Grete Bloch

Margarete Bloch (21 March 1892, Berlin – Precise date unknown, 1944, Auschwitz concentration camp) was a friend of Felice Bauer and a pen-friend of Franz Kafka.[1]

Grete Bloch was a daughter of the sales representative Louis Bloch and Jenny Bloch, born Meyerowitz. She visited a girls’ school (höhere Töchterschule) and then two schools for learning a profession: a school of the Lette-Verein (Education for women; founded in the 19th century and still existing) and the academy for trade Salomon in Berlin. At age 16, after finishing her education, she found work in the office machine branch and added in this way to the family income. From 1908 to 1915 she worked in Berlin and Vienna. Before October 1913, she met the four years older Felice Bauer and they became friends.

Felice Bauer had since August 1912 a relation with Franz Kafka. In fact this was a correspondence-relation. Kafka lived in Prague and Bauer in Berlin. We know that he wrote her three letters a day, letters that are today seen as world literature. Besides that he wrote the novel Das Urteil (The Judgement) and parts of the roman Der Verschollenne (The missing; later the English book: The Man who Disappeared; in other languages often: America). But the relation itself remained vague. Grete Bloch wanted to help Felice Bauer and went during her work journey between Berlin and Vienna to Prague.[2] She met Franz Kafka in Hotel Schwarzess Ross (Black Steed) with the intention to get him to Berlin to meet Felice Bauer in person.[3] But the result was that Kafka started also an intensive pen-relation with her, in which he used her as a ‘wailing wall’[4] and where also her private problems became subjects of discussion. On 7 April 1914 he sent her a book of Franz Grillparzer: Der arme Spielman (The poor Musician).[5]

After being informed about the first engagement between Felice Bauer and Franz Kafka (on the first of June 1914) she decided to show Bauer the compromising letters Kafka sent to her (after scissoring out too intimate details).[6] On 12 July, Grete Bloch, Felice Bauer and her sister Erna Bauer went to the hotel Askanischer Hof where Franz Kafka resided. The three woman confronted the Doctor Jura Kafka with his letters to Grete Bloch. The result was the breakup of the engagement. Kafka saw Grete Bloch as the bad genius and the whole gathering as a kind of trial (Diary of 23 July 1914). It took him months to get over this. Then he wrote his famous roman Der Process (The trial). In this (contrary to what happened in Askanischer Hof) the accusation was unknown and the accused had to prove his innocence. So it is probable that Grete Bloch, contrary to her intention, caused the break up of the engagement and made Kafka write his great roman.

Since December 1915 Bloch worked for Adrema maschinenbouwgesellschaft GmbH that made addressing machines. She was secretary to Julius Goldschmidt and later an attorney. So she became one of the best paid women in the Weimar Republic.[7]

After the takeover in 1933 it became in September 1935 forbidden for Jews to work or have such an enterprise. Goldschmidt was forced into Swiss exile. Bloch helped him to build a new enterprise there. But he died in 1936 and the starting enterprise was cancelled. For some time Bloch stayed with Felice Bauer-Marasse in Geneva. Then she went to her brother Hans in Palestine. But she could not settle there and went back to Europe, Florence, fascist-talie where she lived from writing.

Until the Germans occupied Italy (September 1943), Grete Bloch had troubles with her Jewishness but got along. After that she fled to a mountain village but was arrested in May 1944. She was deported to Auschwitz and killed.[8] The 28 letters from Kafka she gave to her teacher Italinish. They are now kept in Marbach (Germany).[9]