Dora diamond

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dora Diamant (Dworja Diament, Yiddish Dora Dymant ) (born March 4, 1898 in Pabianice , Congress Poland , † August 15, 1952 in London ) was a political activist and actress. She was Franz Kafka's last partner .

Life

family

Dora Dymant was the daughter of Herschel Dymant, a successful small business owner and Hasidic supporter of the Gerrer Rebbe . Her mother died when she was eight years old; the family moved to Będzin in Silesia near the German border. After a short training as a kindergarten teacher in Krakow, Dymant moved to Berlin at the age of 21, where she worked at the Berlin Jewish People's Home .

The time with Franz Kafka

In July 1923, at the age of 25, Dymant met the then 40-year-old Franz Kafka in the Baltic resort of Müritz , where she worked as a caretaker for a holiday colony at the Volksheim. In September of that year, Kafka and Dymant moved into an apartment together in Berlin-Steglitz , Grunewaldstrasse 13. Since inflation was peaking in Germany at this time , they had to move twice due to financial problems. Kafka had now finally broken away from Prague and his family; he considered this to be the greatest achievement of his life. In her later records, Diamant contradicted the image of the neurotic, sexually abnormal poet. She described Kafka as sensual like an animal (or like a child) and described his cheerfulness, playfulness and zest for life. During this time, the story A Little Woman was written .

Marriage plans failed due to resistance from Dymant's father. Kafka's health deteriorated as a result of his pulmonary tuberculosis . In April 1924 he went to a sanatorium in Kierling near Klosterneuburg (Lower Austria). Kafka cared for Diamant there until his death on June 3, 1924. Diamond's devotion to Kafka moved his parents to overcome prejudices against her. When it came to Kafka's funeral, Hermann Kafka telegraphed: “Dora decides” .

Dora Dymant, against Kafka's intention, kept an unknown number - and unknown content - of his notebooks in her possession. These were stolen from her apartment along with her other papers during a raid by the Gestapo in 1933 and have been lost to this day, as have Kafka's letters to Dora Dymant.

Next life

After Kafka's death, Dora Dymant first moved to Berlin, and from 1926 became an actress in Düsseldorf , where she appeared in various productions from 1927 to 1930. She joined the KPD in 1930 after moving to Berlin again . In 1932 she married the economist and editor of the Rote Fahne Lutz Lask (1903–1973). Their daughter Franziska Marianne (d. October 12, 1982) was born on March 1, 1934.

In 1936 Dora Dymant fled with her in-laws Louis Jacobsohn and Berta Lask from the National Socialists to the Soviet Union . Here her husband, who had already fled there, was imprisoned in the course of the Stalinist purges , while in 1938 she and her daughter were able to flee to western countries. When she reached Great Britain in 1940 , she was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man , after which she lived in London. She died in 1952 of complications from kidney failure . The following year, Lutz Lask, with whom all contact had been broken, was released from prison in the Soviet camp.

literature

  • Kathi Diamant: Kafka's last love: the biography of Dora Diamant . From the American by Wiebke Mönning and Christoph Moors. With a foreword by Reiner Stach , onomato-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2013, ISBN 978-3-942864-23-7 .
novel

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Dora Diamant at www.franzkafka.de, accessed on April 15, 2015
  2. ↑ Dieter Hildebrandt: Dora and death . In: Die Zeit 35/2011, 25 August 2011, p. 45.
  3. ↑ a b Oliver Pfohlmann: Kafka's kitsch suspect accomplice , in: Der Standard daily newspaper , Vienna, website from September 26, 2014, supplement album from September 27, 2014, p. A4 f.
  4. ↑ Franz Kafka: Diaries , Volume 3: 1914-1923, based on the critical edition, S. Fischer-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 1990 ISBN 978-3-596-18119-3 , p. 315.
  5. ↑ "Letters and Diaries" at www.franzkafka.de
  6. ↑ Franziska Marianne Lask on findagrave.com
personal data
SURNAME Diamond, Dora
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dymant, Dora
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish Jew, last partner of Franz Kafka
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Pabianice , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 15th August 1952
Place of death London , UK