Theodor Lessing

The German cultural historian, philosopher, literary critic, poet, and novelist Theodor Lessing was a disciple of Nietzsche. He converted to Protestantism in 1895 but reembraced his Jewishness at the turn of the century under the influence of Zionism. He was the first writer to examine the phenomenon of Jewish selfhatred, of which he himself had been an exemplar earlier in his life. Always controversial, he fled Germany in March 1933 and settled in Marienbad, Czechoslovakia, where Sudeten German Nazis assassinated him in August 1933.