My dear Fraulein Bauer,
In the likelihood that you no longer have even the remotest recollection of me, I am introducing myself once more: my name is Franz Kafka, and I am the person who greeted you the first time that evening at Director Brod’s in Prague, the one who subsequently handed you across the table, one by one, photographs of a Thalia trip, and who finally, with the very hand now striking the keys, held your hand, the one which confirmed a promise to accompany him next year to Palestine.
Now, if you still wish to undertake this journey — you said at the time you are not fickle, and I saw no signs of it in you — then it will be not only right but absolutely essential for us to start discussing this journey at once …
Thus, the opening salvo in the “postal war” that Franz Kafka mounted upon a Berlin secretary in a dictaphone company, Felice Bauer, in September 1912. Their correspondence lasted until 1917 and during this time they were twice engaged to be married.
In the end, Felice — by all accounts, “a positive, uncomplicated person” (Introduction, Letters to Felice) — went on to marry a wealthy Berlin businessman and have two children. Kafka went on to another correspondence: the more famous one with Milena, the married writer and translator, Milena Jesenská, which began in 1920 and lasted until the year before his death at the age of 40 in 1924.
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Kafka’s first letter to Felice was dated 20 September 1912. In it he makes two claims for himself: “I am an erratic letter writer” and “I never expect a letter to be answered by return; even when awaiting a letter day after day … I am never disappointed when it doesn’t come, and when finally it does come, I incline to be startled.”
He then appears to have set out, immediately, to put the lie to these claims with as much alacrity as was logistically possible in early 20th century Europe. For within a matter of weeks, he was writing to Felice up to three times a day including weekends, and reproaching her for not writing:
But why haven’t you written to me? It is possible, and from the manner of that letter even probable, that there was something foolish in it that may have disconcerted you, but it is not possible that the good intention behind my every word could have escaped you.
It was Bernhard Siegert (1) who recognised Kafka’s correspondence with Felice as a “postal war.” Siegert points out that between 1910 and 1914 in Berlin, where Felice lived, there were eight mail deliveries a day including Sundays. In Prague, where Kafka lived, there were two deliveries, and only one on Sundays. So, as Siegert says, from the very beginning, Felice Bauer didn’t stand a chance: “… the armies of postmen were unevenly divided.” The odds of ever satisfying Kafka’s ravenous hunger for response, albeit temporarily, were stacked against her.
In addition, the railways were now delivering mail and by reviewing the train timetables, the correspondent could estimate “the hour in which his letter will reach the hands of its recipient.” Which is exactly what Kafka did, calculating to the minute when the postman for Felice’s street would be walking past that house, turning this corner, nearing her door, and so on.
Kafka didn’t only rely on the ordinary mail but used, as Siegert says, the full “firepower” of the medium available to him. He used ordinary letters, registered letters, express letters, ordinary postcards, picture postcards, photographs and telegrams. He knew that: (1) an ordinary letter mailed in Prague before 4pm was delivered in Berlin the next day (and vice versa), (2) a letter mailed after 4pm was not delivered until two days later, (3) a telegram from Prague to Berlin took 4 hours, and (4) an express letter was delivered the same day.
As early as the fifth letter, dated 24 October, he must have already used the registered mail system because he remarks, “Farewell, and don’t be annoyed by the daily signings of receipts.” Note the “daily” here! And again on 6 November, his letter suggests a steady stream of registered letters:
Does it annoy you to get registered letters? I send them not only because I am anxious, though that is one of the reasons, but because I feel they are more likely to come straight to you, instead of aimlessly shuttling about, like those ordinary letters that sadly ply their way; and I always imagine the outstretched hand of a smart Berlin mailman who, if necessary, would force the letter upon you, even if you were to resist.
Could anyone but Kafka make a registered mail delivery sound like a rape?
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The letters to Felice are like a kind of dress rehearsal for the later correspondence with Milena, but they are remarkable in their own right. Here is Kafka, in his late 20s but seemingly much less mature: rash, ardent and manipulative. Demonstrating all the tics of his nature from the very first paragraph.
Read them. They’ll make you feel sane, if a touch unimaginative.
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Note 1. Bernhard Siegert: Literature as an epoch of the postal system
