PROFILE ROFESSOR KathiDiamant ID: 417756
Download Pdf The PPT/PDF document "about her namesake" is the property of its rightful owner. Permission is granted to download and print the materials on this web site for personal, non-commercial use only, and to display it on your personal computer provided you do not modify the materials and that you retain all copyright notices contained in the materials. By downloading content from our website, you accept the terms of this agreement.
PROFILE about her namesake ROFESSOR KathiDiamants life waschanged forever by aGerman languageclass at Georgia Uni-versity in 1971 when she was19-years-old. The daughter of Jewish theatredirector William Diamant and hisactress wife Peggy, Kathi hadspent much of her childhood inGermany, where her father ran theFrankfurt Playhouse, founded bygoverthe post-war Marshall Plan. After short spells in France andKorea, the family returned totheir native America where Kathiwent to university, majoring inart. She chose the German class asknowledge of German from herchildhood. The 19-year-old had a crush on bringing me back to Kafka. It wasas if she were saying to me, takeanother look at Kafka. She continued: That day I wentto the library and looked up every-thing I could find on Dora. She did appear in the finalchapters of Kafkas biographies,but nobody knew what happenedto her. She disappeared afterKafkas death in 1924. There was no record of herexcept to say that she burned his shared her surname. She said: Dora and I were clear-ly connected, besides the fact thatwe shared the same surname. I wasborn on May 15, 1952, three monthsto the day before Dora died onAugust 15. According to the Kafka biogra-phies, Dora was a 19-year-oldwoman when she met Kafka in thelast year of his life. I was 19 when Ifirst learned about her. That con-nected us.Although, after years of search,Kathi never found any genealogi-cal connections between herfathers family and that of Doras,that ceased to matter.Kathi told me: What happenedalong the way about me knowingabout Dora was that it ceased tomatter whether or not we wererelated. We were clearly connect-ed. In writing her biography it was read about her was amazing. Iwanted to be related to her. Kathi, who went on from Geor-gia University to study perform-ing arts at Florida State Universi-ty and then had an extremely suc-cessful career as a TV producerand presenter, later discoveredthat Dora was herself an actress,joining the communist theatrecompany Agitprop to campaignagainst the Nazi regime in 1930sBerlin. Kathi told me: Many coinci-dences kept me going through thelong slog. It wasnt till 2001 that I foundmyself in Dusseldorf where shehad gone to theatre school. I wentto the theatre museum, which hadall the letters and records abouther theatrical training. Her train-ing schedule was exactly the sameas mine.Besides these amazing similari-ties, what was it about Dora that late Jewish lovers wishes by set-tling in Israel, but had been calledback to her home, which was thenin London, when her daughterIt took 13 years from first hear-ing the mention of Doras nameuntil Kathi was able to begin hersearch and fill in all the gaps ofhistory, not only about Doras life,but also about that of her formerJewish lover Kafka.Kathi was interviewing thecurator of the Smithsonian Insti-tution in Washington DC, who wasbringing an exhibition of Judaictreasures from the Czechoslovak ! "#$$ % ! &!'()*+, "' #- ## ' # . +*+ . %-/* - ## 0 # /0## 0 / was that sheburned his work to influencemy decisions ! " # $ ! %!& '& ( " !)* ( ! ( + (&( ' %% % , -* ). .+(*'& ) 5( &(*+ /0% ! ( !1 #2345 33 and Vienna, where Kafka died. Iwas able to visit the room wherehe died in Doras arms. Then I went on to Israelbecause I learned that there was aDiamant collection at HebrewUniversity with the genealogy of300 different Diamant families. Itwas boots on the ground. I showedup. In 1990, I went to London to findDoras grave. I stayed for six weekstill I found it, walking miles part of Kafkas ! "#"$ SMARTGIVING has launched itsupdated charity account andfundraising platform,smartgiving.org.ukThe platform has undergoneextensive redevelopment, givingit a sleeker look and feel, andmaking it even easier for donorsand charities to raise funds.SmartGiving works like abank account, enabling users tomanage their charitable giving A CAMPAIGNS manager atAmnesty International hascalled for the prosecution of vis-iting former Israel DefenceForces chief and defence ministerKristyan Benedict posted onTwitter: An urgent call on theUKs Director of Public Prosecu-tions to prosecute visiting warMofaz was in the UK to attendthe UK-Israel strategic chal-lenges conference.Amnesty distanced itself fromone of Benedict previous tweetswhere he used the hashtag#JSIL? (Jewish State in the Lev-ant) a play on Islamic State ofIraq and the Levant.