Kafka, vegetarianism, Moriz Schnitzer and the International Vegetarian Union.
In this talk I will show you interesting facts about life of Franz Kafka, his vegetarianism and even connections to the International Vegetarian Union. One part of this talk will be about Moriz Schnitzer, Jewish vegetarian from North Bohemia, whose organization was a member of the International Union and who was the organizer of the IVU Congress in 1929. Kafka met Schnitzer in 1911 ad followed his advice about healthy lifestyle. He was also for 15 years subscriber of Schnitzer´s magazine called Reformblatt. In this presentation I will show you some photograph from Kafka´s life and vegetarian restaurants that he visited. As the main resource I’m using Kafka´s own diaries and correspondence which I highly recommend to everyone who thinks, that Kafka is boring and hard to read author. It’s an amazing journey through his life and feelings and, of course, it’s telling us a lot about his vegetarianism.
I will very briefly introduce Franz Kafka and then will I start with his vegetarian life.
Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, Bohemia, a part of Austria-Hungary at that time, in Jewish German speaking family, eldest of six children. After secondary school he studied Law at the Charles University in Prague, finished the university with title Doctor of Law and started to work in an insurance company. Interested in literature he started writing and publishing and become one of the most important authors in modern literature with famous stories and novels The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle.
His father was from a kosher butcher’s family (which has caused many troubles for Franz) and had a store with men's and women's fancy goods and accessories in Prague.
Kafka suffered tuberculosis and died in 1924 at the age of 40.
There are many myths about Kafka. If you have read his diaries and letters and then some of the hundreds of books that are published about him, it seems, that the authors have never used Kafkas own writings and are only recycling other books.
One of the Myths about Kafka is that he was an unknown author discovered much later in the 1960´.
The truth is that he was not only known as a writer, but also as a vegetarian!
In the newspaper Prager Tagblatt from June 1918 he is mentioned three times in two different articles. In one of them- which is about Prague’s German writing authors – is written:
“Franz Kafka who got the Fontane Award for his stories The Stoker and the Metamorphosis, draw off sensitively, has bought a garden somewhere in Deutschböhmen, where he is looking for the return to nature in a vegetarian way.”
There are other myths, for example that Kafka loved Prague, was shy, especially in contact with women and did not like his profession.
The truth is that he wanted to get out of Prague and travelled a lot through Europe, had more women than is today’s average and was an excellent lawyer. He was so good lawyer that he moved up in his job and got more money even when he was on long term sick leave. And his employer protected him from military service in the World War 1st.
Kafka´s Famous Quote
There is world known sentence that Kafka said. “Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore“he told to the fishes in aquarium.
But where does this sentence comes from? Although very often used in many lists of famous vegetarians, most people don’t know. It’s neither in his writings, nor letters or diaries.
It comes from the biography of Kafka written by his best friend Max Brod. Brod writes, that Kafka said this to Brod´s girlfriend when they were watching fishes in Aquarium in Berlin (before the marriage of Max Brod and Elsa, i.e.1913) and Brod follows “he became a strict vegetarian.”.. “He (Kafka) compared the vegetarians to the early Christians, like them, the vegetarians are pursuit and taunted in dirty dinning houses.”
Kafka – Vegetarian
It is not known when exactly Kafka becomes vegetarian but it was around 1909-1910. In December 1910 he wrote in his diary “I was thinking about vegetarian dinner and was satisfied with my digestion.” He was probably influenced by his uncle Siegfried Löwy, a medical doctor. He also started with exercises from the book Mein System written by Jorgen Peder Müller (1866-1938) a Danish vegetarian athlete who had lectures in Prague’s vegetarian restaurant in 1906. And eating by the rules of Horace Fletcher (1849-1919) – chewing the food many times.
This system o chewing has caused, that Kafka´s Father was covering his view on Kafka during the dinner for a couple of months before he accepted it.
In 1911 Franz Kafka met Moriz Schnitzer who advised him to be a vegetarian, to have fresh air, to sleep at the opened window and to work in the garden.
Kafka was following this completely including the working in garden. After his office work he went to one of Prague’s gardeners and helped him. Not many gardeners had lawyer as worker.
Kafka started with vegetarianism because of health reasons, but his vegetarianism was also ethical. Later Kafka had an agreement with his sister Ottla, that if the doctors will force him to eat meat, she will be a vegetarian instead of him. It was probably a way how to save the animals. She kept that promise even after his death and remained vegetarians until her death in concentration camp.
There is another very interesting fact. Kafka is very often writing about the animals. And for example a short story called Report for an Academy (Ein Bericht für eine Akademie) written in 1917 is about the line between an animal and a man. An ape has learned to behave like a human to escape from captivity and is writing to the academy about his transformation. But there are many other animals in his novels and stories. Singing mouse, mole, jackals, dogs, horses, oxen etc... In his stories meat is eaten raw and bloody:
An Old Manuscript
“Not long ago the butcher thought he might at least spare himself the trouble of slaughtering, and so one morning he brought a live ox. But he will never date to do that again. I lay for a whole hour flat on the floor at the back of my workshop with my head muffled in all the clothes and rugs and pillows I had, simply to keep from hearing the bellowing of that ox, which the nomads were leaping on from all sides, tearing morsels out of its living flesh with their teeth. It had been quiet for a long time before I risked coming out; they were lying overcome round the remains of the carcass like drunkards round a wine cask.”
(Letzthin dachte der Fleischer, er könne sich wenigstens die Mühe des Schlachtens sparen, und brachte am Morgen einen lebendigen Ochsen. Das darf er nicht mehr wiederholen. Ich lag wohl eine Stunde ganz hinten in meiner Werkstatt platt auf dem Boden und alle meine Kleider, Decken und Polster hatte ich über mir aufgehäuft, nur um das Gebrüll des Ochsen nicht zu hören, den von allen Seiten die Nomaden ansprangen, um mit den Zähnen Stücke aus seinem warmen Fleisch zu reißen. Schon lange war es still ehe ich mich auszugehen getraute; wie Trinker um ein Weinfaß lagen sie müde um die Reste des Ochsen.)
In books about Kafka, there is a myth, that Moriz Schnitzer was a fanatic or sectarian.
This is mentioned in many biographies of Kafka and it is only showing, how the authors know nothing what they are writing about.
Moriz Schnitzer was a successful Jewish businessman and textile factory owner in Warnsdorf in North Bohemia. After years of health problems he learned about vegetarianism and healthy lifestyle and started helping the other people. He founded organization Naturheilverein (Union for Natural Healing) in 1894 and started with publishing of magazine called Reformblatt für Gesundheitspflege (Reform Magazine for Healthcare) and in a short time he unified many “return to nature” clubs in one big organization.
The “Natural Healing” was not in term of modern esoteric kind of natural healing. Schnitzer was advising people to eat healthy and to be active and helped them with the access to health care if they couldn’t afford it.
In 1906 he bought large piece of land and let it for people to have there their own vegetable gardens, which helped them especially during the food crisis in the World War 1st. Later he bought another large area for the same purpose and opened there also a public swimming pool. The gardens are still there.
Also in the First World War he exchanged goods from his own factories for food and was giving this to the poor and also -together with Prague’s vegetarians - demanded different food rations for vegetarians. He was many times accused for medical advice without a licence and brought to trial but was always cleared.
One example of how clever was Schnitzer in solving complications is described in Czech vegetarian magazine in 1900. One of his lectures was banned so he declared it as a voter’s assembly, which couldn’t be banned in any way and could be done without permission and supervision.
In the Vegetarian Messenger from September 1935 there is an article mentioning Schnitzer.
“Mr. M. Schnitzer (Czecho-Slovakia), speaking on the subject of "The Ethical Worth of Vegetarianism," said he was a vegetarian for moral reasons and held that man should be guided in his choice by his conscience and by the senses of sight, smell, hearing and taste. Our senses, had, however, been wrongly used for hundreds of years and the brain's keenness of reception spoiled. … Mr. Schnitzer had been led to the practice of vegetarianism by the revolting sight of an animal being slaughtered in the open air. One fine morning he saw a young cow bound to a linden tree in flower. The butcher came on the fair scene, stunned the animal with a blow of his pole-axe and then cut its throat. How different the effect on the senses from that of viewing an orchard ripe with fruit.”
In 1923 Moriz Schnitzer and his son Adalbert visited International Vegetarian Union Congress in Stockholm and the Nature Healing Union becomes a member organization. He was present on other IVU congresses. His friends Bernhard O. Dürr and Hans Erwin Feix were active in the IVU and all together organized the 1929 congress in Steinschönau. All went perfect until 1938, the Munich Agreement and annexation of the border area of Czechoslovakia where Schnitzer lived. Schnitzer was Jewish and therefore on the meeting of the Nature Healing Union in 1938 after 44 years of being a chairman he was not re-elected (and even not invited) and was replaced by his old friend Bernhard O. Dürr, the president of the International Vegetarian Union. This was sharply criticised in Czech vegetarian magazine Natural Doctor as a sign of Nazi rising power and racial cleanings and as an inflictor refusing re-election of Schnitzer is mentioned Hans Erwin Feix, the secretary of the IVU. We don’t know much about this, but this was probably an unsuccessful attempt to save the Natural Healing Union which did not helped. The Union has become a part of another organization that was connected to Nazis and ceased. Schnitzer died at home in February 1939 at the age of 78, early enough to escape the death in concentration camp. Bernhard Dürr died during the war and Hans Erwin Feix disappeared. This all led to the lost of complete files and documents of the International Vegetarian Union that ended probably confiscated by the Nazis.
Schnitzer´s Nature Healing Union was member of the IVU since the IVU Congress in Stockholm in 1923. Kafka was a subscriber of the magazine Reformblatt since 1911 until his death. The subscribers were usually automatically members of the Nature Healing Union that had ten thousand of members and was one of the largest organizations, if not the biggest in Europe. So perhaps Kafka was a member of IVU´s member organization.
We are not sure about Kafka¨s membership, but we know for certain, that he was a subscriber of the magazine for 15 years and we have a proof that he supported Schnitzers activity against vaccination.
In the June 1911 edition of Schnitzers Magazine Reformblatt, there is a list of supporters of this antivivisection activity. There is mentioned Dr. Franz Kafka from Prague as a donator of 2 Crowns for the campaign.
At that time, vivisection was in the stage of “testing on humans”, using dirty substances made in a process of infecting and killing animals and causing very often horrible health damages and even death especially among children. The Austrian government wanted to make it compulsory and Schnitzer tried to change it. But even writing about the complications and cases led to confiscation of the magazine. But Schnitzer was very clever and only changed the name of the magazine for a while and started publishing again.
His struggle was supported by some of the members of the Parliament, who wrote complaints and wrote about strangling of the freedom of the press and suppressing the truth.
But let’s turn back to Franz Kafka
As I mentioned, in December 1910 he wrote into his diary: “I was thinking about vegetarian dinner and was satisfied with my digestion”
His new lifestyle did not only cured his digestive system, the exercises were also successful so Kafka who was ashamed of his thin body went half a year later proudly to the public swimming place.
Thanks to his diaries we know, that on New Years Eve 1911 he had dinner with black salsify (also called serpent root or viper´s herb, Schwarzwurzeln in German) with spinach and a quarter litre of fruit juice Ceres.
He was also mentioning the food when writing postcards to family and to his friends, like in 1911 to his sister Elli: “I’m eating here cranberry milk, Herkulo, Stuffed cabbage, fruit soup and other good things which you can’t even envy me.”
Schnitzer´s organisation impressed him so much, that he wrote to his diary in March 1912: “I wish I had the power to establish a nature healing association.”
Kafka was choosing vegetarian places for Holidays and sanatoriums with vegetarian diet to cure his health problems. He had many troubles with his lifestyle, the family and especially his father did not accept it. But his friends saw the positive effect of this and supported him.
In a letter to his girlfriend Felice in 1912 he wrote:
“My lifestyle- that cured my stomach – would seem foolish and intolerable to you. My father had to cover himself with newspaper during the dinner for months until he accepted it.”
“Of course I do not drink alcohol, coffee and tea and usually don’t eat any chocolate.”
Few days later Kafka´s mother writes secretly to Felice: “If it would be in your power to change his lifestyle, I would be very grateful.” So Kafka had to explain Felice what is he eating and why and added: “there is no other diet that is more exciting for me than this”
He is supported with his friend Max Brod who wrote her:
“Franz found after years of searching finally diet that makes him good, and that is the vegetarian diet. He suffered on stomach illnesses for years and now is he so healthy and fresh like never before…. But now the parents are trying to make him to eat meat again.”
Felice admitted that she is eating meat and asks Kafka about that. He answered: “I’m allowing sausage, mixed cold meat and things like this, but I ´m finding drinking of such an amount of tea, especially so regularly, unpleasant and you are defending this like other people defends poison that they are used to.”
She also told him, that she is a great cook, but he replied: “That will be useless in our household, unless you will learn it completely in a new way…. I believe, that our household will be vegetarian, or not?” And he sent her My System for Ladies by J.P. Müller.
Later, Kafka is writing to another friend, Grete Bloch who lived in Vienna, this time he is promoting vegetarianism and showing the positive health effects of this lifestyle.
”Dear Miss Bloch, follower of natural healing is not surprised that you have headaches, but friend is sorry about this!
Couldn’t you start with the simplest change in your life - with the vegetarian diet? Meat is so ravaging your horrible tired body. Nevertheless there is a vegetarian restaurant in Opolzer Street near the Hofburg Theatre, the best one I know. Clean, nice, with very friendly family of the owner. Maybe is closer to your workplace than your own flat…” That the food is cheaper in Thalisia (that’s the name of the place) than yours I’m certain, and that is important for you”
“There is no doubt that you will eat there better and with more joy (but maybe not during the first days), that you will feel more free and stronger, you will sleep better and wake up fresh.” “I wish you will try this”
Few days later he writes again: “You are not writing about headaches, does this means that it stopped thanks to strict vegetarian diet? You are making great pleasure to the follower of natural healing suffering almost unremitting headaches.”
In another letter she was writing about her tooth aches that are caused by the cold wind. Kafka writes her: “There is no doubt, that the air draught is not the cause of the tooth ache. On the contrary, the tooth feels best in the air draught. And if it’s not the result of the bad care, it’s - like it was by me – caused by the meat eating. We eat, smile and talk and in the meantime, in the little fibres of the meat between the teeth germs are rising in no small amount, rotting and fermenting like dead rat clenched between two stones. And only meat is having fibres like this which can be removed only very hard and not completely, unless we would have teeth like predators, pointy and with gaps for tearing these fibres.
But this won’t help you. You have not been in the restaurant in Opolzer Street and you are not going there even now, in the season of fresh vegetables.”
Kafka was using this sharp propaganda to turn people to vegetarianism. On his journeys he had very often to defend his vegetarianism “against advices of meat eaters and beer drinkers” and that vegetarianism is good for intellectual working people.
Here are some places where Kafka was eating.
Thalysia Reichenberg/Liberec
Thalysia was one of the first restaurants Bohemia opened at the end of 19th century. It was founded by Mrs. Amalia Gebhardt, Reichenberg´s well known fighter for the rights of the women. The restaurant was appraised by vegetarians, women and people looking for health but smokers, meat eaters or alcoholics could ´n stand it. There were funny songs or stories about the restaurant or even a few street fights. Thalysia was offering more than 20 meals on the menu, alcohol – free drinks, salads, teas, fresh fruit and juices etc. Opening hours were from 7am to 10pm. Due to the pressure of other restaurants Amalia Gebhardt was forced to close in 1912. Kafka visited this restaurant during his business trip to Reichenberg, sent a postcard with picture of the restaurant to his sister and described her he had for diner.
Warnsdorf - Reformspeisehaus David Zimmer
David Zimmer´s Reformspeisehaus (Reform Eatery) in Warnsdorf was the first vegetarian restaurant in Bohemia. Zimmer was a friend of Moriz Schnitzer and was also active in Schnitzer´s Natural Healing Union. In this restaurant was the library of the Union.
1911 Kafka met here Moriz Schnitzer. He sent this postcard.
Berlin – restaurant at the Friedrichstrasse
There were at least two vegetarian restaurants located on this street. Kafka visited Berlin many times and lived here for a time so he probably visited both. In October 1923 he wrote to his friend Max Brod: “We had poached eggs with potatoes (excellent, made with good butter), then vegetable schnitzel, then noodles with apple purée and plum compote, another plum compote and tomato salad.
13 years earlier he wrote to Brod: “Nothing is as good as the food in this vegetarian restaurant. Instead of bread rolls the have Graham’s bread. I’m awaiting semolina pudding, raspberry syrup, lettuce salad with cream, and gooseberry wine, and strawberry-leaf tea will taste perfect with this.”
In addition to these restaurants he visited other, In Vienna, Prague, Switzerland and many other places. We also know where he could buy vegetarian food in Prague, probably in this store. He also had vegetarian cookbooks and once said that cooking is very easy.
There is another myth about Kafka - that his lifestyle has worsened his illness.
This is simply not true. The prognosis for tuberculosis patients at that time were following: 40% died within the first year from the symptoms - the blood coughing (like the English poet John Keats or Kafka’s contemporary Czech poet Jiří Wolker if we are talking about writers) and the rest - 50-60% within 5 years. Kafka lived for 7 years.
But there is another surprising thing. In October 1918 was Kafka infected by so called Spanish Flu, an epidemic of extremely dangerous strain of flu that killed almost 100 million people worldwide. More than were killed during the World War first. Healthy people in Kafka´s age were dying in thousands, but Kafka himself already fighting for a year with lethal tuberculosis did not and recovered quickly.
The doctors were not able to help him, but following Moriz Schnitzer´s advice about vegetarianism and healthy eating and exercises added few years to Kafka’s life. On this picture from 1921 he is almost 40 and fighting with tuberculosis, but he looks healthy and much younger.
Kafka did not like physicians much, but consulted his health problems regularly. But they were not able to diagnose him right or cure him. In 1916, probably already suffering tuberculosis, the doctor declared him healthy and advised him: “smoking less, not to drink, but occasionally, more vegetables than meat, no meat in the evening, going to the public swimming place” Kafka was a non smoker, usually drank no alcohol, did not eat meat but a lot of fruits and vegetables and went swimming regularly. No surprise that he did not trust the doctors much.
In 1920 he wrote to his sister: “I don’t want to go to the sanatorium at all. Why? The doctor will catch me and will choke me with amounts of meat stuffing it into my throat with his disinfection stinking fingers.”
So he was choosing places, where was vegetarian food as a part of the treatment. But in 1920, while in sanatorium in Tatra Mountains, they had no sympathy for his vegetarianism he had to eat fish as a part of the treatment.
Kafka wrote her sister: “I was sad in the evening, because I ate sardines. They were well prepared, with mayonnaise and potato purée, but it were sardines. For a few days I was eager for meat and this was a lesson to me. Sad as a hyena I walked through the woods. Sad as a hyena I spent the night. I imagined hyena that has found a tin-can of sardines lost by some caravan, is breaking the can with her teeth and eating the carcasses.
What is the difference between her and people? She doesn’t want but have to, we needn’t but want to.
The doctor was calming me down in the morning –why to be sad? I ate the sardines and not the sardines me.”
Although his lifestyle helped him with the fight with tuberculosis, unfortunately, Kafka´s illness worsened in 1924 and he died on June 3, 1924 from starvation in sanatorium near Vienna. The tuberculosis damaged his throat and he was not able to eat anything.
I hope that I have presented a new view on Franz Kafka as an active vegetarian and on Moriz Schnitzer, an important person for the International Vegetarian Union - that Kafka did not said only one nice sentence about vegetarianism but was much more active vegetarian than we thought and Moriz Schnitzer wasn’t sectarian freak but humanist and philanthropist and that without him and his friends there would probably be much less activity in International Vegetarian Union in the 1920´and 1930´.
I will close this talk with one interesting finding. At the end of his life, Kafka´s dream was to go to Palestine and to open a restaurant in Tel Aviv with his last girlfriend Dora, he wanted to work there as a waiter. You can guess what kind of restaurant it would be.
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