An observer looking out over the city from the eastern ramparts of the Castle would have seen many changes taking place during the course of Kafka's lifetime. These would have included burgeoning industrialization in the city districts of Holešovice and Karlín, and the building of whole new residential neighborhoods, especially in Josefov, but also in Karlin and Žižkov.
Standing on the Castle's southern ramparts, which overlook Mala Strana, this same observer would have noted far fewer changes -- that city quarter having been largely settled and built up by the 18th century. Looking across and up to Petřín hill, however, our observer would have noticed the presence of the Petřín observation tower, built in 1891 as Prague's modest tribute to the Eiffel Tower; it is true that in our time the Eiffel Tower is thought of as little more than an iconic tourist attraction, an object that is famous because it is famous, but when it was first built it aroused amazement and admiration for its size, the
rapid speed of its construction, and its open-lattice wrought iron structure, all of which helped to make it a symbol of industrial modernity. And it was this admiration that inspired Prague to construct its own tower just two years after the completion of the original.
And nothing better symbolized the technological modernity of Kafka's time than the airplane. At least this is the case if we are to believe Kafka's essay "The Aeroplanes at Brescia," which is an account of a trip he took with Max and Otto Brod to an airplane race and exhibition in Brescia, Italy. The essay, which was published in the newspaper Bohemia in 1909, was one of the first literary descriptions of the airplane to appear in German. On a stylistic level, "The Aeroplanes at Brescia" is important as a reminder of Kafka's writing skills: we are already aware of his remarkable ability to distort our world into something strange and different, as he does for example in The Trial or Metamorphosis; that he was also capable of so brilliantly bringing to life an event that was completely of this world helps to show us why he was one of the world's great writers.
