Edgar Feuchtwanger

Edgar Joseph Feuchtwanger (born 28 September 1924) is a German-British historian.

Feuchtwanger was born in Munich. 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. His family was Jewish. As a child, he lived with his family in Munich near the private residence of Adolf Hitler on Grillparzer Strasse. From 1935 to 1938 he attended the Maximilian school in his hometown.

Feuchtwanger was 14 when the Gestapo arrested his father on Nov. 10, 1938, part of the coordinated pogrom known as Kristallnacht, which included the detentions of 30,000 Jews in Austria and Germany, the deaths of 91 and the widespread ransacking of Jewish-owned stores and synagogues. The elder man 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 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 reunited in England. From 1944 to 1947 he studied at Magdalene College in Cambridge, where he received his doctorate in 1958. From 1959 he taught history at University of Southampton 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: Hitler, mon voisin – Souvenirs d'un enfant juif (My Neighbor Hitler – Memories of a Jewish Child). It was published in English as I was Hitler's Neighbour.

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