Architectural historian in Britain and founder of the Pelican History of Art and The Buildings of England series. Pevsner was brought up in the fashionable "Music Quarter" of Leipzig by Russian-Jewish parents Hillel Pewsner, later Hugo Pevsner (1869-1940), and Anna Perlmann (Pevsner) (d. 1942); his father was a fur importer. Hugo's absence in Sweden during the years of World War I allowed the young Pevsner to attend the Thomasschule (the same school at which Bach played the organ), converting to Christianity in 1920 and receiving his Arbitur in 1921.