Dora Diamant
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Dora Diamant (Dwojra Diament, also Dymant) ( – 1952) is best remembered as the lover of the writer
Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...
and the person who kept some of his last writings in her possession until they were confiscated by the
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
in 1933. This retention was against the wishes of Kafka, who had requested shortly before his death that they be destroyed.


Biography

From a Jewish family, Diamant was born in
Pabianice Pabianice is a city in central Poland with 63,023 inhabitants (2021). Situated in the Łódź Voivodeship, it is the capital of Pabianice County. It lies about southwest of Łódź and belongs to the metropolitan area of that city. It is the thi ...
, Poland on 4 March 1898 (sources differ on her year of birth), the daughter of Herschel Dymant, a successful small businessman and a devout follower of the Hasidic dynasty in Ger. After her mother's death around 1912, the family relocated to
Będzin Będzin (; also seen spelled ''Bendzin''; ) is a city in the Dąbrowa Basin, in southern Poland. It lies in the Silesian Highlands, on the Czarna Przemsza River (a tributary of the Vistula River, Vistula). Even though part of Silesian Voivodeship ...
, near the German border. At the end of World War I, after helping to raise her ten siblings, Dora refused to marry and was sent to
Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...
to study to be a
kindergarten Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cen ...
teacher. She ran away and went to
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
, where she worked in the Berlin Jewish community as a teacher and seamstress in an orphanage (and changed the spelling of her name to Diamant). In July 1923, she was a volunteer at a camp "organized and run by the Berlin Jewish People's Home" at Graal-Müritz on the
Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...
, when she met Franz Kafka, who was 40 years old and suffering from tuberculosis. It was love at first sight, and they spent every day of the next three weeks together, making plans to live together in Berlin. In September, after returning briefly to
Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
, Kafka moved to Berlin, where he and Dora shared three different flats before his tuberculosis required hospitalization. Dora stayed with him, moving even to the sanatorium outside
Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
where he died in her arms on 3 June 1924. After Kafka's death, Diamant was criticized for burning Kafka's papers under his gaze and at his request during his last months of life, as well as for her decision to retain some of his journals and thirty-six of his letters to her. Despite
Max Brod Max Brod (; 27 May 1884 – 20 December 1968) was a Bohemian-born Israeli author, composer, and journalist. He is notable for promoting the work of writer Franz Kafka and composer Leoš Janáček. Although he was a prolific writer in his ow ...
's request that she turn over to him all the Kafka papers in her possession, Diamant kept letters Kafka had written to her. Max Brod, along with others in possession of letters and related materials also chose not to comply with Kafka's final requests that all his writing be destroyed. Diamant also secretly kept an unknown number of Kafka's notebooks, which remained in her possession until they were stolen from her apartment, along with her other papers, in a 1933 Gestapo raid. It is not known which notebooks ended in Diamant's possession and which had already been passed on to Brod during Kafka's last illness. Searches for these missing papers have been conducted by Max Brod and German Kafka scholar Klaus Wagenbach in the 1950s, and since the 1990s by the Kafka Project, based at
San Diego State University San Diego State University (SDSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Diego, California, United States. Founded in 1897, it is the third-oldest university and southernmost in the 23-member California State University (CS ...
in
California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
. In the late 1920s, Dora studied theatre at the Academy for Dramatic Art of the
Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...
Playhouse and worked as a professional actress. She had a "great triumph and her first rave review" in 1928 as the female lead, Princess Alma, in
Frank Wedekind Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (July 24, 1864 – March 9, 1918) was a German playwright. His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes (particularly towards sex), is considered to anticipate expressionism and was influential in the developme ...
's ''King Nicolo, or Such is Life''. In the 1930s Dora joined the
Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (, ; KPD ) was a major Far-left politics, far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, German resistance to Nazism, underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and minor party ...
as an
agitprop Agitprop (; from , portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', "propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in the Soviet Union where it referred to popular media, such as literatu ...
actress and married Ludwig (Lutz) Lask, editor of ''
Die Rote Fahne ''Die Rote Fahne'' (, ''The Red Flag'') was a German newspaper originally founded in 1876 by Socialist Worker's Party leader Wilhelm Hasselmann, and which has been since published on and off, at times underground, by German Socialists and Commun ...
'', the Communist party newspaper. She gave birth to a daughter, Franziska Marianne Lask, named after Franz Kafka, on 1 March 1934. The daughter died in London in September 1982. Dora escaped Germany with her daughter in 1936, joining her husband in Soviet Russia. After Lask was arrested in March 1938 and sent to "a labor camp on the Kolyma River on the Arctic Circle in far eastern Siberia" during
Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...
's
Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...
, Dora left the Soviet Union, traveling across Europe, reaching safety in England one week before Germany invaded Poland in 1939. In 1940, Dora and her daughter were interned as enemy aliens at the Port Erin Women's Detention Camp on the
Isle of Man The Isle of Man ( , also ), or Mann ( ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Govern ...
, then released in 1941. In 1942, she returned to London, where she lectured and gave readings of
Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...
stories for Friends of Yiddish, working to keep the Jewish language and culture alive. She also "worked as a dress designer and opened a restaurant". In 1945, she "published her first theater review in ''Loshn un Leben''. Over the next four years she wrote a half dozen articles and essays in the iddishjournal." In 1949 she finally realized her lifelong dream and visited the new state of
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
. She died of kidney failure at Plaistow Hospital in east London on 15 August 1952 and was buried in an unmarked grave in the United Synagogue Cemetery on Marlowe Road in
East Ham East Ham is a district of the London Borough of Newham, England, 8 miles (12.8 km) east of Charing Cross. Within the boundaries of the Historic counties of England, historic county of Essex, East Ham is identified in the London Plan as a ...
. In 1999, her relatives from Israel and Germany gathered at her gravesite for a stone setting, which reads "Who knows Dora, knows what love means". Diamant is played by actress Henriette Confurius in the 2024 Kafka biographical film ''Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens ( The Glory of Life).


Notes


References


Further reading

* Murray, Nicholas. ''Kafka'', New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. * Pawel, Ernst. ''The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka'', New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1984.


External links


"Kafka Project" at San Diego State University conducts search for Franz Kafka's missing papers, confiscated by the Gestapo

''Branded'', play about Dora Diamant by Remigiusz Grzela
{{DEFAULTSORT:Diamant, Dora 1952 deaths Franz Kafka 19th-century Polish Jews Jewish women activists People interned in the Isle of Man during World War II Polish emigrants to the United Kingdom People from Pabianice County