Kafkas Schwestern

In the organizer's words:

On June 3, 1924, Franz Kafka dies in a sanatorium near Vienna as a result of his long-standing tuberculosis and is buried in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague on June 11. This was followed by the posthumous publication of his works and finally world fame.

While Franz Kafka's life has been recorded in countless biographies, his three sisters remain largely in the shadows. We know the most about the youngest sister, Ottilie "Ottla", who was a close confidante of her brother throughout her life and with whom she maintained a lively correspondence. Gabriele "Elli" and Valerie "Valli" only appear in passing in the brother's life and writings. After Kafka's early death, the lives of the three became blurred. Most biographies content themselves with noting that Kafka's sisters were murdered in German extermination camps in 1942/43.

On the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka's death, we would like to commemorate Elli, Valli and Ottla with an intervention by artist Sebastian Jung. Their biographies are representative of the extermination of German-speaking Jewry in Prague, of which their brother is celebrated today as a symbolic figure.

An installation by artist Sebastian Jung in the foyer of the Jewish Museum Munich as part of the KAFKA 2024 festival