Joseph Goebbels: Difference between revisions
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Goebbels was born to a Catholic family in Rheydt, his father was a factory clerk and his mother was originally a farmhand. Goebbels had four siblings and was educated at a Christian Gymnasium, where he completed his Abitur (university entrance examination) in 1916. | Goebbels was born to a Catholic family in Rheydt, his father was a factory clerk and his mother was originally a farmhand. Goebbels had four siblings and was educated at a Christian Gymnasium, where he completed his Abitur (university entrance examination) in 1916. | ||
He had a deformed right leg, the result either of club foot | He had a deformed right leg, the result either of club foot or osteomyelitis. William L. Shirer, who was in as a journalist in Berlin in the 1930s and was acquainted with Goebbels, wrote in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) that the deformity was from a childhood attack of osteomyelitis and a failed operation to correct it. Goebbels wore a metal brace and special shoe because of his shortened leg, but nevertheless walked with a limp. He was rejected for military service in World War I, which he bitterly resented. He later sometimes misrepresented himself as a war veteran and his disability as a war wound. He did act as an "office soldier" from June 1917 to October 1917 in Rheydt's "Patriotic Help Unit". | ||
Goebbels attended the boarding school of German Franciscan brothers in Bleijerheide, Kerkrade in the Netherlands. Gradually losing his Catholic faith he studied literature and philosophy at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, Freiburg and Heidelberg, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on the 18th century romantic novelist Wilhelm von Schütz. Despite the atrocities Goebbels would commit later in life his two most influential teachers, Friedrich Gundolf and his doctoral supervisor at Heidelberg, Max Freiherr von Waldberg, were both Jews. His intelligence and political astuteness were doubtlessly great and even his enemies admitted such. | Goebbels attended the boarding school of German Franciscan brothers in Bleijerheide, Kerkrade in the Netherlands. Gradually losing his Catholic faith he studied literature and philosophy at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, Freiburg and Heidelberg, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on the 18th century romantic novelist Wilhelm von Schütz. Despite the atrocities Goebbels would commit later in life his two most influential teachers, Friedrich Gundolf and his doctoral supervisor at Heidelberg, Max Freiherr von Waldberg, were both Jews. His intelligence and political astuteness were doubtlessly great and even his enemies admitted such. |