Kafka’s Earliest Writing Fragment to Auction With $15,000 Estimate
The 14-year-old Kafka's note in a friend's album
A short inscription by the 14-year-old Franz Kafka which is the earliest piece of his writing known to exist will come to auction for the very first time at Bonhams' Fine Books & Manuscripts online sale running December 8 - 18.
The early scrap of writing from a teenage Kafka in his own hand appears on page six of the 'liber amicorum' or autograph book of his close childhood friend Hugo Bergmann who went on to be the founder of Israel's National Library. Signed by Kafka and dated Prague, November 20, 1897, it reads in the original German:
Es gibt ein Kommen und ein Gehn
Ein Scheiden und oft kein – Wiedersehn
which in English translates to: "There is a coming and a going/A parting and often no – reunion."
Bergmann, who like Kafka was born and raised in Prague, took his book - which has 20 leaves and a contemporary red blind stamped cloth - with him when he immigrated to Palestine in 1920. Bergmann was an influential member of the Jewish community both in Prague and in Israel. Together with Martin Buber he founded Brit Shalon, an organization that sought peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Israel. In later life Bergmann later suggested Kafka's words be interpreted "as a warning to his generation"
The fragment has an estimate of $10,000 - $15,000.
