Edgar Joseph Feuchtwanger (born 28 September 1924) is a
German-British
Germans in the United Kingdom form one of the largest minority groups in the country. Today, there are many Germans living in the United Kingdom, and many Britons or ''German British'' () have German ancestry, including the British royal family. ...
historian.
Life and work
Feuchtwanger was born in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...
. He is the son of Erna Rosina (née Rheinstrom) and lawyer, lecturer, and author
Ludwig Feuchtwanger, and a nephew of novelist and playwright
Lion Feuchtwanger
Lion Feuchtwanger (; 7 July 1884 – 21 December 1958) was a German Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht.
Feuchtwanger's J ...
, who was a vocal critic of Hitler and the Nazis. His family is
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
. As a child, he lived with his family in Munich near the private residence of
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
on Grillparzer Strasse. From 1935 to 1938, he attended the Maximiliansgymnasium in his hometown.
Feuchtwanger was 14 when the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
arrested his father on 10 November 1938, part of the coordinated
pogrom
A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russia ...
known as ''
Kristallnacht
() or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation fro ...
'', which included the detentions of 30,000 Jews in Germany and Austria, the deaths of 91, and the widespread ransacking of Jewish-owned stores and synagogues. Edgar's father Ludwig was then imprisoned at the
Dachau concentration camp, and 14-year-old Edgar's sense of security crumbled.
When his father was released six weeks later, the family considered relocation options. They dismissed Palestine and Prague
and ultimately managed to obtain entry visas to Britain, and in February 1939, Edgar boarded a train bound for London. His father accompanied him as far as the Dutch border, and then returned to Germany to finish arrangements for him and his wife to follow. In May of that year, the family was re-united in England. From 1944 to 1947, Edgar studied at
Magdalene College
Magdalene College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel, in time coming to be known as Buckingham College, before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mar ...
in
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...
, where he received his doctorate in 1958. From 1959, he taught history at
University of Southampton
, mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour
, type = Public research university
, established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...
, until he retired in 1989.
In 2003, he was awarded the
Federal Cross of Merit.
In 2012, Feuchtwanger co-authored a book with French journalist Bertil Scali describing his childhood brushes with Hitler entitled ''Hitler, mon voisin: Souvenirs d'un enfant juif'' it was published in English in the US as ''Hitler, My Neighbor'' in 2017. Feuchtwanger has also published an autobiography describing his experiences during the "Third Reich" and the post-war years, entitled ''I Was Hitler's Neighbour'', in 2015.
Feuchtwanger was appointed
Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the
2021 New Year Honours for services to Anglo-German understanding and history.
Published works
*''Disraeli, Democracy and the Tory Party''. Oxford University Press, 1968.
*''Prussia: Myth and Reality''. Oswald Wolff Limited, 1970.
*''Upheaval and Continuity: A Century of German History''. London: Wolf, 1973.
*''Gladstone''. Macmillan, 1975.
*''The Soviet Union and the Third World''. Macmillan, 1981. (with Peter Nailor).
*''Democracy and Empire: Britain, 1865–1914''. Edward Arnold, 1985.
*''From Weimar to Hitler: Germany, 1918-33''. Palgrave Macmillan (2nd Revised edition, 1995)
*''Disraeli''. Bloomsbury USA, 2000.
*''Imperial Germany 1850-1918''. Routledge, 2001.
*''Bismarck''. Routledge, 2002.
*''Albert and Victoria''. Hambledon Continuum, 2007.
*''Hitler, mon voisin: Souvenirs d'un enfant juif'' (with Bertil Scali). Éditions Michel Lafon, 2013 (in French).
*''Hitler, My Neighbor'' (with Bertil Scali). New York: Other Press, 2017.
References
External links
''Hitler My Neighbour'' 60-minute documentary film (Kuiv Productions, France, 2012), broadcast in English on PBS America
background information and informal bibliography for researchers, journalists, students, etc.
"What Hitler's Jewish Neighbor Saw" CNN Amanpour, 23 June 2016.
"Growing Up Jewish on Hitler's Block: 'Our Neighbor's a Dangerous Man'" ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
''. 7 November 2017. (An excerpt from ''Hitler, My Neighbor''.)
''Edgar Feuchtwanger'' links page listing recent articles and appearances.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Feuchtwanger, Edgar
Living people
Alumni of Magdalene College, Cambridge
Writers from Munich
English historians
1924 births
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom
Officers Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
German emigrants to the United Kingdom
English people of German-Jewish descent