17 Facts About Victor Klemperer

Victor Klemperer was a German literary scholar and diarist.

Victor Klemperer's journals, published posthumously in Germany in 1995, detailed his life under the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the fascist Third Reich, and the communist German Democratic Republic.

Victor Klemperer's parents were Wilhelm Klemperer, a rabbi, and Henriette nee Frankel.

Victor Klemperer had three brothers and four sisters.

In 1903 Victor Klemperer converted to Protestantism for the first time, shortly thereafter returning to Judaism.

Victor Klemperer was a student of philosophy, Romance and German studies at universities in Munich, Geneva, Paris and Berlin from 1902 to 1905, and later worked as a journalist and writer in Berlin, until he resumed his studies in Munich from 1912.

Victor Klemperer chose Christianity as being most compatible with his primary sense of identity as, simply, a German, and became baptised again in Berlin in 1912.

Victor Klemperer was habilitated under the supervision of Karl Vossler in 1914.

In 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was passed removing all non-Aryan professors from their profession, with the exception of those who had fought in World War I This exception allowed Klemperer to continue in his position a little longer, although without the right to use the university library or other faculty privileges.

Victor Klemperer was gradually forced out of his job and forced to retire in 1935.

On 13 February 1945, Victor Klemperer witnessed the delivery of notices of deportation to some of the last remaining members of the Jewish community in Dresden, and feared that the authorities would soon send him to his death.

Victor Klemperer became a significant cultural figure in East Germany, lecturing at the universities of Greifswald, Berlin and Halle.

Victor Klemperer was a delegate of the Cultural Association of the GDR in the GDR's Parliament from 1950 to 1958, and frequently mentioned in his later diary his frustration at its lack of power and its largely ceremonial role.

Victor Klemperer married Eva Schlemmer, an "Aryan" German in 1906.

Intermarriage helped Victor Klemperer to survive, but brought down his wife's societal status.

Victor Klemperer gives accounts of suicides, household searches, and the deportation of his friends, mostly to Theresienstadt.

Especially in the final weeks of the war and immediately after Germany's surrender, when Victor Klemperer was free to mix and talk with a wide variety of Germans, his observations of the "German" identity show how complex this question was, and why it was so central to his purpose in writing the LTI and his journals.