[German Version]

(real name François-Marie Arouet; Nov 21, 1694, Paris – May 30, 1778, Paris) was the youngest of three children of François Arouet, a prosperous notary at the Paris Palais de Justice, and his wife Marie Catherine, who died in 1701. He received a good education at ¶ the famous Jesuit Louis-le-Grand college. In 1711, at his father’s wish, he became a law student, but soon felt called to be a writer, and to his father’s displeasure fell in with a circle of freethinking aristocrats and writers. Following a love affair, he was put …