Iffland was born on 19 April 1759 to the well-to-do registrar of the Royal War Office of Hannover, Christian Rudolf Iffland, and Elisabeth Friederike Karoline Iffland, née Schröder; he was the youngest of four children. He received his early education from private tutors, attended the city Lyceum for several years, and then was put in tutelage to a pastor Richter in the village of Springe to be prepared for the ministry. Iffland agreed with his father's plans for his future, but for the wrong reasons: he enjoyed the histrionics of preaching. From the time of his first visit to the theater at age four he had been fascinated by the stage and had attended as many of the occasional performances in Hannover as he could. In 1775 he returned to the Hannover Lyceum; there he took advantage of every opportunity to read or act before audiences, earning applause especially for his imitations of important local people. He acted in school plays, including Goethe's Clavigo (1774). When Konrad Ernst Ackermann's troupe, then at the height of its fame, came to Hannover, the eighteen-year-old Iffland concluded that he must follow an acting career in spite of the objections of his family.
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