The German novelist and playwright Lion Feuchtwanger was born in Munich on 7 July 1884 as the eldest of the nine children of a prosperous businessman, Sigmund Feuchtwanger, and his wife Johanna. As a schoolboy Feuchtwanger turned his back on the orthodox Judaism and bourgeois conventionality of his parents, seeking an alternative in literature, philosophy and the world of the theatre. Nevertheless, his upbringing left him with the knowledge of the Talmud, the Bible and Hebrew which was to underpin all his work. He proved a gifted student of German literature and history at university in Munich and Berlin, but after completing a doctorate on Heine’s Der Rabbi von Bacherach in 1907 he gave up the prospect of an academic caree

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First published 20 December 2004

Citation: Wallace, Ian. "Lion Feuchtwanger". The Literary Encyclopedia. 20 December 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1514, accessed 9 February 2010.]