Rolland, Romain

The French author and playwright Romain Rolland was born in Clamecy, Bourgogne. The family moved to Paris, partly for the sake of his education. He attended the École Normale Supérieure and Sorbonne, where he presented two PhD theses. Rolland also studied and carried out research in Rome before he began to teach history of art at the École Normale and later became the first professor of the history of music at Sorbonne. He was injured in a road accident in 1910. As a result he was forced to resign from teaching a couple of years later, and he dedicated his time to writing. Rolland settled in Switzerland in 1914 and returned to Bourgogne in 1938. He died at Vézelay.