Kafka’s Fiancée, Felice Bauer

They exchanged more than five hundred letters and postcards following their first meeting in Max Brod’s apartment in 1912, and although they seldom saw each other, they got engaged on two separate occasions. However, the Prague bachelor Franz Kafka never settled down with his fiancée from Berlin. The capable bride-to-be had a good job at Carl Lindström AG, a phonograph company – so she had little time, and quite possibly little understanding, for literature. For his part, Kafka complained repeatedly that he was incapable of submitting to the yoke of marriage, that he was alarmed by bourgeois conventions, and that married life would be detrimental to his writing. While Felice eventually sailed into the haven of marriage with somebody else, Kafka remained a bachelor for the rest of his life. 

If she loves me, I don’t deserve it.

Franz Kafka, Diaries

The general critical analysis: I am lost to F. 

Franz Kafka, Diaries

Miss Felice Bauer. When I went to the Brods’ on 13. VIII she was sitting at the table but seemed like a maid to me. I was not even curious as to who she was, but I accepted her straight away. An empty, angular face, which wore its blankness openly. Open neck. Wearing a blouse. Seemed to be dressed in a quite domesticated way, although that turned out later not to be the case. […] An almost broken nose. Blonde, somewhat stiff, unattractive hair, a strong chin. In the process of sitting down, I looked at her more closely for the first time; by the time I had reached the chair, I had come to an unshakeable verdict. 

Franz Kafka, Diaries