If Kafka had simply stood at the eastern walls of The Castle, looked out over Prague, and watched as the years passed by, he would have seen many of the most important changes that Prague underwent during his lifetime. These 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 Žižkov, Vinohrady, and New Town.
Standing at the southern walls overlooking Mala Strana, which was largely settled by the 18th century, he would have seen far fewer changes. On top of Petřín hill, however, he would have noted the Petřín observation tower, which was built in 1891 as Prague's modest tribute to the Eiffel Tower. And though at present the Eiffel Tower is thought of as an iconic tourist attraction, at that time 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, if we are to believe Kafka's account of the crowd's behavior in his essay "The Aeroplanes at Brescia," in which Kafka describes a trip he took with Max and Otto Brod to an airplane race and exhibition in Brescia, Italy, nothing could better symbolize the technological modernity of his time than the airplane. This essay, 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 why he was one of the world's great writers.
