Levy was born in
Stargard in the
Province of Pomerania, the son of Ernestina (née Lewy) and Moritz Levy and the brother of Max Levy (1869, Berlin - 1932) and Emil Elias Levy. He studied medicine in
Freiburg, qualifying in 1891. He left the
German Empire in 1894, where his father was a banker in
Wiesbaden, and lived in the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He apparently discovered, or was more thoroughly converted to, Nietzsche in 1905 or 1906 via a patient. The 18-volume Nietzsche translation he oversaw appeared from 1909 to 1913. His collaborators were Francis Bickley, Paul V. Cohn,
Thomas Common, William S. Haussman, J.M. Kennedy,
Anthony Ludovici, Maximilian A. Mugge,
Maude D. Petre, Horace B. Samuel,
Hermann Georg Scheffauer, G.T. Wrench and
Helen Zimmern. Ludovici became his most important follower. In general he found little British support, but
A.R. Orage was an enthusiast and Levy found an outlet in
The New Age. Subsequently, his life was complicated by having to leave the United Kingdom and his medical practice despite his support for the British side against the
Central Powers when
World War I broke out. He went back to the German Empire in 1915 and then to
Switzerland. Back in the United Kingdom in 1920, he incautiously wrote a preface for an inflammatory political pamphlet by
George Pitt-Rivers,
The World Significance of the Russian Revolution. He was deported as an alien in 1921. He then lived in the
French Third Republic. Eventually he returned to the
United Kingdom. He died in
Oxford. He was married to Frieda Brauer. His daughter Maud lived in Oxford, having married the bookseller
Albi Rosenthal. His grandson is television sports presenter
Jim Rosenthal and his great-grandson is actor
Tom Rosenthal. In 2004, his papers were deposited in the
Nietzsche-Haus in Sils Maria. == Works ==