Last week German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined a rally in Berlin against anti-Semitism. The rally was called 'Stand Up, Jew Hatred—Never Again'. Merkel said that she would do all she could to fight abuse against Jews, because anti-Semitism was an attack against all of Germany.
If you hadn’t been following events in Europe you’d wonder why this rally, and Merkel’s speech, was necessary at all. It could only mean that Jewish hatred is possible and that it is happening again.
Our admiration for Kafka was instantly radical, without our quite knowing just why we felt that his work concerned us personally.
In his diary, on the day WWI began, Kafka wrote: ‘Murder in Sarajevo. Went for a bath.’ He seemed a world away, living in some abstract, apolitical universe. If anyone could have predicted the horror of what was to come, however, it was Kafka. The Trial remains the best description we have of 20th century persecution. It tells the story of an innocent man who’s arrested, prosecuted and murdered for no reason by a strange, remote and inaccessible, but all-powerful, authority.
During the recent conflict in Gaza, pro-Palestinian protests were banned in France because of anti-Semitic incidents, even though most of the demonstrators had nothing against Jews. Belgium also banned pro-Palestinian protests and arrested scores of participants for defying the ban. The UK didn’t fare much better.
Related: Metamorphosing Franz Kafka through comics and music
Indeed, an analysis of anti-Semitic incidents right across Europe shows a steady rise. In Britain these kinds of disturbances reached a near-record level, with 304 incidents noted between January and June. In France figures showed there were 527 anti-Semitic incidents between January and July this year—up 91 per cent from the same period last year. Even Germany, working hard to combat such sentiments, said that there were 131 anti-Semitic incidents in July and 53 in June, a huge rise since last year.
These incidents included petrol bombs thrown at a synagogue in Wuppertal and a man wearing a yarmulke being beaten in Berlin. Much of this violence was attributed to frustration concerning the war in Gaza. The longer violence in the Middle East goes on, the greater risk there is of that violence acquiring a life of its own in Europe as ultra-nationalists use it for their own political ends.
At the beginning of last century, the Kafka family lived in the Jewish Quarter of Prague. They were in the old city square and were relatively affluent. However, rising inflation and the anti-Semitism of the time made their lives difficult.
Kafka himself died of tuberculosis in complete poverty in 1924. He’d seen Europe’s grand intellectual project disappear under the auspices of a bloated empire and then sink into a reign of terror. His three sisters were taken to concentration camps and killed during WWII. His two brothers died in infancy. Of the six Kafka siblings, none survived the world wars.
Prague, for Kafka, was a cage looking for a person. He was desperate to get out. He wanted to go to Palestine and began to study Hebrew, but like Moses he never made it.
Kafka’s story is a warning. While institutions like the European Union have given us a grander, more inclusive vision than they had in Kafka’s time, they have yet to evolve mechanisms to control things like hate speech on the internet.
They also cannot control the actions of extreme right-wing nationalist governments, like Viktor Orban’s in Hungary. Diplomats in Brussels can only watch as Hungary rewrites its own constitution, and uses the freedoms of the EU to expel citizens who dare to challenge the current regime.
The current European economic crisis is being used like a firehose aimed at minority groups. The strategy is Kafkaesque—the perfect form of oppression for the modern era. After all, a market economy doesn’t owe anybody anything.
Related: European Classics Book Club on The Metamorphosis
The message of the Trial is that human life counts for nothing and that the authority with complete power over human life has no ideology. All that authority wants is to stay in power. There is nothing else to it.
‘Our admiration for Kafka was instantly radical, without our quite knowing just why we felt that his work concerned us personally,’ wrote Simone de Beauvior, remembering her relationship with Kafka and speaking for a whole generation of French intellectuals.
‘Faulkner, all the others, told us remote stories; Kafka spoke to us about ourselves. He revealed to us our own problems, confronted by a world without God and where nonetheless our salvation was at stake. No father had embodied the Law for us, but the Law was inflexibly engraved in us just the same. No universal reason could hope to decode it. It was so singular, so secret, that we ourselves could never succeed in spelling it out; yet we knew that if we failed to obey it, we were lost.’
Perhaps Jacques Derrida could have comforted De Beauvior by telling her that failure and success in reading the law are not necessarily contradictory. That one can exist alongside the other. He could also have added that neither provides an answer.
This article contains content that is not available.
These were the thoughts I took with me for a walk around Prague. I visited the Charles Bridge, the Palace, the Kafka Cafe and the Old Jewish Cemetery. Finally, I ended up at the giant functioning metronome that overlooks the city. The world’s largest statue of Stalin was knocked down on this spot in 1962; the city of Prague has replaced it with the metronome and a skate park.
The artist who sculpted the enormous statue of Stalin committed suicide. The mass movement which replaced the monument was called the Prague Spring.
Prague has always been a city of a certain kind of stability in a country of turmoil. There have been high ideals, lofty aspirations and radiant optimism in this place of 100 church spires, but there has also been much turbulence and deep despair. This city has a rhythm of enlightenment and oppression.
It is a city of the mind and imagination, and as such this metronome is a parable in itself. Like all parables, the meaning is murky, but it tells me something about waiting and something about meaning continually deferred.
Encounter invites listeners to explore the connections between religion and life—intellectually, emotionally and intuitively—across a broad spectrum of topics.
WhitePaper