Advisory Committee

Kathi Diamant, Kafka Project Director (USA)

Journalist, author and adjunct professor at San Diego State University, Kathi Diamant has researched the life of Dora Diamant since 1971. In 1985, Diamant embarked on the first of more than a dozen international research missions to discover what happened to Dora after Kafka's death in 1924. Building on research conducted by Max Brod and Klaus Wagenbach, she began the Kafka Project in 1997 working pro bono for the Kafka Estate in London, England. In 1998, she led the four-month-long 1998 Berlin Research Project, which among other things, confirmed the confiscation of the property of Dora Diamant (Dymant-Lask) and distributed German-language Kafka Project Alerts to Berlin archives, identifying the missing material. Her book, Kafka's Last Love: The Mystery of Dora Diamant was first published in the US and UK in 2003. Translations have been published in Germany, Spain, France, Russia, China, Brazil, Turkey and Albanian. In 2012, she received a residency as an Eastern European scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC.

Bernd-Rainer Barth (Germany)

Born in Hungary in 1957, Bernd Barth is a historian of the modern age in Germany. He has published 20 papers in 72 publications in two languages and 413 library holdings. His book, Wer War Wer in der DDR is an essential guide to the history of the SED and the government of East Germany. His knowledge of the German archives has been essential to the Kafka Project since 1998.

Christoph Geis, Ph.D. (Germany)

Christoph Geis is a retired psychologist and psychotherapist. His scientific studies on Kafka led him to his research project, which he began in 2022, on unknown documents of German literature up to 1945 found in the Federal Archives (Koblenz, Berlin). His active search for Dora Diamant's papers confiscated in 1933 builds on previous research results.

Hans-Gerd Koch, Ph.D. (Germany)

Born in 1954, Hans-Gerd Koch is a literature and book scholar and the leading authority on Kafka’s letters. Since 1981 he has worked at the Kafka Research Center at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. He is co-editor of the critical edition of Franz Kafka’s works, in which he edited the “Diaries,” the “Texts Published in His Lifetime,” and the collections of letters. He is also the editor of the paperback edition of Kafka’s works in the manuscript version.

Anthony Rudolf (England)

Author, translator, editor, publisher, radio and television broadcaster, Anthony Rudolf worked for the BBC World Service in London, England, from 1974-1995. A Royal Literary Fellow, he is the former editor of European Judaism and advisory editor to Jewish Quarterly. Mr. Rudolf is London’s editor of Jerusalem Review, has written books of fiction and literary criticism, and translated French, Russian, and Hebrew poets, and founded the Menard Press, publisher of many distinguished writers and poets, including two Nobel prize winners.

Stefanie Groenke (Germany)

Steffi Groenke joined the Kafka Project in Berlin in 1998 as a translator and administrative assistant. For five years, she provided primary translation and research services for the book, Kafka's Last Love. A 2001 master’s graduate of Free University in Berlin, she taught at Wheaton College in Massachusetts before becoming DAAD-Lektorin at the University of Edinburgh in 2002. She has taught in Germany at the university and high school levels and continues to work in the field of education.

Bonnie G. Klein (USA)

Bonnie Klein was Program Manager of Foreign Acquisitions and Copyrighted Information, Defense Technical Information Center in Ft. Belvoir, VA, until her retirement in 2010. DTIC is the organization which translated, categorized, and disseminated tons of German research and development documents taken from Germany by the Allied Forces. Ms. Klein's prior positions include Acting Chief of Cataloging and Chief of Special Programs. Ms. Klein served as a member of the Federal Library and Information Center Committee, sponsored by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Niels Bokhove, Ph.D. (Netherlands)

Niels Bokhove is a Kafka scholar, philosopher, and former professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The co-founder and first chairman of the board of the Nederlanse Franz Kafka Kring (Dutch Franz Kafka Circle), he served as general editor of the Dutch literary quarterly, Kafka Katern. Dr. Bokhove has conducted original research on Dora Diamant's life in Holland in 1939-40, and has written books, articles and numerous papers about Kafka.

Emeriti Committee

Yoram Mayorek (Israel)

An independent archival research consultant in Jerusalem, Yoram Mayorek retired in 1998 as director of the Central Zionist Archives, after 30 years of employment with the largest and most important Jewish archives in the world. An expert in archival research for museums, exhibitions, archives, and university faculty, Mr. Mayorek specializes in research in Holocaust-era assets, Israel, and genealogy. Fluent in English, Russian, French, Hebrew, and German, as well as his native Polish, his professional contacts and expertise extend throughout the world. It was through his efforts that we obtained Dora’s Comintern file from Moscow’s “Special Archives.”

Rolf J. Goebel, Ph.D. (USA)

Associate Professor of German in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the Born in Kiel, Germany, Dr. Rolf J. Goebel holds degrees from Brown University (M.A. in English, 1977), the University of Kiel (Staatsexamen in German and English, 1979), and the University of Maryland (Ph.D. in German Language and Literature, 1982). From 1982-2020 he taught German language and culture at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus at this institution. A Kafka scholar in literary critical matters, Dr. Goebel has written two books on Kafka as well as numerous published articles.

Kathleen B. Jones, Ph.D (USA)

Kathleen Jones is Professor Emeritus at San Diego State University, former Associate Dean, College of Arts and Letters, and Chair of the Department of Women's Studies at SDSU, the oldest such department in the U.S. Active in the field of women, politics, and feminist theory, Dr. Jones is the recipient of many honors and awards, including four National Endowment for the Humanities grants. Dr. Jones's scholarly writing includes six books published with academic presses--three monographs and three edited anthologies of critical essays. She lives in Stonington, Connecticut.

Timothy Rogers (UK)

Former Deputy Director of the Department of Western Manuscripts at the Bodelian Library at Oxford University.

Advisory Committee

Emeriti Committee

Contact Us