In 1911 he started studies in English and Polish literature at the University of Lemberg. In 1912 he visited Palestine, which resulted in publication of "In Yidishn Land (In Jewish Land)" in 1912, later republished in Vienna in 1918 as "Heymlider (Home Poems)." In 1914 he published love poems in a tome "Royznbleter" ("Rose Flowers"). Imber was unable to complete his studies because he was recruited into the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1915. After the Lemberg pogrom in November 1918, he traveled to Vienna and joined a group of Jewish authors and continued to write and edit. There, along with other neo-romantic Yiddish poets such as Ravitch, Melech Chmelnitzky, , and Uri Zvi Greenberg, Imber formed the group known as Young Galicia, that began to merge traditional poetry with modern formal experimentation popular in Vienna. Königsberg called Imber the “head” of the movement (and himself as the "heart"). In 1918 they published an anti-war poetry anthology "Inter Arma", redacted by Imber. After several month of travel in 1921, Imber returned to now-independent Poland and settled in Lwów, where he finished his studies.