Von Fledermaeusen und anderen Tieren. Alfred Kurella, Franz Kafka und die Rettung des Epischen

Against the background of the debate on the nature of realism, which reached its climax at the Kafka Conference in Liblice in 1963 and its aftermath, and especially in reference to Alfred Kurella's verdict on Kafka's alienating pseudo-novels, the article aims to reveal the ideological and literary-critical ghosts that inspired such a verdict and to compare the principles of socialist realism with the erosion of historiography that determines the diegesis of Kafka's novels and short stories.