School Life – Kafka at Grammar School

After four years of elementary school, Kafka went up to the German National Humanistic Gymnasium in the Kinsky Palace on the Old Town Square. This humanistic (i.e. classics-oriented) institution educated its pupils in German, mathematics, sciences, and philosophy, and, above all, infused them with the spirit of the ancient world through rigorous study of Latin and Greek. After eight years of exam stress, and presumably also light-hearted schoolboy pranks, in this strict school Kafka took his Matura exams (equivalent to A levels) in 1901 and was thereby declared ready to study at university. 

[I was convinced that] I would not pass the end-of-year exams, and, if I should manage that, I wouldn’t go up a year, and if I managed to cheat my way out of that, I would ultimately be bound to fail the Matura, and, in any case, I would, quite definitely, at some point, surprise my parents and the rest of the world, who had been lulled to sleep by my regular progress, with the revelation of some sudden unheard of inability. 

Franz Kafka, Diaries

You are the exercise. There is no pupil far or wide.

Franz Kafka, Aphorisms