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Latest update: 20/07/2010
- Israel - literature
Kafka originals ‘unearthed’ at Zurich bank
Following a long legal tussle over ownership between the State of Israel and the inheritors of documents relating to author Franz Kafka (pictured), safe deposit boxes at a Swiss bank containing the famed-writers manuscripts have been opened.
By FRANCE 24 (text)
Original manuscripts penned by famed German author Franz Kafka were unearthed Monday from safe deposit boxes at a Zurich bank, according to Israeli news website Haaretz.
According to a Haatetz source, the boxes contain original handwritten material by the author of 20th century classics including “Metamorphosis” and “The Trial”.
Haaretz says that the Tel Aviv Family Court had ordered the opening of four safe deposit boxes after a protracted legal battle over ownership of the manuscripts. On Monday, at UBS’s Zurich branch, Israeli lawyers and literature experts witnessed the opening of the boxes, whose contents had not seen the light of day in decades.
Kafka died of tuberculosis in 1924 aged just 40.
The German Jewish writer asked his friend and fellow writer, Max Brod, to burn his manuscripts after his death.
But Brod did not fulfil his friend’s dying request, instead publishing the novels and taking other material with him to Palestine, before the Jewish State of Israel was created.
The find is the latest twist in a long legal saga over who owns the documents.
The documents are at the heart of a legal tussle between the Israeli authorities and the Hoffe sisters - who say they had inherited the estate from their mother Esther Hoffe, Max Brod’s secretary. Brod also bequeathed the originals to Esther Hoffe.
As Brod had migrated to Palestine in 1939, the state of Israel now claims that Kafka's documents are property of the state.
A trial is therefore ongoing in Israel to determine if the Hoffe sisters are the rightful heirs of this literary, and likely valuable, estate.
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Comments (1)
kafka works...brod family v state of israel
just like everything else...yet another piece of historical treasure as to rights to ownership between governmental state and private family dictatorship...at the end of the day the resulting effect of who owns what should be determined upon the fact that these manuscripts belong to a public world audience in the forgotten unforseen history that they now carry from past to present society unveiling memmoirs that have been kept secret from the public eye for decades...far to long...i say put them in a museum for all to be able to study and enjoy and learn from the past...i would like to hear some commented feed back on this present news article please????
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