January 18 - September 29, 2024 | Installation in the foyer | Free admission

KAFKA'S SISTERS

An installation by the artist Sebastian Jung in the foyer of the Jewish Museum Munich as part of the festival KAFKA2024

On June 3, 1924, Franz Kafka died in a sanatorium near Vienna as a result of tuberculosis that he had suffered from for several years. He was buried on June 11 in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague. The posthumous publication of his works and ultimately world fame ensued. While Franz Kafka’s life is recorded in countless biographies, his three sisters have remained largely in the shadows.

On the 100^th anniversary of Franz Kafka’s death, an installation by the artist Sebastian Jung at the Jewish Museum Munich commemorates the life and fate of the three sisters:

Gabriele Hermann (1889–1942)
Valerie Pollak (1890–1942)
Ottilie David (1892–1943)

Who were Elli, Valli, and Ottla—as Kafka always called his sisters? The most is known about Ottla, the youngest, who was a close confidant of her brother’s throughout his life. In their correspondence, she comes across as an intrepid young woman who hopes to become professionally independent, considers emigrating to Palestine and finally marries a Czech Catholic against her father’s will. Elli and Valli, who both married and left their parents’ house early, only appear in passing in Kafka’s writings.

In 1941, Elli and Valli and their families were deported to Łódź ghetto. In 1942, they were murdered in Chełmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp. In 1942, Ottla was deported to Theresienstadt where she worked in a children’s home. In 1943, she accompanied Polish-Jewish children deported to the extermination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau where she was also murdered. The three biographies stand for the extermination of German-speaking Prague Jewry, for which their brother is celebrated today as its symbolic figure.

The watercolors, “Three Sisters”, which form the central point of the installation, were created from a photo of the sisters as children and were first shown in the exhibition “Kafka: 1924” at the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich (until February 11, 2024). Moving the pictures to the foyer of the Jewish Museum Munich, the focus is shifted to the lives of the three sisters and Kafka’s Jewish family background. The installation is being shown as part of “Kafka2024”—a year-round festival to mark the 100^th anniversary of Franz Kafka’s death with exhibitions and events in Munich, Prague, and other cities.

The Artist:
Sebastian Jung, born in 1987 in Jena, studied art and design at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. He works in the genres of drawing, painting, and sculpture, designs publications, and initiates interdisciplinary projects as an artist in collaboration with representatives from politics, popular culture, literature, and science. His works have been exhibited in the Kunstsammlung Jena, the Kunstverein Rosenheim, the nGbK (neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst) in Berlin, the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism, the Münchner Stadtmuseum, and the Neues Museum – State Museum for Art and Design Nuremberg, among others.

Curator: Lara Theobalt