Beschreibung:

KAFKA, Franz (1883-1924) Presentation inscription signed ('F. Kafka') to [Dr Hugo Bermann], Prague, 18 December 1905, also signed by his friends Berta Fanta, Ida Freund, Max Lederer, Oskar Pollak and Emil Utitz, in Ludwig Busse. Geist und Körper, Seele und Leib. Leipzig: Verlag der Dürr'schen Buchhandlung, 1903. Original boards (binding worn and weak at joints, repaired with tape). [With:] Two autograph letters and one autograph postcard signed to Hugo and Else Bergmann by Max Brod, [c.1927], 1956 and n.d., an autograph letter signed by Else Brod, 1913, and a transcript of a poem by Brod. A presentation inscription by Kafka and friends. The signatories alongside Kafka include Berta Fanta (1865-1918), who led a well-known Prague literary and philosophical salon, attended variously by Albert Einstein, Kafka, Brod, Bergmann (who was to marry Fanta's daughter, Else), Rudolf Steiner and others; Fanta's sister, Ida Freund; the art historian Oskar Pollak (1883-1915), whom Kafka had succeeded as rapporteur of the literary arts section at Charles University in 1903; and the philosopher Emil Utitz (1883-1956). The recipient, Hugo Bergmann (1883-1975) had been a schoolfriend of Kafka's, and was close to Max Brod, whom he introduced to Zionism; Bergmann emigrated to Israel in 1920, where he was director of the Jewish National Library and a professor, and later dean, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The book was presented to Bergmann on the occasion of his Doctorate of Philosophy: the inscription by his former fellow-students is 'Zur Erinnerung an unser gemeinschaftliches Streben' ('In memory of our common endeavours'). The letters to the Bergmanns by Brod include a reference to his novel Die Frau nach der man sich sehnt (1927), and express his resistance to atonal music (which he will 'take only in homeopathic doses'), as well as offering congratulations on the birth of their son Martin in 1913.