Editing Franz Kafka (section)

=== Private life ===
[[File:Felice Bauer and Franz Kafka.jpg|thumb|Felice Bauer and Franz Kafka]]

Kafka never married. According to Brod, Kafka was "tortured" by sexual desire,{{sfn|Hawes|2008|p=186}} and that he was filled with a fear of "sexual failure".{{sfn|Stach|2005|pp=44, 207}} Kafka visited brothels for most of his adult life{{sfn|Hawes|2008|pp=186, 191}}{{sfn|European Graduate School|2012}}{{sfn|Stach|2005|p=43}} and pornography was "part and parcel of his sexual life" at one time.{{sfn|Hawes|2008|pp=69, 186}} In addition, he had close relationships with several women during his lifetime. On 13 August 1912, Kafka met [[Felice Bauer]], a relative of Brod's, who worked in Berlin as a representative of a [[dictaphone]] company. A week after the meeting at Brod's home, Kafka wrote in his diary:

{{blockquote|Miss FB. When I arrived at Brod's on 13 August, she was sitting at the table. I was not at all curious about who she was, but rather took her for granted at once. Bony, empty face that wore its emptiness openly. Bare throat. A blouse thrown on. Looked very domestic in her dress although, as it turned out, she by no means was. (I alienate myself from her a little by inspecting her so closely&nbsp;...) Almost broken nose. Blonde, somewhat straight, unattractive hair, strong chin. As I was taking my seat I looked at her closely for the first time, by the time I was seated I already had an unshakeable opinion.{{sfn|Banville|2011}}{{sfn|Köhler|2012}}}}

Shortly after this meeting, Kafka wrote the story "{{lang|de|[[Das Urteil]]|italic=no}}" ("The Judgment") in only one night and in a productive period worked on {{lang|de|[[Amerika (novel)|Der Verschollene]]}} (''The Man Who Disappeared'') and {{lang|de|[[Die Verwandlung]]}} (''The Metamorphosis''). Kafka and Felice Bauer communicated mostly through letters over the next five years, met occasionally, and were engaged twice.{{sfn|Stach|2005|p=1}} Kafka's extant letters to Bauer were published as {{lang|de|[[Letters to Felice|Briefe an Felice]]}} (''Letters to Felice''); her letters did not survive.{{sfn|Banville|2011}}{{sfn|Seubert|2012}}{{sfn|Brod|1960|pp=196–197}} After he had written to Bauer's father asking to marry her, Kafka wrote in his diary:

{{blockquote|My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature.... I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else ... Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause ... A marriage could not change me, just as my job cannot change me.{{sfn|Wagenbach|2019|pp=119–120}}}}

According to the biographers Stach and [[James Hawes (author)|James Hawes]], Kafka became engaged a third time around 1920, to Julie Wohryzek, a poor and uneducated hotel chambermaid.{{sfn|Stach|2005|p=1}}{{sfn|Hawes|2008|pp=129, 198–199}} Kafka's father objected to Julie because of her [[Zionist]] beliefs. Although Kafka and Julie rented a flat and set a wedding date, the marriage never took place. During this time, Kafka began a draft of ''[[Letter to His Father]]''. Before the date of the intended marriage, he took up with yet another woman.{{sfn|Murray|2004|pp=276–279}} While he needed women and sex in his life, he had low self-confidence, felt sex was dirty, and was cripplingly shy—especially about his body.{{sfn|Steinhauer|1983|pp=390–408}}

Stach and Brod state that during the time that Kafka knew Felice Bauer, he had an affair with a friend of hers, Margarethe "Grete" Bloch,{{sfn|Stach|2005|pp=379–389}} a Jewish woman from Berlin. Brod says that Bloch gave birth to Kafka's son, although Kafka never knew about the child. The boy, whose name is not known, was born in 1914 or 1915 and died in Munich in 1921.{{sfn|Brod|1960|pp=240–242}}{{sfn|S. Fischer|2012}} However, Kafka's biographer [[Peter-André Alt]] says that, while Bloch had a son, Kafka was not the father, as the pair were never intimate.{{sfn|Alt|2005|p=303}}{{sfn|Hawes|2008|pp=180–181}} Stach points out that there is a great deal of contradictory evidence around the claim that Kafka was the father.{{sfn|Stach|2005|pp=1, 379–389, 434–436}}

Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis in August 1917 and moved for a few months to the [[Bohemia]]n village of Zürau (Siřem in Czech), where his sister Ottla worked on the farm of her brother-in-law Karl Hermann. He felt comfortable there and later described this time as perhaps the best period of his life, probably because he had no responsibilities. He kept diaries and made notes in exercise books ({{lang|de|Oktavhefte}}). From those notes, Kafka extracted 109 numbered pieces of text on single pieces of paper ({{lang|de|Zettel}}); these were later published as {{lang|de|[[Die Zürauer Aphorismen]] oder Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den wahren Weg}} (The Zürau Aphorisms or Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way).{{sfn|Apel|2012|p=28}}

In 1920, Kafka began an intense relationship with [[Milena Jesenská]], a Czech journalist and writer who was non-Jewish and who was married, but when she met Kafka, her marriage was a "sham".{{sfn|Wagenbach|2019|pp=154, 159}} His letters to her were later published as {{lang|de|[[Letters to Milena|Briefe an Milena]]}}.{{sfn|Brod|1966|p=389}} During a vacation in July 1923 to [[Graal-Müritz]] on the [[Baltic Sea]], Kafka met [[Dora Diamant]], a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family. Kafka, hoping to escape the influence of his family to concentrate on his writing, moved briefly to Berlin (September 1923-March 1924) and lived with Diamant. She became his lover and sparked his interest in the [[Talmud]].{{sfn|Hempel|2002}} He worked on four stories, including {{lang|de|[[A Hunger Artist (collection)|Ein Hungerkünstler]]}} (''A Hunger Artist''),{{sfn|Brod|1966|p=389}} which were published shortly after his death.