Written in 1939 while the philosopher Karl Lowith was in exile in Japan, and first published in Germany in 1986, this autobiography focuses on the years 1914-39, a crucial period in the growth of Hitler's Germany. It covers Lowith's youth in Germany, his emigration to Italy and from there to Japan, and his meeting with Martin Heidegger in Rome in 1936.

Included are philosophical-biographical vignettes of leading German intellectual figures of the day: the George circle, Oswald Spengler, Karl Barth, and Carl Schmitt.

My Life in Germany Before and After 1933 represents the search by a German-Jewish intellectual for political and cultural identity in the Germany of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. It provides a valuable account of the intellectual and social ambience before and after 1933 and will be of value to philosophers, intellectual historians, and those interested in German history.