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Dora Diamant. Activist, actress, and Franz Kafka’s last companion

Dora Diamant, probably Düsseldorf, around 1928 Portrait photograph, section marked as a passport image
©
Lask Collection

Dworja Diament (Dora Dymant in Yiddish) was born in 1898 in the central Polish district capital Pabianice, south of Łódź. She spent her childhood in Będzin in Lesser Poland, on the edge of the Russian-controlled mining region of Congress Poland in Upper Silesia. She began her struggle for a broader Jewish education early in life. According to the strict traditions of her erudite Hasidic father and his local community, such an education was only available to male children. She secretly joined a Zionist group, twice ran away from a school for girls in Krakow, and finally, aged 21, escaped to Berlin to lead a self-determined life. It was there, in 1919, that she officially registered herself under a German version of her name: Dora Diamant. In July of 1923, while working at the Jewish People’s Home (Jüdisches Volksheim) in Müritz in the Mecklenburg region on the Baltic coast, she met the writer Franz Kafka (1883–1924). She fell in love with him and remained at his side until his death eleven months later. From 1926 to 1930, she worked as an actress in Düsseldorf. She joined the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany, and in 1932 married Lutz Lask (1903–1973), the editor of the communist newspaper “Die Rote Fahne”. In 1936, she fled with Lask to the Soviet Union, before travelling to Britain in 1940 to live in exile. She died in London on 15 August 1952, following a long illness.

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Dora Diamant. Activist, actress, and Franz Kafka’s last companion
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Dora Diamant, probably Düsseldorf, around 1928 Portrait photograph, section marked as a passport image
Dora Diamant, probably Düsseldorf, around 1928 Portrait photograph, section marked as a passport image
©
Lask Collection

Dora Dymant’s own notes:

On a Production of Peretz’s. Three Gifts, in: Loshn un lebn [Language and Life]. Hoydesh-zshurnal far literaṭur, teater, kunst un kultur, 63, London: A. N. Stencl, 1945.

To Moshe Oved on his Sixtieth Birthday, in: Loshn un lebn 69, 1945.

On the Actress Dina Helpern’s Appearance on the London Yiddish Stage, in: Loshn un lebn, September 1946.

Shakespeare on the London Yiddish Stage, in: Loshn un lebn 81, 1946.

Shlomo Mikhoels. The Jew, in: Loshn un lebn 97, 1948.

On a Concert of the PPYL at the People’s Palace, in: Loshn un lebn, January 1949.

 

Bibliography:

J. P. (Josef Paul) Hodin: Memories of Franz Kafka. Notes for a definite biography, together with reflections on the problem of decadence, in: Horizon. A Review of Literature and Art, Volume 17, Book 97, London, January 1948, page 26–45; online resource: https://www.unz.com/print/Horizon-1948jan-00026/ (last retrieved on 4/8/2023).

J. P. (Josef Paul) Hodin: Erinnerungen an Franz Kafka, in: Der Monat. Eine internationale Zeitschrift, Year 1, No. 9, Berlin, June 1949, page 89–96.

Nicolas Baudy: Entretiens avec Dora Dymant. Compagne de Kafka, in: Évidences. Revue mensuelle de l'American Jewish Committee II (8), Paris (?) 1950, page 21–25.

Marthe Robert: Notes inédites de Dora Dymant sur Kafka, in: Évidences. Revue mensuelle de l'American Jewish Committee 28, Paris (?), November 1952.

Marthe Robert: Dora Dymants Erinnerungen an Franz Kafka, in: Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken, Year 7, Book 67, Munich, September 1953, page 848–851, https://www.merkur-zeitschrift.de/artikel/dora-dymants-erinnerungen-an-kafka-a-mr-7-9-848/ (last accessed on 4/8/2023).

Martha Hofmann: Dinah und der Dichter. Franz Kafkas Briefwechsel mit einer Sechzehnjährigen, in: Die österreichische Furche, Volume 10, 1954; 30. Supplement: Die Warte. Blätter für Forschung, Kunst und Wissenschaft, 24/7/1954.

Max Brod: Franz Kafka. Eine Biographie [Prague: Heinr. Mercy Sohn, 1937; New York: Schocken, 1954], Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 1962.

Klaus Wagenbach: Franz Kafka in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Rowohlt’s monographs, published by Kurt Kusenberg, rm 91 [1964]), Reinbek near Hamburg, 10th edition, 1972.

 “Als Kafka mir entgegenkam …”. Erinnerungen an Franz Kafka, published by Hans-Gerd Koch, Berlin: Wagenbach, 1995.

Ernst Pawel: The Nightmare of Reason. A Life of Franz Kafka, New York: The Noonday Press: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1984.

Nicholas Murray: Kafka und die Frauen. Biographie [London, 2004], Düsseldorf: Artemis & Winkler, 2007.

Hans-Gerd Koch: Kafka in Berlin. Eine historische Stadtreise, Berlin: Wagenbach, 2008.

Kathi Diamant: Dora Diamant. Kafkas letzte Liebe [New York, 2003], Düsseldorf: onomato, 2013.

Annekatrin Schaller: Dora Diamant, Kafkas letzte Liebe in Neuss. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Rheinischen Landestheaters, in: Novaesium. Neusser Jahrbuch für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Neuss 2017, page 263-286.

 

Online:

Announcement of a film about the meeting of Dora Diamant and Franz Kafka in Graal-Müritz on YouTube to mark the 100th anniversary, https://youtu.be/s3XPCgffWO0 (last accessed on 4/8/2023).

 

Dora Diamant, probably Düsseldorf, around 1928 Portrait photograph, section marked as a passport image
©
Lask Collection
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