague), said she was destitute and saw no reason to give away the only asset she had — the literary estate of Brod, who, she said, had been like a second father to her.

She said she hoped to write a book about Brod herself because she wanted to share his brilliance with the world. She implied a willingness to sell — but not to donate.

Implying the valuable documents had been stored somewhere safe, Hoffe then described a sense of being pressured from all directions, especially by the state of Israel, to yield the papers or come to a decision on their future. She felt under siege, caught in a web, she added.

Her blue eyes yielding no hint of irony, she said, "It is truly Kafkaesque."