Elli Kafka

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Elli Kafka, 1898 or 1900

Gabriele "Elli" Kafka (born September 22, 1889 in Prague ; died 1942 in Chelmno ) was the oldest sister of the writer Franz Kafka .

Life

After her brother Franz, Elli Kafka was the second oldest of the four surviving children of Hermann and Julie Kafka. In 1910 she married the commercial agent Karl Hermann, with whom she had three children (Felix, Gerti and Hanna). In a letter to Max Brod from August 1947, the daughter Gerti Kaufmann reports that Franz Kafka was viewed by his sisters as a kind of higher being.

Apparently Elli only developed a closer relationship with her brother after her marriage. In the spring of 1915 he accompanied her on a visit to her husband, who was stationed in Hungary , and in the year before his death he spent the summer holidays with Elli and her children in Müritz on the Baltic Sea. Kafka took an active part in the upbringing and development of the children, as several detailed letters to Elli attest.

When the global economic crisis broke out in 1929, the Hermann family ran into financial difficulties. The bankruptcy of the family business and the death of her husband meant that Elli Hermann was largely dependent on the support of her sisters.

On October 21, 1941, she and her daughter Hanna were deported to the Litzmannstadt ghetto , where in the spring of 1942 she lived temporarily with her sister Valli and her husband. Elli Hermann was probably murdered in the Kulmhof extermination camp in autumn 1942 . Her sisters Valli and Ottla and other relatives were also victims of the Holocaust . A plaque on the family grave in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague commemorates the three sisters.

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Kafka, Elli
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kafka, Gabriele
BRIEF DESCRIPTION oldest sister of the writer Franz Kafka, victim of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH 1942
Place of death Chelmno