The House “At the Minute” in the Prague Old Town

The Kafka family lived in this Renaissance house on the Little Square from July 1889 to September 1896. For many decades previously, the building had been used for the mixing of ointments and preparation of potions – an apothecary called the “White Lion” was based there until it closed in the middle of the nineteenth century. The lion on the corner of the house serves to this day as a reminder of its former masters. Then, in Kafka’s time, a tobacconist moved into the ground floor of the building. The Kafkas, who moved restlessly from one apartment to another, settled here for a few years. Kafka’s three sisters came into the world here in quick succession, and every morning a lad walked out of the door: the young Franz on his way to the nearby German Primary School for Boys. 

To do what is negative is imposed on us; to do what is positive is a gift.

Franz Kafka, Aphorisms

Once as a young boy I was given a Sechserl [coin worth 10 Kreuzers] and I particularly wanted to give it to an old beggar woman who sat between the Great and Little Squares. But it seemed to me a vast sum of money, a sum that had probably never before been given to a beggar, so I was too embarrassed to do something so outrageous in front of the beggar woman. But I was still compelled to give it to her, so I changed the Sechserl, gave the beggar a Kreuzer, walked all the way around the Town Hall and the arbour into the Little Square, came out on the left as a brand new donor, gave the beggar another Kreuzer, set off again and happily repeated the procedure ten times (or maybe not quite so many, I think the beggar woman lost patience with me later on and disappeared). In any case, by the end of it I was so physically and morally exhausted that I ran straight home and cried until my mother gave me another Sechserl.

Franz Kafka to Milena Jesenská