Oskar Pollak

Oskar Pollak ( born September 5, 1883 in Prague, † June 11, 1915 ) was an art historian.

Pollak was classmate Franz Kafka on the Old German Gymnasium. After leaving school he first began studying chemistry, later philosophy and archeology, and finally the art history at the Karl- Ferdinand University in Prague.

At the beginning of his studies, he joined - as Kafka, his closest friend, he was at this time - in the > Reading and Lecture Hall of the German students < a. In the summer semester 1903 he was appointed as rapporteur of the literary art section. In this role, Kafka took over his succession, as Pollak temporarily took a job as a tutor at Castle Oberstudenetz at Ždírec nad Doubravkou in autumn 1903.

Pollak received his doctorate in 1907 on the Baroque sculptor Johann Brokhoff and Ferdinand Brokhoff. In the same year he married in Prague Hedwig Eisner. Probably he was also at this time still with Kafka in conjunction, although its last preserved letter is to a friend in 1904 and Pollak in his lifetime not once mentioned in Kafka's diary.

Pollak wrote numerous studies of art history, especially the Renaissance and Baroque periods. From 1910 to 1913 he worked first as an assistant, after his habilitation as Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Vienna. When he was offered the Austrian Institute for Historical Research in Rome, the position of secretary of art history, Pollak left Vienna and went with his wife to Italy.

At the beginning of the First World War he volunteered. He died on 11 June 1915 on the Austro- Italian front on the Isonzo.

Oskar Pollak left an extensive art historical estate, which was the end of the twenties partially published.