Kooperativer Bibliotheksverbund

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Format: 1 online resource : , 28 halftones. 9 tables.

ISBN: 9780691222608

Content: Franz Kafka: The Office Writings brings together, for the first time in English, Kafka's most interesting professional writings, composed during his years as a high-ranking lawyer with the largest Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute in the Czech Lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is commonly recognized as the greatest German prose writer of the twentieth century. It is less well known that he had an established legal career. Kafka's briefs reveal him to be a canny bureaucrat, sharp litigator, and innovative thinker on the social, political, and legal issues of his time. His official preoccupations inspired many of the themes and strategies of the novels and stories he wrote at night.These documents include articles on workmen's compensation and workplace safety; appeals for the founding of a psychiatric hospital for shell-shocked veterans; and letters arguing relentlessly for a salary adequate to his merit. In adjudicating disputes, promoting legislative programs, and investigating workplace sites, Kafka's writings teem with details about the bureaucracy and technology of his day, such as spa elevators in Marienbad, the challenge of the automobile, and the perils of excavating in quarries while drunk. Beautifully translated, with valuable commentary by two of the world's leading Kafka scholars and one of America's most eminent civil rights lawyers, the documents cast rich light on the man and the writer and offer new insights to lovers of Kafka's novels and stories.

Note: Frontmatter -- , CONTENTS -- , Preface -- , Abbreviations for Kafka Citations -- , Kafka and the Ministry of Writing -- , Kafka’s Office Writings: Historical Background and Institutional Setting -- , DOCUMENTS -- , 1. Speech on the Occasion of the Inauguration of the Institute’s New Director (1909) -- , 2. The Scope of Compulsory Insurance for the Building Trades (1908) -- , 3. Fixed- Rate Insurance Premiums for Small Farms Using Machinery (1909) -- , 4. Inclusion of Private Automobile “Firms” in the Compulsory Insurance Program (1909) -- , 5. Appeal against Risk Classification of Christian Geipel & Sohn, Mechanical Weaving Mill in Asch (1910) -- , 6. Measures for Preventing Accidents from Wood- Planing Machines (1910) -- , 7. On the Examination of Firms by Trade Inspectors (1911) -- , 8. Workmen’s Insurance and Employers: Two Articles in the Tetschen-Bodenbacher Zeitung (1911) -- , 9. Petition of the Toy Producers’ Association in Katharinaberg, Erzgebirge (1912) -- , 10. Risk Classification Appeal by Norbert Hochsieder, Boarding House Own er in Marienbad (1912) -- , 11. Letters to the Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institute in Prague (1912–15) -- , 12. Criminal Charge against Josef Renelt for the Illegal Withholding of Insurance Fees (1913) -- , 13. Second International Congress on Accident Prevention and First Aid in Vienna (1913) -- , 14. Accident Prevention in Quarries (1914) -- , 15. Jubilee Report: Twenty- Five Years of the Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institute (1914) -- , 16. Risk Classification and Accident Prevention in War time (1915) -- , 17. A Public Psychiatric Hospital for German- Bohemia (1916) -- , 18. “Help Disabled Veterans! An Urgent Appeal to the Public” (1916/1917) -- , Wraparound: From Kafka to Kafkaesque -- , Chronology -- , Notes -- , About the Editors -- , Index , In English.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1515/9780691222608

URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691222608

URL: https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780691222608