Friedrich Heinrich Feuerbach (29 September 1806 – 24 January 1880) was a German philologist and philosopher. In the 1840s he played an important role disseminating materialist and atheist philosophy. Life Friedrich Feuerbach was born on 29 September 1806 in Munich. He was the youngest son of the distinguished jurist Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach (1775–1833) and uncle of painter Anselm Feuerbach (1829–1880). His older brothers were all distinguished scholars. In 1826 he began his studies at the university of Erlangen. At first he studied theology, then history and finally philology and philosophy, specializing in Sanskrit literature. His supervisor was Friedrich Rückert. At Erlangen he was a member of a liberal nationalist student fraternity. In 1831, shortly after graduating, he went to Paris to work with the noted philologists and linguists Chézy, Bournouf and Remusat. France had recently experienced the July Revolution, and Friedrich met with some of the French utopian socialists of the time (e.g., Pierre Leroux). He also seems to have travelled to Switzerland, where he met the radical followers of Wilhelm Weitling; some of them subsequently studied his writings on religion. There is no evidence, however, that Friedrich Feuerbach himself ever participated in any revolutionary association (nor would this have been in character with his diffident nature). On his return to Germany Feuerbach did not seek a profession but instead took rented rooms in Nuremberg and lived on a small state pension. He lived that way for most of his life. Friedrich Feuerbach published several translations from Sanskrit, Spanish, Italian and French. In the 1830s he was associated with the Young German movement in literature; in the early 1840s he contributed to a number of Young Hegelian magazines. Friedrich Freuerbach is described as extremely shy and withdrawn. His brother Ludwig described him as utterly undemanding. The suicide attempt of his older brother Karl, the mathematician, who had been arrested for belonging to a liberal student fraternity in 1824, seems to have greatly affected Friedrich. He was with Karl during his battle with mental illness and when he died prematurely in 1834. The physician Dr. Theodor Spoerri, a family friend, thought he suffered from "heaviness of the blood" (depression). He also thought that the "genius" of the talented Feuerbach family was most concentrated in Friedrich, the least-known brother. The philosopher Georg Friedrich Daumer was one of his few occasional visitors. The liberal theologian Johann Heinrich Wichern also acknowledged