Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (8 December 1723 – 21 January 1789) was a French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist and a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim

Edesheim

Edesheim is a municipality in the Südliche Weinstraße district, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach was born here....

, near Landau

Landau

Landau or Landau in der Pfalz is an autonomous city surrounded by the Südliche Weinstraße district of southern Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is a university town , a long-standing cultural centre, and a market and shopping town, surrounded by vineyards and wine-growing villages of the...

 in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon

Salon (gathering)

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...

. He is best known for his atheism

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

 and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being the System of Nature (1770).
D'Holbach's mother (née

NEE

NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...

 Holbach) was the daughter of the Prince-Bishop

Prince-Bishop

A Prince-Bishop is a bishop who is a territorial Prince of the Church on account of one or more secular principalities, usually pre-existent titles of nobility held concurrently with their inherent clerical office...

's tax collector.