Esther Hoffe

Ilse Esther Hoffe (; 8 May 1906 – 2 September 2007) was a Jewish woman known for being the secretary and presumed mistress of writer Max Brod. Upon his death in 1968, she received a large trove of materials relating to Franz Kafka, Brod's friend. Some of these were sold but most were controversially passed, unreleased to the public, to her two daughters after her own death. She was born in Troppau (Opava).

Biography Hoffe and her husband Otto met Max Brod in Israel soon after he had escaped Prague ahead of the Nazi invasion of the rest Czechoslovakia in March 1939. After the death of Brod's wife in 1942, he grew very close to Hoffe.

The rare sales notwithstanding, in the 40 years between Brod's death and her own, Hoffe maintained a close hold on the papers. They were inventoried by an official archivist in the aftermath of her arrest, but this inventory is believed to be very incomplete, especially as many of the papers were out of the country in Swiss bank deposit boxes. A philologist named Bernhard Echte worked with Hoffe in the 1980s and may have produced the most complete inventory, but copies of this are difficult to obtain.