FRANZ KAFKA MUSEUM

Description

Essentials about the Franz Kafka Museum in brief

If you want to learn more about Franz Kafka, one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century, the Franz Kafka Museum of the same name is the place to be. Housed in the unique surroundings of a former brickworks on the banks of the Vltava River in Prague’s Malá Strana (just a short distance from Charles Bridge), the museum provides an interesting insight into the life and works of Kafka, a native of Prague. Most of the first editions of Kafka’s works are on display in the exhibition, as well as his letters, diaries, manuscripts, drawings and photographs. Many of the exhibits have never been on display before.

The exhibition in the Franz Kafka Museum

Originally, the Kafka exhibition was conceived as a traveling exhibition and was on display for the first time in 1999. Since 2005, it has now been housed as a permanent exhibition in its own museum in Prague. The exhibition is divided into two parts: While the first part, called “Existential Space,” undertakes a search for traces in Prague around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the second part, called “Imaginary Topography,” attempts to trace this physical reality of Prague and its transformation into a metaphorical image. Sounds a bit complicated – but thus corresponds to Kafka’s texts, which mostly take place in the border area between the real and the imaginary. Image, light and music effects turn the exhibition in the Kafka Museum into a complete multimedia work. Those who want to take some literature home with them after their visit to the museum will find a wide range of Kafka’s works and biographies about the writer in the museum store.

The fountain in front of the Franz Kafka Museum

The architectural highlight of the museum is located in the courtyard of the brickyard. It is the unique fountain by the artist David Cerný. It depicts two water-letting bronze statues facing each other in a lake in the shape of the Czech Republic. A special device rotates the hips and raises the genitals of the two men, so that through the flow of water on the surface of the water the letters of some quotes become visible. You have to come up with something like that.