Franz Kafka—an Expressionist on the Contemporary Stage
Zuzana Augustová*
Abstract
This article claims that Franz Kafka’s work is a central component of Prague German literature and can be categorized as Expressionist, while also integrating elements of Surrealism and motifs from the realm of the absurd. It contends that although Kafka produced only one piece that could be considered “Expressionist”—Der Gruftwächter (The Warden of the Tomb) between 1916 and 1917—his overall body of work possesses a timeless literary quality that has inspired theatre makers, filmmakers, and visual artists throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Keywords: Franz Kafka, Czech theatre, expressionism, dramatic fragment, Amerika
Franz Kafka’s work is a cornerstone of “Prague German literature,” often associated with Expressionism while also incorporating elements of Surrealism and motifs of absurdity. His prose carries a uniquely timeless absurdity that has inspired artists across literature, theatre, cinema, and visual arts throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.
Kafka himself wrote only one dramatic piece in late 1916 and early 1917, which was published by Max Brod and titled Der Gruftwächter (Strážce hrobky in Czech; The Warden of the Tomb in English). It was published in 1936 but was released in a Czech translation by Jiří Stromšík only in 2003.[1] The play was first staged by Jean-Marie Serreau in 1950 at Poche Montparnasse in Paris. The German premiere, directed by Rudolf Jürgen Bartsche, took place on 7 November 1950 at the Zimmerspiele Mainz/Haus am Dom. In 1965, it was filmed by the Belgian director Harry Kümel. A radio play, directed by Ferry Bauer, was presented by Austrian Radio on 21 October 1969. It has yet to be presented in the Czech Republic.
The Warden of the Tomb can be considered as part of the metaphysical strand of Expressionist literature, of which Kafka was a leading representative. From the Warden’s monologue, we learn of apparitions from beyond the grave: each night, the Warden grapples with the dead, who try to escape the Prince’s park. In German, but also in Czech Expressionist drama, the motif of communication between the living and ghosts occurs relatively often. In Czech drama, even this strand of Expressionism contains humour, as seen in the plays Před nebeskou branou (Before the Heavenly Gate, 1922) by Lev Blatný, Matěj Poctivý (Honest Matěj, 1922) by Arnošt Dvořák and Ladislav Klíma (1922) and Mrtvá (The Dead, 1919) by Arnošt Dvořák. In contrast, similar German Expressionist texts are characterised by a dark, spectral atmosphere. Kafka’s text, however, lacks both spectrality and humour, even though he is said to have laughed when reading his works to a circle of friends. Nor do we find in it any elements of heroism, as in Franz Werfel’s debut work Besuch aus dem Elysium (The Visit from Elysium, 1910).
All the direct and narratively processed actions and interactions between the characters, like their reciprocal relationships, are subject to the logic of dreams. Dream logic generally determines the shape of Kafka’s fictional world, the structure of the characters’ statements and the way in which he constructs the story. Even though individual details of Kafka’s literary world border on hyperrealism, they are placed in an entirely unreal context. Thanks to the specificity of details and the objectification of the characters’ subjective states, Kafka achieves a seemingly matter-of-fact and austere style. His style diverges into a straightforward rhetorical Expressionism, as exemplified by the Prague German-Jewish writer Paul Kornfeld in his first dramatic work, Der Verführung (also known as Svedení in Czech and The Seduction in English, 1916).
Expressionism disrupts the familiar dimension of time-space and the progression of events. Duke Friedrich has been appearing to the Warden of the Tomb for thirty years, even though he has only been dead for half that time. The Warden projects his own feelings onto the other characters, as is typical of the subjective perspective of Expressionist drama. He shows tender paternal affection towards the prince, even though he is encountering him for the first time. The immediate mutual closeness of the characters evokes Karel Rossmann’s encounter with a fatherly stoker on board a ship in the short story Der Heizer (Topič/The Stoker, 1913), later inserted into the novel Amerika, originally titled Der Verschollene (Nezvěstný/The Man Who Disappeared, published 1927). In both The Warden of the Tomb and The Stoker, the sudden bond between the two protagonists has the deep intimacy and existential dimension that we know from dreams. Dream logic and a subjective perspective are also associated with August Strindberg’s pre-Expressionist plays To Damascus (1898) and A Dream Play (1902), which became models for Expressionist authors.
The central characteristic of Kafka’s dramatic world is its distinct metaphysical perspective, which transcends both the characters and the authorial voice. Additionally, Kafka’s work cannot be easily categorized within the “O – Mensch – Dichtung” framework; it should not be interpreted merely as a messianic or activist drama aimed at realizing a vision of the New Man or establishing a just society. Instead, it emphasizes not only material concerns but, more significantly, the liberation of the spirit.
During that period, Expressionist utopias served as a counterpoint to apocalyptic visions of the old world’s demise. Notable German plays in this genre include Ernst Toller’s Die Wandlung (Transfiguration, 1919) and Georg Kaiser’s Gas (1918) and Gas II (1920). The protagonists in these works embody the New Man who no longer requires God, as he is capable of achieving salvation on his own.

Max Brod, a close friend of Kafka, contributed notable works to this theme. In his play Die Retterin (The Lady Saviour, 1914) and the one-act piece Erlöserin (The Lady Redemptionist, 1921), he crafted a positive Marian archetype, intriguingly portrayed through the lens of saleswomen. Similarly, Paul Kornfeld’s Himmel und Hölle (Heaven and Hell, 1919) features the character Marie, a lesbian prostitute, who embodies this theme of redemption. Additionally, the prose of Franz Werfel often highlights self-sacrificing, “holy” maidens, exploring issues of Christianity, faith and salvation.
In the novel Nicht der Mörder, der Ermordete ist schuldig (Not the Murderer, but the Victim Is Guilty, 1919), Werfel dealt with the central Expressionist conflict between sons and their fathers as representatives of the old, bourgeois world of stale, ossified values against which the sons are fighting. The conflict with patriarchal authority is also central in a number of Kafka’s texts, starting with Brief an den Vater (Dopis otci/Letter to His Father, 1919) and the crucial short stories Die Verwandlung (Proměna/The Metamorphosis, 1912) and Das Urteil (Ortel/The Judgement, 1912), in which the father represents a kind of higher divine authority whose power includes pronouncing a death sentence on the son, which the son immediately carries out himself by jumping into the river.
In The Metamorphosis and The Judgement, but also in Amerika, The Trial and The Castle, we find the frequent Expressionist motif of the protagonist’s loneliness in an unfriendly world and exclusion from human society, which Werfel’s, Kornfeld’s and Toller’s protagonists also encounter: According to Walter Herbert Sokel, “A deep belief in their own inadequacy emerges as a constant theme in all Expressionist works. Indeed, Expressionism can be seen as an entire generation’s attempt to come to terms with the sense of devastating self-loathing to which modern poets are subject” (107).

The autobiographical characters in these plays hate the bourgeoisie and despise their greed and pursuit of success, even as they envy their lives. They find themselves forever on the periphery of society or are excluded from it due to some fateful trait, even though they wish to be at the centre of societal events. As Sokel writes, “Something within them prevents them from . . . being able to partake of the world’s warmth and love” (107).
Nevertheless, it can be said that Kafka’s work is unlike anything in the literature of his time. Kafka’s “texts . . . circle around some unspecifiable absolute value, we could call it an absolute truth,” writes Ingeborg Fialová-Fürstová (181–82). In this absolute value in Kafka’s texts, combined with his critique of modern rationalism, I see a parallel with the beliefs of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who says, “even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched” (88).
Among Czech authors, Jan Patočka comes close to this dimension of Kafka’s work in the volume Negativní platonismus (Negative Platonism, written in the early 1950s but published only in 1990), with the thesis of the negative, non-substantial idea as a concentration of inaccessible meaning. The following quote could be a definition of Kafka’s concept of the Law:
“But what is this whole, to which we have no access, after all? . . . whence our relation to the totality . . . ? It comes from the Idea as the fundamental source from which our life flows. . . . Every finite experience of our own, every item . . . is only an expression of not reaching the Idea, and the Idea is inexpressible and ungraspable, it is an eternal mystery for the very reason that no reality expresses it. . . . The Idea is therefore pure transcendence, the pure appeal of transcendence. . . . [It] is not an object of contemplation, since it is not an object at all; it is necessary for the understanding of human life, of its experience concerning freedom. . . . The philosophy of negative Platonism is poor, since its knowledge covers one and only thing, and this one thing is not communicated directly as the factual knowledge available in the world . . . in addition, the possibility of leaning on a truth which is not relative and worldly is saved by this knowledge for the human, even though it cannot be formulated positively and in terms of content.” (52–58)
Ingeborg Fialová-Fürstová defines the absolute value in Kafka’s texts in a similar way:
“It is typical of Kafka’s texts that this value is never in any way concretised in them: in the parable Vor dem Gesetz (Before the Law), it is expressed as . . . a blaze which cannot be put out and breaks through the doors of the Law . . . this absolute value—very indeterminate and ungraspable, but nevertheless existent in the text, in metaphor—rebels against closer contact and examination. . . . Kafka thus defines the human negatively, as a being whose curse is to reach . . . the highest values, however indeterminate . . . and these highest values, then . . . are depicted as existent but manifested only by their unattainability.” (181–82)
The theme of the unattainability of the highest values parallels the claim made by twentieth-century French mystic Simone Weil regarding the complete absence of God in our world. Additionally, the presence of absurdity in Kafka’s work resonates with this transcendental perspective:
“Our life is impossibility, absurdity. . . . Impossibility—radical, clearly perceived impossibility, absurdity—is the gateway to the supernatural. It can only be knocked upon. It is opened by someone else. . . . To hear the silence of God in all sounds. . . . The word is the silence of God in the soul. . . . There are people for whom everything that brings God closer to them is beneficial. For me, it is everything that distances Him from myself. Between me and him, there is the density of the universe. . . . Creation is abandonment. By creating something else than Himself, God has necessarily abandoned it.” (103–11)
During the communist regime, Kafka’s works were only published and performed to a limited extent in Czechoslovakia starting in the 1960s. This shift was largely influenced by the international literary studies conference titled “Franz Kafka,” held in Liblice in 1963, which was organised by Germanist Eduard Goldstücker to help lift the taboo surrounding Kafka’s work in Czech culture. Shortly thereafter, director Jan Grossman dealt with Kafka’s work, both theoretically (332) and practically, as a theatre maker. In 1966, he dramatised The Trial and presented it at Prague’s Theatre on the Balustrade. Grossman highlighted Kafka’s proximity to absurdist theatres. As Tereza Pavelková comments “For Grossman, the absurdity was a further prerequisite for [Kafka’s] theatricality. . . [Kafka] managed in his . . . works to depict a world markedly similar to our real one, but which also seems unnatural and deformed” (91–92).
Another wave of dramatic renderings and productions of Kafka appeared in the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s. At the end of totalitarianism, productions of Kafka were both an expression of the disintegration of the regime and a means of critiquing it. The first such production was Amerika, directed by Petr Osolsobě and Jan Antonín Pitínský at Ochotnický kroužek (The Amateur Circle) in 1985. In 1988, Petr Lébl and his ensemble JELO presented their own dramatisation of a Kafka story in Prague, titled Přeměna – wie hatte sich die Schwester denn so schnell angezogen? (The Metamorphosis—How Did the Sister Get Dressed So Quickly?). Here, Pavelková argues,
“[the] main shift was a clear strengthening of the metaphor of a totalitarian system. Lébl set Kafka’s story in the context of Czech-German relations . . . he focused mainly on the motifs in Czech-German relations of the time, which were linked to totalitarianism (i.e. the Nazi occupation) and also used multiple references to the socialist ideology, which quickly supplanted the Nazi occupation.” (108)
In early 1989, Studio Ypsilon presented Amerika, dramatised by Zdeněk Hořínek and directed by Jan Schmid. In 1994, not long after the Velvet Revolution and in new socio-political conditions, a film of the same name, based on the production, was made by director Vladimír Michálek.
In the spring of 1989, a production of Proces (The Trial), dramatised and directed by Arnošt Goldflam, premiered in the Brno studio theatre HaDivadlo, which had staged productions strongly critical of the communist regime throughout the normalisation era thanks to poetic stage metaphors. At the centre of Goldflam’s adaptation “stood not Josef K., but the court process itself. . . . An Expressionist vision of the work from the position of the subject . . . changes in the production into a concrete stage reality of an absurd, totalitarian work, in which everyone is part of a constant, ceaseless court proceeding” (Pavelková 97).
After the fall of the communist regime, the Kafka repertoire “appeared in the work of Czech theatres and in productions by the English language ensemble Black Box, which presented dramatisations of the story The Metamorphosis[2] and the novel The Trial,[3] or as part of the festival Kafkovy divadelní dny (Kafka Theatre Days), organised in 1992 by the Franz Kafka Society” (Pecková Černá 115). After the year 2000, two further waves of Kafka productions appeared, perhaps linked to the feelings of threat, uncertainty and the absurdity of our world, along with its institutions and rules. Theatre makers again reached for the three best-known prose works: after 2000, The Metamorphosis was staged four more times,[4] Amerika three times[5] and The Trial was staged eight times,[6] following the HaDivadlo production. The works of Franz Kafka resonate even in contemporary Czech theatre. This is evidenced by the fact that, in the 2023 and 2024 seasons alone, we can find nine titles based on his literary works in the repertoires of theatre and dance ensembles across the Czech Republic.

I am now going to focus on the latest production of Kafka’s Amerika at D 21 Theatre, which was premiered on 30 April 2021, dramatised and directed by Ondřej Štefaňák. Hasan Zahirović, an actor of Bosnian origin who has long lived in the Czech Republic, was cast in the leading role of Karel Rossmann; it, therefore, entirely conforms to the hero’s and the author’s affiliation with the German-Jewish minority when the actor utters with a non-Czech pronunciation, “I am native of Czechia.” In accordance with the Expressionist poetics, penetrating most of Kafka’s work, Karel is the centre of the stage action, which we perceive from his perspective. But let us not look for metaphysical values in this contemporary treatment. The creators have strongly updated Karel Rossmann’s pilgrimage.
Nevertheless, the archetypal motif is mirrored in the fact that the actor and the director have conceived the hero as a simpleton: he defends himself against the attacks of his surroundings with a childishly defiant diction, which, however, is completely insufficient against the attacks of others, and so—on his pilgrimage through alien society—Karel becomes a bludger and a victim in every milieu. Still, he sets out with undying optimism each time. The awkward, slightly garbled Czech diction of the forty-something Hasan Zahirović, with which he naively repeats the principles that should help him succeed in a hostile world, helps the authenticity of his childlike sincerity. At the beginning, while still in the audience, he recites sentences from the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms: “Personal freedom is guaranteed. No one shall be subjected to forced labour or service. Everyone has the right to retain his human dignity, personal honour, reputation and name.” He repeats them throughout the show and at the end. But all the stage action directly contradicts these principles.

Karel is wearing an uninflated life jacket at the beginning and end. The adapters have actually turned the passengers of the ocean liner into contemporary migrants. As they are waiting on board the ship to be let into a land of wealth and seeming freedom, strife and animosity erupt among the immigrants. Each of them feels more entitled to enter than the others, whom he tries to “eliminate” in order to increase his own chances. And so, in the very first scene, a xenophobic fight is shown, and a murder is implied by covering the body with a golden lifesaving foil. But even on the mainland, paradise awaits no one; rather, the law of might takes the rule. The Statue of Liberty, traditionally welcoming pilgrims, appears in a supremely comic scene as a travesty show actor, accompanied by a Ku Klux Klan member, who hands out “yucky black coffee” to the audience.
The director deliberately plays with various clichés and eclectic naturalistic motifs and escalates them ad absurdum, making visible use of mashed-up theatrical devices: Karel’s uncle Jacob (Marek Zeman), as an Orthodox Jew, has an enormously long grey beard hanging from his chin on a string. The actor chokes with coughing fits, presumably a metaphor for the fact that Uncle has worked his way through the hard work that has ruined his health. Indeed, Uncle is the parodic embodiment of the “American Dream” and, moreover, literally illustrates the right-wing thesis that everyone is accountable for their own happiness, as well as their misfortune and distress, if they have not been enterprising and diligent enough. In the hotel where Karel is later employed as a lift boy, the assistant head cook Tereza (Stela Chmelová) shows him how her mother died: coughing up blood while visibly squishing bags of theatrical blood, besmearing herself with it.

His uncle’s associate Pollunder invites Karel to his country estate to be a companion to his daughter Klára (Stela Chmelová). Director and designer Lenka Odvárková suggests the character’s romantic entanglements with an extravagant rococo wig, while the actress underscores her depravity through a deliberately crude pronunciation of her name and the word “piano,” which Karel is meant to play for her. Throughout the production, the direction deliberately emphasises sexual themes and behaviour bordering on abuse. The victim, of course, is always the childishly defenceless Karel, and the perpetrators are those who pretend to be his friends and supporters: Klára, her father, Green, the head cook, Robinson and Delamarche. Karel’s failed sexual union with a student is portrayed with farcical quasi-naturalistic action. The sexual affair between Delamarche and the singer Brunelda is, in turn, suggested by the singer’s exaggerated bodily forms (the costume mimics her emaciated semi-naked body, the Teutonic helmet with horns suggests her probable German origins), while Delamarche, half-naked, dons the mask of an Egyptian pharaoh (at times on top of his head like a hat) as her “master.”

Most of the action takes place on a simple wooden turntable, where all the characters, including Karel, rotate together. This setup allows for quick scene changes without needing to change the backdrop and enables striking musical entrances during live performances. As a result, the episodes can be edited to resemble Karel’s troubled dreams.The fast-paced rhythm immerses us as well, making us feel Karel’s experiences of outside attacks and the constant sense of threat he faces.

The connection between stage and the spectators is almost permanent: in the process of spilling, handing out and sipping coffee or memorizing passages from the Bill of Rights that contradict everything that happens to Karel. The spectators find themselves the audience of a parodic travesty show concerning the Statue of Liberty, and they become accomplices to a theft when—at an auction—they are forced to buy Karel’s outfit, which is literally ripped off his body by his cunning cronies. One viewer even stands in for Karel as a liftboy. Spectators seem to become direct participants in the migrant crisis, and on the “right” side of the majority society.
But this is not something to be proud of these days, when we realise that a few hundred kilometres away, in the European Union, Greek or Polish border guards have permission, if not orders, to push migrants back across the border at any cost—over the barbed wire fence (as Agnieszka Holland’s recent film Green Border proved) or worse—throw them overboard back into the Mediterranean Sea.
In reality, we live on a continent where those in power are meant to uphold the law, yet they instead validate violence. I doubt the theater group envisioned this societal backdrop while rehearsing America in 2021. However, this unfortunate circumstance makes the production even more pertinent today.
Note: This is a revised and significantly expanded version of the paper originally published in the booklet Rare Czechs (Art and Theatre Institute, Ministry of Culture, 2022).
Endnotes
[1] Kafka, Franz. Strážce hrobky. In: Povídky II, Nakladatelství Franze Kafky 2003, p. 176–217 and 395–400. This dramatic work is also part of the anthology Expresionistické drama z českých zemí. A clean copy and two expanded fragments of Kafka’s texts, including passages that the author struck out (here, in contrast to the original, the character of the Princess appears at the end), were included in the selection of Czech plays and plays translated into Czech from German (all other German texts were translated for the first time for the anthology). See Zuzana Augustová, Lenka Jungmannová, Aleš Merenus (2020).
[2] By Franz Kafka and Steven Berkoff, The Metamorphosis, directed by Nancy Bishop.
[3] By Franz Kafka and Gwen Orel, The Trial, directed by Nancy Bishop.
[4] Theatre a 7 and a Half, Brno (2002), Prague Chamber Theatre at Komedie Theatre (2003), Švanda Theatre, Prague (2014), Studio Ypsilon, Prague (2015).
[5] The J. K. Tyl Theatre, Pilsen (2014), Goose on a String Theatre, Brno (2018), D21 Theatre, Prague (2021).
[6] The F. X. Šalda State Theatre, Liberec (1990), Zlín City Theatre (1997), The Drama Club, Prague (2001), the Petr Bezruč Theatre, Ostrava (2002), Prague Chamber Theatre at Komedie Theatre (2007), Aréna Chamber Stage, Ostrava (2011), Roxy/NoD, Prague (2014), Polárka Theatre, Brno (2021), Petr Bezruč Theatre, Ostrava (2023).
Bibliography
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*Zuzana Augustová pursued her PhD in Theatre and Film Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, and the University of Vienna. Her expertise lies in the theatre and drama of German-speaking countries, as well as Czech theatre and drama. She has taught at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University, the University of Vienna, and the Department of Theory and Criticism at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Additionally, she is part of the Modern Czech Theatre Research Team at the Institute of Czech Literature within the Czech Academy of Sciences. Her published works include Thomas Bernhard (2003), Art Dangerous to Life: Reflections on Contemporary (Not Only) German Theatre and Literature (2018), and Experiment as a Criticism of Nazism: Post-War Austrian Experimental Drama (2020). In recognition of her literary translations, she received the Translation Prize from the Austrian Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture in 2013, as well as the Creative Award from the Translators’ Association in 2016, particularly for her translation of Fritz Zorn’s novel Mars.
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Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #30, Dec. 2024
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