After the death of Esther Hoffe (long time friend and secretary of Max Brod, and sole executor of Brod’s estate), the attempts to seize the final documents of Franz Kafka and Max Brod from the Hoffe daughters have transitioned from passive-aggressive to completely aggressive-aggressive. Over the past two odd years since Esther Hoffe’s death, no argument has been too taboo or absurd, as the memories of holocaust victims and concepts of an ethnic identity are casually dragged through the dirt, in attempts to support claims of ownership to the literary estate of Franz Kafka and Max Brod.

I first became interested in Franz Kafka after seeing a wild and corny trailer for the movie “Kafka” before Franc Roddam’s “K2″. As a kid I was drawn to the film’s indifferent and cruel circumstances in the context of its novel and abundant strangeness. It was the same sort of indifference and weird cruelty I saw in pop-News and bible stories. The films strangeness seemed natural in contrast with the history and myth I was becoming a part of, and articulated for me what, at the time, I suspected were unspoken and natural underlying necessities to the culture I belonged to.

A couple of years later I was given a book of his short stories and couldn’t have cared less. It was a couple more years before I opened it, and few more before I formed a gist from it. If I enjoyed anything from Kafka, it was the kudos points for knowing his name, and the feelings of self-righteous self-pity his stories would inspire.

It wasn’t until after watching a foreign remake of the Metamorphosis that I was reacquainted with the stories of Franz Kafka, and gained a genuine interest in his literary work. Over time, the strangeness and the images I had associated with “indifference and cruelty” had become less sensational and abstract…

These past years, the growing controversy over the rites and ownership of Max Brod and Franz Kafka’s literary legacy has finally come to a head.

Shortly before his death, Kafka entrusted his friend and publisher Max Brod with his written work. It was Kafka’s request that he burn what he had left him. After Kafka’s death Max Brod edited and published Kafka’s stories, turning them into the renowned and wide success they are now.

In 1939, Brod left Prague shortly before the Nazi invasion, taking Kafka’s documents with him to Tel Aviv. The documents were moved again during the Suez crisis in 1956, to Zurich Switzerland.

In Tel Aviv Brod met Otto Hoffe, who was also from Prague, during a Hebrew class. Brod and Otto Hoffe became friends as well as Otto’s wife Esther Hoffe, who eventually became Brod’s secretary and assistant.

In 1961 Max Brod gave most of Kafka’s manuscripts to the Bodleian library at Oxford University (which included The Castle and Amerika), at the request of Kafka’s heirs. Max Brod kept The Trial for himself, claiming it was a gift to him from Kafka. The rest of Kafka’s papers were gifted to Max Brod’s friend and secretary Esther Hoffe in 1947 and 1952.

“The Kafka manuscripts were a gift from Max Brod during his lifetime. Esther Hoffe officially accepted the gift[…] This whole act was not an inheritance process, but simply a gift. The procedure was reviewed by an Israeli district court in the early 1970s and recognized as legal. In 1974, the corresponding judgment was handed down. Based on this, Esther Hoffe was the rightful owner of these Kafka manuscripts. She was therefore entitled to dispose of them – for example, via a Sotheby’s auction in 1988. What Max Brod left behind in his will – which Esther Hoffe inherit[e]d and then passed on to her daughters – is another story. The legality of this final handover is currently disputed by a family court in Jerusalem.”
-Ulrich Raulff, director of the literature archive at the Museum of Modern Literature

In Max Brod’s last will and testament of June, 1961, Ester Hoffe was named the “sole executor.” When Max Brod died in 1968, Ester Hoffe became custodian of his estate. In 1970, Hoffe gave the manuscripts to her daughters. Several years after Max Brod’s death Esther Hoffe was sued, with her legitimacy as executor of Brod’s will contested. In January of 1974, Esther Hoffe won the lawsuit, and the final judgment ruled Esther Hoffe sole executor, allowing Mrs. Hoffe, “for the rest of her life, to proceed at your own discretion.“

Since then, “The executors’ report reveals that [Hoffe’s daughters] sold the manuscripts to private collectors and archives the world over for millions of dollars, and they shared these profits with their mother.”

Manuscripts including letters and postcards sent to Max Brod From Kafka, and a letter Kafka had written to fiancée Felice Bauer (which sold for 11,000 marks). In 1988 the Hoffe’s had Sotheby’s in London auction off the original manuscript of “The Trial”. It was sold for £1million to the German Literature Archive in Marbach.

Since Esther Hoffes death, Eva Hoffe and her sister have been unable to gain access to their dead mothers money (roughly $1.5 million), the current trial being the reason for the court’s inability to issue a certificate of inheritance.

The Israeli National Library has since filed for an injunction on the execution of the will. The National Library claims it was unlawful for Esther Hoffe to have of ever sold any of “the inheritance” from Max Brod.

“The papers did not belong to Ester Hoffe, so they don’t belong to her daughters […] According to the will, the manuscripts belong to us.”
-Shmuel Harnoi, Director of the Israeli National Library

In Max Brod’s will he suggests but never specifies possible placements of his literary estate. “Among the first places mentioned are the Jewish National Library, the University Library in Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv city library, and also ‘every other public archive in Israel or abroad.’”

The National Library believes that Max Brod would have wanted his work to stay in Israel, and uses the mention of the National Library in clause 11 of Max Brod’s will as a possible placement, as reason to their claim.

“The National Library of Israel, which is a library of the Jewish people too, understands that in the will of Dr. Max Brod he asks that these documents should be placed in a public archive and he names the National Library as the first option for that.”
-Meir Heller, acting attorney for The National Library of Israel

Ron Jeremy and friends, promoting his new memoir at the National Library of Israel. Sept. 22 2007

The National Library is also staking claims to already-sold “The Trial”, and is willing to compensate The Museum of Modern Literature for it. The National Library says that they are the lawful owners according to the late Max Brod who was executor of Kafka’s will.

“We have legal representation, but we are not the party leading in the lawsuit. We only have a ‘stand-by’ role, so to speak. Once the case has been solved, we’d be interested in making purchases. That’s why we are involved. And we can keep pointing out that Max Brod, Esther Hoffe and her daughters always said that Marbach would be a very good – perhaps the best – place for the document.”
-Ulrich Raulff, director of the literature archive at the Museum of Modern Literature

The Hoffe sisters claimed they had plans to sell the remaining manuscripts to the Museum of Modern Literature after their mother’s death. When the Hoffe sisters stood to inherit the final literary estate and the money Esther Hoffe had made selling the documents, The National Library of Israel stepped in, stating that the Hoffe sister’s inheritance of Max Brod’s literary estate and its proceeds would be unlawful.

The Hoffe sisters claim this trial has been an invasion of their privacy, and that nothing they have done has been illegal. “Not well loved by most of her neighbors because of the scores of cats she adopted over the decades, giving them free rein to the apartment and front yard.” (Until health inspectors intervened after local complaints about”the stench“) Eva Hoffe in an interview said that she “sees this [her private property] as part of her and her family, and she feels like they [The National Library of Israel and Assoc.] are raping her.” According to another source, Eva Hoffe has even “threatened suicide if she was forced to give the National Library her Kafka items.”

The final papers are stored in safety deposit boxes in Zurich and Tel Aviv. The Library of Israel claims that they are the rightful heir to Max Brod’s literary inheritance, and that in the safety deposit boxes is further evidence to their claims, such as a possible second will that replaces Esther Hoffe as sole executor with Felix Weltsch. The library has since petitioned a court investigation of the remaining manuscripts.

“My animals love the [Kafka papers]. If I were to lose or get rid of them, I know it would hurt them. If you love someone, you can’t hurt them.”
-Eva Hoffe, RollingStone Sept.2001

The Hoffes pleaded that the boxes not be opened, claiming the aged papers could become damaged due to their high acidic content. Potential buyers of the manuscripts, also communicated that a court investigation of the papers would lower their interest in purchasing them.

It’s weird to see such a macabre, mysterious, literary figure, with so much influence, at the core of such a gross and hilarious superficial scandal. This whole story is stale and typical, and leave’s anyone reading about it with a cheap taste in their mouth.

Out of all the reasons as to why the National Library feels it theoretically needs and has a rite to the original copies of the Kafka/Brod papers, the most bizarre feature of these reasons is the fact that they are meant to support the National Libraries need or rite to the original Kafka/Brod papers. The National Library needs the original copies so badly, it’ll shamelessly fuck two creepy old ladies out of a couple million.

More and more unnecessary dramatic and bureaucratic barriers have been placed before a conclusion (by the Hoffes and National Library), just as older ones are being broken, extending this rather simple court procedure into the embarrassing freak show it is now.

Under the extreme controversy that Esther Hoffe inherited the Kafka/Brod papers, the Hoffe’s should have sold the papers as soon as possible and stored their earnings in a place were controversy couldn’t touch them. Now the Hoffe sisters are fucked; they could lose their inheritance of the final Kafka/Brod papers and the money from the Kafka documents they’ve already sold.

The longer this inheritance trial lasts, the more desperate for victory the Hoffes are going to become. After two plus years of trial and possibly more to come, the Hoffe sisters would be lucky if the manuscripts could bring in enough money to pay off all their court costs.

“If Franz Kafka could’ve seen his literary legacy culminate into a hollow courtroom drama you’d find on afternoon television, I hope he would’ve changed his mind about having it all burned. Not like it mattered anywise.”
-John Tomlinson Jr.