Founded in 2023, the Franz Kafka Institute (FKI) is an internationally oriented, non-profit research institution based in Prague. The FKI has set itself the aim of promoting knowledge about Franz Kafka, his family and his cultural surroundings and of communicating this to a wider audience through the publication of academic essays and accessible works. A high academic standard is pursued through cooperation with university institutions and leading experts (scientific advisory board). The FKI also sees itself as a forum for interdisciplinary exchange among domestic and international scholars, artists, writers, and institutions. To achieve its goals, the institute has access to an extensive thematic archive of images and publications, which is continuously being expanded.

Current Projects of the Franz Kafka Institute

• The publication of an annotated edition of Franz Kafka’s works in the city where they were written (“The Prague Edition”). Since the founding of the Franz Kafka Institute, the volumes A Country Doctor, The Metamorphosis, Meditation, and the school reader Kein Schüler weit und breit (There is No Pupil Far or Wide) have already been published.

• Research into the medical aspects of Kafka’s life (illnesses, doctors, sanatoriums, medicine around 1900, etc.)

• The translation of international Kafka scholarship into Czech and of Czech academic works into English and other major languages of international research. The first undertaking in this field is the Czech translation of Hartmut Binder’s seminal pictorial and documentary work, Franz Kafka – Ein Leben in Bildern (Franz Kafka – A Life in Pictures), comprising 1,088 pages and more than 1,500 illustrations.

• The publication of the Institute’s own series of scholarly works, making its research topics accessible to a broader public.

• The cultivation of media partnerships with the aim of regularly publishing Kafka-related reports, short articles, etc.

• The expansion of the existing image and publication archive to meet research needs.