According to one guidebook to Prague, Franz Kafka "worked as an insurance clerk, but [italics ours] frequented Berta Fanta's literary salon," at the House of the Stone Ram, which is located on the south side of Old Town Square. The description is true, but there is no reason for the somewhat incredulous "but." If Kafka clerked, he did so in the way that lawyers clerk because he was in fact a lawyer. So it was only to be expected that Dr. Franz Kafka would have been invited to Frau Fanta's prestigous literary salon for discussions on the work of the proto-phenomenologist Franz Brentano and to hear distinguished guests who passed through the city to lecture, including one Albert Einstein shortly after he published a work titled "A special theory of relativity."
The impression many people have that Kafka was a "mere" insurance clerk has also led to another myth regarding Kafka: that he is a rare example of a literary outsider who came, albeit posthumously, to great fame. But, unfortunately for the many of us who are literary outsiders and have drawn hope from his example, this was not the case. Kafka graduated with a doctorate from Charles University in Prague, a leading university of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and so had acquired, and then duly maintained, the all-important literary and business contacts such a schooling confers on an individual. This was especially true in regard to his life-long friend and confidante, Max Brod. Kafka met Brod at the university in 1902, and Brod's connections, energy, and devotion to Kafka and his writings assured Kafka of the high regard of German and Austrian literary circles in his own lifetime, and of the world afterwards.
