Kafka's Crucible: School, Language, and the Birth of a Writer

Last time, I talked about Kafka’s childhood and his complicated relationship with his father. So now, let’s continue our exploration of Kafka’s formative years. We’re still in a period preceding any surviving manuscript or fragment—except for the possibility of hidden treasures within the 1,000 untranslated pages of Nachgelassene Schriften und Fragmente (aka Lost Writings). If anyone out there has access to these volumes, do correct me if I’m wrong… So, once more, we must turn to Reiner Stach’s invaluable biography to sketch a portrait of young Kafka as a teenager in his cultural milieu while he attended the Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium in Prague (that is: his high/secondary school).

An essential point before we do: after losing his two infant brothers and being a solitary child until the age of six, Kafka became the eldest sibling and “the boss” as it were of his three younger sisters, Elli, Valli, and Ottla. Though he didn’t share a particularly close relationship with the first tw…