Abstract
The article first summarizes previous interpretations of Franz Kafka's story "Jackals and Arabs", which in the sense of an allegory assumed that the text actually dealt with the relationship of Jews and Arabs or that of Czechs, Germans and Jews in the Bohemian lands. In a very small-scale reading then the inappropriateness of such approaches is worked out and shown that the narrative revolves around all those phenomena (individuals, groups, relationship of individuals to the group and groups among themselves, tradition, nature and culture), which for intercultural constellations (and thus also for the context of Kafka's life) are relevant.