Himself a genius, he belongs to a notably talented family; the father one of the most distinguished criminal jurists of Germany; brother, sister, nephew, all gifted. He is born at Landshut in 1804; studies at Heidelberg; turns his attention to theology, first from the orthodox, afterwards from the critical standpoint; then to philosophy, first abstract, afterwards realistic, ever more realistic. He publishes his _Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit_ ("Thoughts on Death and Immortality") anonymously. The book is at first confiscated, but subsequently allowed to circulate. After it becomes known that he is the author, he applies in vain for professional appointments at several of the South German universities, and similar attempts made somewhat later in Berlin, France, Switzerland, and Greece prove equally fruitless, in spite of the support of noted savants. From 1836 onwards he lives a retired life in the country--till 1860 at Brückberg, near Ansbach, afterwards at Rechenberg, near Nuremberg. In his later years it is the life of a hermit. He corresponds with friends of his own class and stamp, and also with men of the people (such as Konrad Deubler of the Salzkammergut), who sometimes understand his writings better and feel them more deeply than the so-called cultivated class. In 1837 he married the love of his youth. It was not without influence on his life that, in the beginning of the Forties, a young girl, daughter of one of his friends, was for a time passionately attached to him, an attachment which he returned. His only course of lectures was delivered in 1848, at Heidelberg, but not at the university; there he was dreaded and shunned. In 1842 his friends had tried to get him appointed professor at Heidelberg; he at first took kindly to their plan, but afterwards frantically opposed it. "To try to make me a professor and that, too, in the ordinary way, the way in which any blockhead can be made one ... is to place me on a level with the fools that are posing as professors now, is to insult, to disgrace me.... The professor's desk is no place for a man with a head like mine. Do you know the proper place for my head? Guess! The block: for my brain is as keen and as peremptory as the executioner's sword, and I have no desire, no courage to do any deeds but those for which men risk the loss of their heads."[15] His friend had been advising him rather to call his work _Wesen der Théologie_ than _Wesen des Christenthums_. He answers: "I take no interest whatever in the overturning of theology. I concern myself only with great world-entities (welthistorische Wesen).... One must deal a mortal blow, must deny on principle. To act means to take life--with the determination, if necessary, to give one's own life in return."