His family were middle-classAshkenazi Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was the fourth child of Jakob Kafka,[3][4] a shochet or ritual slaughterer inOsek, a Czech village with a large Jewish population located near Strakonice in southern Bohemia.[5] Hermann brought the Kafka family to Prague. After working as a travelling sales representative, he eventually became a fancy goods and clothing retailer who employed up to 15 people and used the image of a jackdaw (kavka in Czech) as his business logo.[6] Kafka's mother, Julie (1856–1934), was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous retail merchant in Poděbrady,[7] and was better educated than her husband.[3]Kafka's parents probably spoke a variety of German influenced by Yiddish that was sometimes pejoratively called Mauscheldeutsch, but, as the German language was considered the vehicle of social mobility, they probably encouraged their children to speak High German.[8] Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom Franz was the eldest.[9] Franz's two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy before Franz was seven; his three sisters were Gabriele ("Ellie") (1889–1944), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1942) and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943). They all died during the Holocaust of World War II. Valli was deported to the Łódź Ghetto in Poland in 1942, but that is the last documentation of her.Hermann is described by the biographer Stanley Corngold as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman"[10] and by Franz Kafka as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, [and] knowledge of human nature".[11] On business days, both parents were absent from the home, with Julie Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day helping to manage the family business. Consequently, Kafka's childhood was somewhat lonely,[12] and the children were reared largely by a series of governesses and servants. Kafka's troubled relationship with his father is evident in his Brief an den Vater (Letter to His Father) of more than 100 pages, in which he complains of being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character;[13] his mother, in contrast, was quiet and shy.[14] The dominating figure of Kafka's father had a significant influence on Kafka's writing.[15]

The Kafka family had a servant girl living with them in a cramped apartment. Franz's room was often cold. In November 1913 the family moved into a bigger apartment, although Ellie and Vallie had married and moved out of the first apartment. In early August 1914, just after World War I began, the sisters did not know where their husbands were in the military and moved back in with the family in this larger apartment. Both Ellie and Valli also had children. Franz at age 31 moved into Valli's former apartment, quiet by contrast, and lived by himself for the first time