User:Hanover Archivist/Fritz Lang

Early life[edit]
Lang was born in Vienna, as the second son of Anton Lang (1860–1940), an architect and construction company manager, and his wife Pauline "Paula" Lang (née Schlesinger; 1864–1920). He was baptized on December 28, 1890, at the Schottenkirche in Vienna. He had an elder brother, Adolf (1884–1961).

Lang's parents were of Moravian descent and practising Catholics. His mother, born Jewish, converted to Roman Catholicism before Fritz's birth, and his parents, who took their religion seriously were dedicated to raising Fritz as a Catholic. Lang frequently had Catholic-influenced themes in his films. Late in life, he described himself as "a born Catholic and very puritan". Although an atheist, Lang believed that religion was important for teaching ethics.

After finishing school, Lang briefly attended the Technical University of Vienna, where he studied civil engineering and eventually switched to art. He left Vienna in 1910 in order to see the world, traveling throughout Europe and Africa, and later Asia and the Pacific area. In 1913, he studied painting in Paris.

At the outbreak of World War I, Lang returned to Vienna and volunteered for military service in the Austrian army and fought in Russia and Romania, where he was wounded four times and lost sight in his right eye, the first of many vision issues he would face in his lifetime. While recovering from his injuries and shell shock in 1916, he wrote some scenarios and ideas for films. He was discharged from the army with the rank of lieutenant in 1918 and did some acting in the Viennese theater circuit for a short time before being hired as a writer at Decla Film, Erich Pommer's Berlin-based production company. In 1919, he married for the first time to Lisa Rosenthal, a Jewish woman; in 1921, she died under mysterious circumstances, of a single gunshot wound deemed to have been fired by a sidearm weapon from World War I.

copied from Fritz Lang