Background
Ethnicity:
Wiedemann was partly of Jewish descent - his paternal grandmother was Jewish.
Thomas Ernst Josef Wiedemann was born on May 14, 1950, in Karlsruhe, Federal Republic of Germany. He was the son of Heinrich and Johanna (Schmitt) Wiedemann.
His family was German and some members fled that country when Hitler came to power, as they were of Jewish descent. Other members of the Wiedemann family were arrested and murdered by the Nazi regime but Wiedemann's father was liberated in 1945 and the family moved to England.