Dear Parents - by Edgar J Feuchtwanger & Antonia Cox (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In 1939, fourteen-year-old Edgar Feuchtwanger was sent alone from Munich to the small Cornish village of St Mawes, leaving his Jewish parents behind in Nazi Germany. From his new life in exile he wrote a stream of vivid letters home, describing school lessons, music practice, seaside walks, and his struggle with English, while carefully trying to reassure the parents whose safety he feared for every day.

Dear Parents - Letters from a Child in Exile brings together these extraordinary letters from 1939 with commentary by Edgar's daughter, writer and translator Antonia Cox, and an introductory essay by Anja Tuckermann. Read alongside documents about the November 1938 pogrom, Ludwig Feuchtwanger's imprisonment in Dachau, and the desperate efforts to secure visas and affidavits, the letters reveal both the everyday worries of a bright adolescent and the looming catastrophe of the Holocaust.

Born into a prominent German-Jewish family and a nephew of the novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, Edgar would later become a noted historian of modern Germany and Britain and the author of memoirs about growing up as "Hitler's neighbour". This volume opens a previously unseen window onto his earliest exile year, offering an intimate primary source for readers and institutions interested in Holocaust history, German-Jewish exile, and the experiences of refugee children in Britain on the eve of the Second World War.

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About the Author

Author Edgar Joseph Feuchtwanger OBE (1924-2025) was a German-British historian whose childhood in Munich unfolded in the shadow of Adolf Hitler's apartment on Prinzregentenplatz. Born into a distinguished German-Jewish family and a nephew of the novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, he fled Nazi Germany for Britain in 1939 and later studied history at the University of Cambridge. From 1959 to 1989 he taught history at the University of Southampton and published influential works on Bismarck, Imperial Germany, and nineteenth-century British politics, as well as memoirs drawing on his experience as "Hitler's neighbour". His contributions to Anglo-German understanding were recognised with the German Federal Cross of Merit and appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Co-Author Antonia Cox, Edgar Feuchtwanger's daughter, studied philosophy and history at Cambridge University. She has worked as a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard, as well as a political advisor. She is a board member of the South Downs National Park Authority and was elected as a Hampshire county councillor in 2026. She has three sons with her husband, Simon Cox, and a grandson called Edgar.

Foreword and edited by Anja Tuckermann, author and journalist. Her works are held in high regard and have been awarded several accolades. She has also written non-fiction books on the topic of German dictatorship. Her books have been translated into 15 languages.