Edgar Feuchtwanger

Edgar Joseph Feuchtwanger (28 September 1924 – 22 August 2025) was a German-British historian. As a child, he lived with his family in Munich on Grillparzerstraße 38, near the private residence of Adolf Hitler on Prinzregentenplatz 16. From 1935 to 1938, he attended the Maximiliansgymnasium in his hometown.

Feuchtwanger was 14 when the Gestapo arrested his father on 10 November 1938, part of the coordinated pogrom known as Kristallnacht, 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. and ultimately managed to obtain entry visas to Britain. On 19 February 1939, until he retired in 1989. In 2003, he was awarded the German 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 married to Primrose Essame from 1962 until her death in 2012 and had three children.

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, 1993 (2nd revised edition, 1995). Disraeli. Bloomsbury USA, 2000. Imperial Germany 1850–1918. Routledge, 2001. Bismarck. Routledge, 2002. Second edition: Routledge, 2014. 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. Kinderbriefe aus dem Exil: Edgar Feuchtwanger in England 1939 (with Antonia Cox, ed. Anja Tuckermann). Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2024.