Sybille Bedford, OBE was a German-born English writer. Many of her works are partly autobiographical. Julia Neuberger proclaimed her "the finest woman writer of the 20th century" while Bruce Chatwin saw her as "one of the most dazzling practitioners of modern English prose". She was born as Freiin Sybille Aleid Elsa von Schoenebeck in Charlottenburg on the noble outskirts of Berlin to Baron Maximilian Josef von Schoenebeck , a German aristocrat, retired lieutenant colonel and art collector, and his German-Jewish wife, Elizabeth Bernard . Sybille was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of her... father at Schloss Feldkirch in Baden. She had a half sister, by her father's first marriage, Maximiliane Henriette von Schoenebeck . Her parents divorced in 1918, and she remained with her father, under somewhat impoverished circumstances. He died in 1925, when she was 14 years old and Sybille went to live in Italy with her mother and stepfather, an Italian architectural student. During these years she studied in England, lodging in Hampstead.
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| Birthdate: | March 16, 1911 |
| Birthplace: | Berlin |
| Date of death: | February 17, 2006 |
| Religion: | Agnosticism |