Schopenhauer was born on 22 February 1788 in Danzig (today Gdansk, Poland). His father, Heinrich Schopenhauer, was a successful businessman of Dutch extraction who so despised absolutist government that when Danzig was annexed to Prussia in 1793 he moved his family and business to Hamburg. Schopenhauer's mother, Johanna Henriette Trosiener Schopenhauer, was of an artistic temperament and had some success as a writer. The family traveled a good deal, and the young Schopenhauer spent several years touring with them through France, England (including several months at a mediocre school in London), Switzerland, and Austria, as well as throughout Germany. In his travels Schopenhauer developed a love of natural beauty, along with a hatred of the human cruelty he witnessed everywhere. He also acquired a facility in several languages; as a thinker Schopenhauer was to be a cosmopolitan who admired English and French models more than German (his library had comparatively few books in that language).
After his father's death--probably by suicide--in 1805 Schopenhauer honored a promise he had made to enter business, although he found commerce distasteful.
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