Richard Friedenthal

Richard Paul Caspar Friedenthal was a German writer.

Friedenthal was a son of the physician and anthropologist Hans Wilhelm Carl Friedenthal . He grew up in Berlin-Nikolassee . During World War I he served as a soldier and was seriously wounded. After the war he studied literature and art history as well as philosophy at the universities of Berlin , Jena and Munich , among others as a student of Heinrich Wölfflin , Fritz Strich and Max Weber . In 1922 he received his doctorate in philosophy .

Stefan Zweig supported his first literary attempts in the 1920s . From 1928 he worked as a publisher's editor ; from 1930 he was head of the Knaur publishing house in Berlin. Friedenthal published Knaur's Konversationslexikon there , which embodied the new type of one-volume, popular reference work and was a great sales success. From 1933 Friedenthal was subject to a writing ban because of his Jewish origins.

In 1938 Friedenthal emigrated to Great Britain. From June 1940 to March 1941 he was interned at Hutchinson Internment Camp . From 1942 to 1950 he was Secretary of the PEN Center of German-speaking Authors Abroad . From 1943 to 1951 he worked for the BBC . From 1945 to 1950 he was co-editor of the Neue Rundschau in Stockholm . He also published Stefan Zweig's works and managed his estate. In 1951 Friedenthal received British citizenship. From 1951 to 1954 he lived in Germany again and managed the Droemersche publishing house in Munich. From 1954 he lived permanently in Great Britain. 

He died in 1979 while on a visit to Germany.