Oskar Pollak

Pollak, born in Prague, was a classmate and possible lover of Franz Kafka at the Altstädter Gymnasium (letters from Kafka to Pollak potentially imply some sort of romantic or sexual relationship between the two, with suggestive language and vague innuendos to some sort of risqué behavior).

After graduation from school, he briefly studied chemistry at the Faculty of Science of the German-language section of Charles University (the Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität) in Prague, before switching to the Faculty of Arts where he studied philosophy, archeology and art history.

Kafka took over this function, when in 1903 Pollak accepted a temporary job as a tutor at Schloss Oberstudenetz at Zdiretz.

When he was offered the position of secretary of art history at the Austrian Institute for Historical Research in Rome, Pollak left Vienna and went with his wife to Italy.

Part of his private library was a large collection of topographical descriptions of and guidebooks to Rome, on which Ludwig Schudt based his bibliography Le Guide di Roma, published in 1930.