Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 April 2009
Felix Behrend was born at Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany, on 23 April, 1911, the eldest of four children of Dr. Felix W. Behrend and his wife Maria, nee Zöllner. Felix Behrend senior was a mathematics and physics master at the Herderschule, a noted “Reform-Realgymnasium” in one of the western suburbs of Berlin; he was a widely known educationalist, and later headmaster of an important school elsewhere in Berlin, until demoted and finally dismissed by the Nazis, partly because of some Jewish ancestry, partly because of his liberal political views.