Biography of ludwig feuerbach

1. Background

Ludwig A. Feuerbach was born in a Lutheran family on July 28, 1804, in Landshut, Bavaria; the fourth son of Anselm von Feuerbach and his wife Wilhelmine. Anselm von Feuerbach was a distinguished German jurist and criminologist, who "ranks at least as high in the history of legal thinking and criminological studies as his son Ludwig does in the history of philosophy and of ideas." (Kamenka 1970, 18) Anselm gained fame as the first Protestant to be elected to a chair at the Roman Catholic dominated University of Bavaria.

His father reworked Bavarian civil law on behalf of Napoleon while Ludwig was still a youth, and later wrote what remain several classics in criminology. Anselm was so hot tempered and tyrannical that his family nicknamed him “Vesuvius” (Kamenka 18-21).

Perhaps this provides some insight into why Ludwig would eventually feel imprisoned by the faith of his youth.

The other members of the Feuerbach fam