Milena jesenska biography for kids
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On returning to Prague, she makes a name for herself with her passionate writing about a new role for women. Her father, Jan Jesensky, was a Czech university professor of dentistry. She checked into a hospital to end her drug dependence so that it would not impede her work.
In 1938, with the assistance of the courageous, sympathetic, German-speaking and Aryan-looking Joachim von Zedtwitz, she and Klinger arranged an escape route through Poland to England and set about helping people flee the country.
Milena's home became a rendezvous for the refugees and von Zedtwitz, who would then drive them across the border in his jaunty sports car.
Those who venture inside may wonder about the cafe's name and about the beautiful, intense-looking woman whose photograph adorns one of the walls.
That the world remembers the name of Milena Jesenska can be attributed for the most part to her relationship with Franz Kafka. To spare himself any further embarrassment, Jesensky finally consented to their marriage, provided the couple move to Vienna, out of his sight.
Polak was quickly swept up by Viennese intellectual life, spending his time in cafes with his fellow writers and engaging in numerous casual affairs.
It was he who brought Kafka to the attention of Milena Jesenská. Their relationship was described by Milena's daughter, Jana Černá, as a "blend of terror, love, revulsion, hatred and respect." In this way, more than one scholar has noted, it was remarkably similar to Kafka's relationship with his father.
For her education, Milena was sent to the exclusive Minerva Girls' Academy of Prague, an institution that encouraged self-confidence and creativity in the students it hoped to mold into the next crop of elite "modern women."
At Minerva, Milena cultivated her lifelong spirit of independence and nonconformity.
The two began a tempestuous affair that was soon the biggest scandal in her father's social circle. ...
She’s a living fire, such as I have never seen. She was diagnosed with an ulcerated kidney and underwent surgery in the camp. Their letters became increasingly frequent and intimate until, after a few months, Kafka was in love. Her frail, chronically ill mother, Milena Hejzlarova, died when Milena was 16.
But their relationship had no future, and, eventually, it and their correspondence lapsed and faded away.
Milena Jesenska’s marriage with Pollak was a deeply unhappy one, and in 1924, she divorced him and moved back to Prague.
Milena, also smitten, invited him to come and see her in Vienna; in June 1920, after his usual vacillation and trepidation, he went.
The meeting was a profoundly significant event. In one of her first feature articles, she describes how German emigrants who had fled from National Socialism were arriving in Prague.
Milena, however, was a remarkable woman in her own right. She had a willful and generous nature that often manifested itself in a Robin Hood-type of behavior, such as taking items from her own house and distributing them to her less-advantaged friends.
Dr. She also visited him a few times over the next three years as his health continued to deteriorate.
On one of these occasions, Kafka handed Milena all of his diaries and asked her to keep them.
But Milena, still more in love with Polak, could not leave. On two occasions they met in person.