Johannes Urzidil became widely known in the 1950s as a writer of short stories; he also distinguished himself as a literary historian and critic with publications on Goethe, Adalbert Stifter, and Franz Kafka.

Urzidil was born in Prague in 1896 to Josef Urzidil, a railroad official, and Elsa Metzeles Urzidil, the daughter of a rabbi. Prague was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; it was a multiethnic city with a sizable German-speaking minority, to which the Urzidils belonged. The death of his mother in 1900 and the remarriage of his father three years later to a woman who was less than an ideal stepmother had a traumatic effect on the young Urzidil.

From 1906 to 1914 Urzidil attended the Humanistisches Gymnasium, a high school emphasizing the study of Greek and Latin and of the ancient Greek and Roman cultures. He then enrolled at the German University in Prague, majoring in German and...