KAFKA PROJECT CONTINUES IN BERLIN

In Feb. 2023 KAFKA PROJECT Director Kathi Diamant returns to Berlin to coordinate with Dr. Hans Gerd Koch who has been working with the German Federal Archives and Ministry of Culture since 2015 on behalf of the KAFKA PROJECT. She will be meeting with researchers who are continuing the search in Berlin. Since the discovery of an uncatalogued, secret archive in Berlin, in 2013, efforts have been made to procure funding and access so the archive may be catalogued. The archive is reportedly one of many confiscated German collections captured by the Red Army and later returned to East Germany in the 1960s. Read more about the research.

LOST MASTERPIECES

The Nazis confiscated Franz Kafka's love letters to Dora Diamant, and one woman has made the search for them and other missing documents a full-time job, and passion.

On June 3, 1924, Franz Kafka died of tuberculosis in a sanatorium in Austria. He was only 41 years old and was just getting started with his writing career.

But his death was made all the more tragic by love–Kafkas last moments were spent in the arms of Dora Diamant, the love of his life whom he had only met 11 months earlier. Read more about the lost files.

2016 MAGICAL MYSTERY LITERARY TOUR ENDS IN SUCCESS IN BERLIN

The 2016 Kafka Project tour wrapped up with new friendships formed, and long-standing friends and family connections renewed. Members of Dora Diamant's family from Israel joined the tour in Prague. Zvi Diamant's widow, Shoshi, and their children, Dvir, Hadas, Idan and Shani with husband Tamir, plus the newest Dora Diamant descendant, Eyal Diamant, only 5 months old, joined the Magical Mystery Literary History travelers for our personalized tours of Kafka's Prague, and for our welcome dinner reception with Kafka scholars Jan Jindra and Věra Koubová. and Vadim Erent and Bonita Rhodes, owners of Insight Cities Tours. Following the conclusion of the ten-day tour in Berlin, Kafka Project Director Kathi Diamant met with archivist Bernd Rainer Barth and Kafka scholar Dr. Hans Gerd Koch, and a major shift forward was made with the adoption of the Kafka Project by two German Universities.

READ THE 2016 KAFKA PROJECT UPDATE

We have so much news! Since the last newsletter in 2012, we've made significant advancements in the search for Franz Kafka's missing literary treasure. In the past four years, Kafka's Last Love has been published in new editions in Albania, Brazil, Germany and last year in Turkey, adding to translations in China, France, Russia, and Spain. The next edition is to be published by PRAH in the Czech Republic. We've celebrated Kafka and Dora's life in international events in Mexico, Germany, Turkey and England. And sadly, we've lost dear friends whose lives and contributions we will always appreciate, acknowledge, and remember.

FOUND: A CLUE TO KAFKA'S MISSING TREASURE
For more than 60 years, Kafka scholars have believed it possible that Kafka's last writings, unpublished notebooks, and letters written in the last year of his life may have survived, lost among Nazi-confiscated materials which were removed from Berlin during the Allied bombing for safekeeping in Silesia. The Kafka Project at SDSU has made an exciting breakthrough in the ongoing search for this missing literary treasure, the last love letters, and writings of literary giant Franz Kafka. Read more about the clue.

MAGICAL LITERARY HISTORY TOUR INTERVIEWS ON RADIO AND WEB

Magical Literary History Tour Featured in 2 Interviews with Kathi Diamant in October 2015.

RADIO: The tour was featured on the podcast of the KFMB AM 760 It's Your Money and Your Life.

WEB: Read the TravelDew article to learn how the Kafka Project Tour offers a step back into history!

INTERNS AND ASSISTANTS MAKE A DIFFERENCE

In October 2015, Morgan Carlson became the latest Kafka Project assistant, following in the footsteps of Chloë Barran, who is now in her junior year at Bard College, and Diego Lynch, who is now in his first year at NYU Graduate School of Journalism. Chloë and Diego were instrumental in getting the Kafka Project Archive catalogued and organized for future researchers. Morgan will be working on updating the Kafka Project websites and helping organize communications to promote the 2016 Magical Literary History Tour. Read more about our interns.

KAFKA PROJECT RESEARCH PUBLISHED

The Journal of the Kafka Society of America (New International Series) recently published "The Search for Kafka's Lost Love Letters & Last Notebooks." The 22-page academic paper written by Kafka Project Director Kathi Diamant details the almost two-decade long search conducted by the Kafka Project. Read the full article.

EASTERN EUROPEAN RESEARCH YIELDS NEW LEADS

In 2008, the Kafka Project came closer to pinpointing the location of Franz Kafka's missing notebooks and letters. Through media coverage by Czech and Polish newspapers, magazines and radio, and working with libraries and universities, we promoted the search in Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. We learned that if Kafka's lost writings still exist, they are safely buried among top-secret documents in closed archives in Poland. Time and patience is required, but we knew that. In the meanwhile, in order to build interest and urgency, we are joining with German and Polish scholars, writers, academics, historians and government officials. For more information, read the summary of the Final Report 2008 Eastern European Research.

SOLVING A LITERARY MYSTERY

The Kafka Project is the official search to recover the last writings of Franz Kafka, working on behalf of the Kafka Estate of London, England. Under the auspices of San Diego State University's College of Arts and Letters since 1998, the Kafka Project has worked with the German government for the discovery and return of Kafka's unpublished letters and notebooks. Building on the results of the last search conducted by Max Brod and Klaus Wagenbach in the mid-1950s, the Kafka Project is a non-profit volunteer organization, funded by donations, pooling resources, skills and knowledge to resolve a literary mystery.

The missing Kafka material was confiscated from Kafka's last companion, Dora Diamant, in a Gestapo raid of her residence in Berlin in 1933. At Kafka's request, before his death, she burned some of his work. But she saved much more than she burned, including 35 letters and 20 notebooks. Learn more about Dora Diamant.