ARTE Distribution

Kafkaesque! This is the right word to describe this incredible, even miraculous, journey of the work of the Prague German-speaking writer. When Kafka died at 40 in 1924,he ordered his friend and executor Max Brod to burn everything down, although he had only published short texts …

Max Brod discovers and publishes Kafka’s three great novels discovered in his boxes: The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926), and America, (1927). A betrayal that gives birth to masterpieces of the 20th century literature.
 
In 1968, when Brod died - he wanted to bequeath everything to the National Library of Israel but did not have time to finalize his bequest - it all went to his secretary, Esther Hoffe. She committed to entrusting this heritage to the German Literature Archives in Marbach (or LiMo). At the end of 1988, Esther Hoffe sold the manuscript of The Trial to them for $ 1.7 million. It is still there today.
When she died in 2007, her two daughters, Eva and Ruth inherited the manuscript, but the National Library of Israel contested the inheritance and demanded The Trial to the German Archives, arguing a law which prohibited important archives from leaving the country before having been copied: Everything must return to the National Library’s shelves, including "The Trial"... unduly acquired! This is the first page of the most Kafkaesque judicial soap opera, which will end in... 2016. Germany and Israel are waging a "war of memory", as for today's Czech Republic, it simply is satisfied with some statues and commemorative plaques to the great writer