Kafka

The fourth episode shows Kafka in his professional world as an insurance lawyer. He is a well-known expert in the field, wins almost every court case on behalf of the insurance company and is highly respected by his superiors - an honor he does not reciprocate. For him, the rather comfortable workplace is a living hell from which he just wants to escape. At the height of the First World War, his superiors go so far as to save Kafka's life by officially declaring him indispensable, thus saving him from being drafted. This episode highlights the reversal of Kafka's nightmarish fear of an overwhelming bureaucratic force that he highlights so well in his works, for Kafka's superiors are by no means unreachable: they are friendly and helpful - a fact that Kafka never acknowledges or admits.

The fifth episode is about Kafka's short but intense relationship with the writer Milena Jesenská, who recognizes his genius in a way that only Max Brod has ever done. During a long afternoon in the Vienna woods, they go through all the phases of a passionate love affair - until they finally separate.

The first half of the last episode focuses on the vacation of Kafka, who was already seriously ill with tuberculosis, in the spa town of Špindlerův Mlýn in the Giant Mountains, which in his imagination is transformed into the dark and mythical village of his last and most famous novel, "The Castle". But he also meets his last great love, Dora Diamant. After he finally escapes the hated office, the two live in Berlin for a few months and spend his last days together in a sanatorium outside Vienna.