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Lenka Reinerova enjoyed the proud but melancholy distinction of being fêted as the last survivor of the “Prague German” writers. They had been a group active in the Bohemian capital in the early decades of the 20th century, linking German, Czech and Jewish culture and writing mostly in a distinctive local form of the German language. In its time the group had embraced such leading literary figures as Rainer Maria Rilke, Frank Kafka and Max Brod, and Reinerova witnessed the last years of its flowering. She could never claim to be a writer in the same rank as the great novelists, poets or journalists. But through her stories and reminiscences she became in recent years a powerful advocate of that great literary inheritance which had seemed not only extinct but often forgotten in its own homeland. Reinerova knew through bitter... [read full story]
