His parents were of Jewish origin but had converted to Protestantism before their children were born. His father, Simon Carl Siegmund Popper, was a successful lawyer whose real interests lay in scholarship and literature. Popper's mother, Jenny Schiff Popper, came from a musical family and was a talented pianist.
During Popper's early childhood the family was prosperous. They lived in a large apartment in an eighteenth-century house in the center of Vienna, where Popper's father conducted his legal practice. His father had an enormous library, which included many works of philosophy; books were everywhere, Popper says in his autobiography, except in the dining room, where a concert grand piano stood.
In Unended Quest Popper recounts an early brush with philosophy. His father had suggested that he read some volumes of the Swedish dramatist and novelist August Strindberg's autobiography. Popper tried to point out to his father that Strindberg gave too much importance to words and their meanings and was surprised to discover that his father did not agree. He later regarded this incident as the first skirmish in his life-long battle against the influential view that philosophy must concern itself with analysis of meaning.
Bored with his classes, Popper left secondary school at sixteen and enrolled at the University of Vienna as a nonmatriculated student.
