He completed his Matura exams in 1901.Īdmitted to the Charles University of Prague, Kafka first studied chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law.

After elementary school, he was admitted to the rigorous classics-oriented state gymnasium, Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, an academic secondary school with eight grade levels, where German was also the language of instruction, at Staroměstské náměstí, within the Kinsky Palace in the Old Town. His Jewish education was limited to his Bar Mitzvah celebration at 13 and going to the synagogue four times a year with his father. From 1889 to 1893, he attended the Deutsche Knabenschule, the boys' elementary school at the Fleischmarkt (meat market), the street now known as Masná Street in Prague. Later, Kafka also acquired some knowledge of French language and culture one of his favorite authors was Flaubert. Kafka learned German as his first language, but he was also almost fluent in Czech. Ottla is believed to have been sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt and then to the death camp at Auschwitz. Kafka's sisters were sent with their families to the Łódź ghetto and died there or in concentration camps. The children were largely reared by a succession of governesses and servants. His mother helped to manage her husband's business and worked in it as much as 12 hours a day. On business days, both parents were absent from the home.

Kafka had two younger brothers, Georg and Heinrich, who died at the ages of fifteen months and six months, respectively, before Kafka was six, and three younger sisters, Gabriele ('Elli') (1889–1941), Valerie ('Valli') (1890–1942), and Ottilie ('Ottla') (1892–1943). Kafka's mother, Julie (1856-1934), was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a prosperous brewer in Poděbrady, and was better educated than her husband. After working as a traveling sales representative, he established himself as an independent retailer of men's and women's fancy goods and accessories, employing up to 15 people and using a jackdaw ( kavka in Czech) as his business logo. Hermann was the fourth child of Jacob Kafka, a butcher, and came to Prague from Osek, a Jewish village near Písek in southern Bohemia. Kafka struggled to come to terms with his domineering father. His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a 'huge, selfish, overbearing businessman' (Corngold 1972) and by Kafka himself as 'a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature. Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, a kingdom that was then part the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Kafka books the trial