Max Brod

Max Brod (; 27 May 1884 – 20 December 1968) was an Israeli author, music critic, composer, and journalist, born as a German-speaking Czech. He is notable for promoting the work of writer Franz Kafka and composer Leoš Janáček. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is best remembered as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka. Kafka named Brod as his literary executor, instructing Brod to burn his unpublished work upon his death. Brod refused and had Kafka’s works published instead. In 1939, as the Nazis occupied Prague, he immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, taking with him a suitcase of Kafka’s papers, many of them unpublished notes, diaries, and sketches. Biography Max Brod was born in Prague in Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic). At the age of four, Brod was diagnosed with a severe spinal curvature and spent a year in corrective harness; despite this he would be a hunchback his entire life. He would later pass stewardship of the Kafka materials in his possession to Esther in his will. Another close companion was Felix Weltsch. Their friendship lasted 75 years, from the elementary school of the Piarists in Prague to Weltsch’s death in 1964. He incre