structural:summarization
Early life, education, and relationships

Paul Joseph Goebbels was born on 29 October 1897 in Rheydt, an industrial town south of Mönchengladbach near Düsseldorf, Germany. Both of his parents were Roman Catholics with modest family backgrounds. His father, Fritz, was a German factory clerk; his mother, Katharina Maria (née Odenhausen), was born to Dutch and German parents in a Dutch village close to the border with Germany. Goebbels had five siblings: Konrad (1893–1949), Hans (1895–1947), Maria (1896–1896), Elisabeth (1901–1915) and Maria (1910–1949), who married the German filmmaker Max W. Kimmich in 1938. In 1932 Goebbels commissioned the publication of a pamphlet of his family tree to refute the rumours that his maternal grandmother was of Jewish ancestry.

During childhood Goebbels experienced ill health, which included a long bout of inflammation of the lungs. He had a deformed right foot, which turned inwards and was due to a congenital disorder. It was thicker and shorter than his left foot. Just prior to starting grammar school he underwent an operation, which failed to correct the problem. Goebbels wore a metal brace and a special shoe because of his shortened leg and walked with a limp. He was rejected for military service in World War I because of this deformity.

Goebbels was educated at a Gymnasium, where he completed his Abitur (university entrance examination) in 1917. He was the top student of his class and was given the traditional honour of speaking at the awards ceremony. His parents initially hoped that he would become a Catholic priest, which Goebbels seriously considered. He studied literature and history at the universities of Bonn, Würzburg, Freiburg and Munich, aided by a scholarship from the Albertus Magnus Society. By this time Goebbels had begun to distance himself from the church.

Historians, including Richard J. Evans and Roger Manvell, speculate that Goebbels' lifelong pursuit of women may have been in compensation for his physical disability. At Freiburg he met and fell in love with Anka Stalherm, who was three years his senior. She went on to Würzburg to continue studying, as did Goebbels. By 1920 the relationship with Anka was over; the break-up filled Goebbels with thoughts of suicide. In 1921 he wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, Michael, a three-part work of which only Parts I and III have survived. Goebbels felt he was writing his "own story". Antisemitic content and material about a charismatic leader may have been added by Goebbels shortly before the book was published in 1929 by Eher-Verlag, the publishing house of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party; NSDAP).

At the University of Heidelberg Goebbels wrote his doctoral thesis on Wilhelm von Schütz, a minor 19th-century romantic dramatist. He had hoped to write his thesis under the supervision of Friedrich Gundolf, a literary historian. It did not seem to bother Goebbels that Gundolf was Jewish. Gundolf was no longer teaching so directed Goebbels to associate professor Max Freiherr von Waldberg. Waldberg, who was also Jewish, recommended Goebbels write his thesis on Wilhelm von Schütz. After submitting the thesis and passing his oral examination, Goebbels received his PhD on 21 April 1922. By 1940 he had written 14 books.

Goebbels returned home and worked as a private tutor. He also found work as a journalist and was published in the local newspaper. His writing during that time reflected his growing antisemitism and dislike for modern culture. In the summer of 1922 he met and began a love affair with Else Janke, a schoolteacher. After she revealed to him that she was half-Jewish, Goebbels stated the "enchantment ruined." Nevertheless he continued to see her on and off until 1927.

He continued for several years to try to become a published author. His diaries, which he began in 1923 and continued for the rest of his life, provided an outlet for his desire to write. The lack of income from his literary works – he wrote two plays in 1923, neither of which sold - forced him to take employment as a caller on the stock exchange and as a bank clerk in Cologne, a job he detested. He was dismissed from the bank in August 1923 and returned to Rheydt. During this period he read avidly and was influenced by the works of Oswald Spengler, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, the British-born German writer whose book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899) was one of the standard works of the extreme right in Germany. He also began to study the "social question" and read the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, August Bebel and Gustav Noske. According to German historian Peter Longerich, Goebbels's diary entries from late 1923 to early 1924 reflected the writings of a man who was isolated, preoccupied with "religious-philosophical" issues and lacked a sense of direction. Diary entries from mid-December 1923 onwards show Goebbels was moving towards the Völkisch nationalist movement.