Dora Diamant (pictured) was the lover of which 20th century writer?

Dora Diamant (1898-1952) was the lover of Franz Kafka (1883-1924) famous for such works as "Metamorphosis" and "The Trial".

She was born in Poland, to a devout family of Hasidic Jews, and after rebelling against the marriage her family intended for her, trained as a kindergarten teacher and later worked as a seamstress. It was around this time that she settled on the "Diamant" spelling of her surname, which had also been written as "Dymant" and "Diament".

She met Kafka in 1923 when she was helping at a Jewish holiday centre on the Baltic sea. Their affair was to be intense, but brief. He was already riddled with TB and died in Dora's arms in 1924.

There is some dispute about her role in the destruction of most of Kafka's papers. Some say she was entirely complicit with Max Brod in complying with Kafka's wish that they were all destroyed, and others that she kept some of his letters and other papers.

In any event, the Gestapo raided her flat in 1933, and despite extensive searches, none of the papers have been found.

Despite her devotion to Kafka, she did marry Lutz Lask, the editor of a Communist newspaper, and they escaped to Russia whilst the Nazis were in power, only to be later persecuted in Stalin's purges. Dora had to escape once again, this time to England, where she still ended up in internment, though a more humane one, as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man.

Her headstone in a London cemetery reads "Who knows Dora, knows what love means."