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Max Brod, friend of Franz Kafka, and a writer in his own right, was my grandfather's cousin. I know this, not because my family trumpeted its connection to greatness. In my family, greatness was defined by how successful you were in business, and by how many lawyers you produced in the second generation of Americans.
I knew that Max Brod was a cousin because he occasionally wrote letters to my grandfather. The letters were considered important enough to read aloud, translated from Yiddish into English on the fly, because Max Brod had escaped the debacle in Eastern Europe, and made aliyah, settled in Eretz Israel, The Land of Israel. This was before the land, The Promised Land, became the State of Israel. The letters told us of life in that land that we loved from afar. Max Brod was our cousin in The Promised Land, our connection to hope, to renewal.
My father, who was the worldly one in the family, told me that Max Brod was Kafka's friend, but never elaborated. This was the late 1940's, when Kafka's work was not embraced by many. That came later.
By the time I discovered Kafka on my own, anyone who could tell me more about my familial connection to his greatness was gone. It was left to me to assemble the story of Franz Kafka and his friend.
Brod was a prolific writer. In his time, his work was well-known and greatly admired; more so than that of his friend. But he is remembered today, only peripherally for his own work. Brod's name lives on because of his admiration and support of the work of others. Among the others was Kafka, whose work would be unknown today were it not for my Cousin Max from Eretz Israel.
As executor of Kafka's will, Max was instructed by Franz to burn all his manuscripts. Max Brod betrayed his friend, and refused to destroy Kafka's body of work. My cousin Max gave the gift of Kafka's words to the world. The brave betrayal of his friend became an eternal light burning in honor of both men.
Kafka became an icon, Max, an icon maker. He wrote a biography of Kafka well worth reading. He edited Kafka's work. But he also wrote several historical novels, including
Tycho Brahe's Path to God, Heinrich Heine, The Artist in Revolt and Reubeni, Prince of the Jews: A Tale of the Renaissance. He wrote an autobiography, many poems, essays, and stories, even music. Brod's body of work dwarfs that of his friend. And to the great satisfaction of my family, he managed to find the time to become a lawyer as well.
But Brod's body of work will always be dwarfed by the manuscripts he saved from the flames: Metamorphosis, The Trail, Amerika, The Castle, and a few short stories, each a gem. Max Brod's betrayal was his gift to the world. Brod lived long enough to witness the addition of an adjective derived from his friend's name in the language. "Kafkaesque," used to evoke the surreal and the impossibly complex in daily life, is employed somewhat indiscriminately today. Brod hated that word.
Julie Goldman
Max Brod |