Sebastian Haffner

Raimund Pretzel (27 December 1907 – 2 January 1999),[1] better known by his pseudonym Sebastian Haffner, was a German journalist and author. He wrote mainly about recent German history. His focus was specifically on the history of the German Reich (1871–1945); his books dealt with the origins and course of the First World War, the failure of the Weimar Republic, and the subsequent rise and fall of Nazi Germany under Hitler. His most known work is The Meaning of Hitler (German: Anmerkungen zu Hitler, 1978), a short biographical analysis of Hitler.

Sebastian Haffner
Detail of book cover Germany: Jekyll & Hyde
BornRaimund Pretzel
(1907-12-27)27 December 1907
Berlin, German Empire
Died2 January 1999(1999-01-02) (aged 91)
Berlin, Germany
OccupationJournalist and historian
NationalityGermany
SubjectPrussia, Otto von Bismarck, World War I, Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, World War II
Notable worksThe Meaning of Hitler
ChildrenSarah Haffner 1940-2018, Oliver Pretzel

Life and career

Haffner studied Law and finished his exams in 1934. After that he occasionally worked as a lawyer, mostly as a temporary substitute for other lawyers. His main source of income at that time was journalism. In 1938 he emigrated from Nazi Germany with his Jewish fiancée to London, where he intended to work as an author and journalist. He encountered difficulties at first since he was hardly able to speak English at the time – although he rapidly became remarkably proficient in the language – had no money and no financial support, and his fiancée, who became his wife later on, was pregnant. He adopted the pseudonym "Sebastian Haffner" so that his family, who remained in Germany, would not be endangered by his writing. It was a combination of Johann Sebastian Bach and of Mozart's Haffner Symphony; he later used the signature of this piece (KV 385) on his vehicle registration plate.

During the Second World War, Haffner was interned in England for several months in 1940 and released only after publication of his first book in English, Germany: Jekyll and Hyde (1940.)[2] He was one of the promoters and early writers of Die Zeitung, published for German exiles by the British government from 1941 to 1945. His book Offensive against Germany (1941) was commissioned by George Orwell and T. R. Fyvel for Searchlight Books.[3] Under the auspices of his mentor, David Astor, Haffner then wrote for the London Sunday newspaper, The Observer, and became its editor-in-chief. However, because of differences between Astor, who had become the newspaper's publisher, and the London editorship regarding a divided Germany, he became the German correspondent in Berlin in 1954, a position which he kept until the building of the Berlin Wall.

Haffner then wrote for a German newspaper, Die Welt, until 1962, and from then until 1975 was a columnist for Stern magazine. Haffner was a frequent guest on the television show Internationaler Frühschoppen – which translates roughly to "International Morning Pint" – hosted by Werner Höfer, and even had his own television program on the German channel Sender Freies Berlin.

Haffner is considered one of the most successful German authors in the history of the 19th and 20th century writing for a broad, nonacademic audience.

He wrote most of his works in German, some of which have been translated into English, French, Spanish, Hebrew and other languages. The manuscript of Defying Hitler, discovered posthumously by his son, Oliver Pretzel,[4] is a memoir of the Nazis' rise to power, as witnessed by Haffner before he went into exile.

Selected writings
  • 1940 Germany: Jekyll & Hyde, (German language) ISBN 3-930278-04-9
  • 1941 Offensive Against Germany – Searchlight Books
  • 1964 Die sieben Todsünden des deutschen Reiches im Ersten Weltkrieg
  • 1967 Winston Churchill, Biography (German language) ISBN 3-463-40413-3
  • 1968 Die verratene Revolution – Deutschland 1918/19. (about the German Revolution in November 1918) Stern-Buch, Hamburg 1969, (no ISBN)
  • 2nd edition: Die deutsche Revolution 1918/1919 – wie war es wirklich? Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Geschichte. München, Kindler Verlag 1979, ISBN 3-463-00738-X
  • 3rd edition: 1918/1919 – eine deutsche Revolution. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981, ISBN 3-499-17455-3
  • 4th edition: 1918/1919 – eine deutsche Revolution. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1986, ISBN 3-499-17455-3
  • 5th edition: 1918/1919 – eine deutsche Revolution. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988, ISBN 3-499-17455-3
  • 6th edition: Der Verrat. Deutschland 1918/19. Berlin, Verlag 1900, 1993, ISBN 3-930278-00-6
  • 7th edition: Der Verrat. 1918/1919 – als Deutschland wurde, wie es ist. Berlin, Verlag 1900, 1994, ISBN 3-930278-00-6
  • 8th edition: Der Verrat. 1918/1919 – als Deutschland wurde, wie es ist. Berlin, Verlag 1900, 1995, ISBN 3-930278-00-6
  • 9th edition: Der Verrat. Berlin, Verlag 1900, 2000, ISBN 3-930278-00-6
  • 10th edition: Der Verrat. Deutschland 1918/1919. Berlin, Verlag 1900, 2002, ISBN 3-930278-00-6
  • 11th edition: Die deutsche Revolution – 1918/19. Kindler, 2002, ISBN 3-463-40423-0
  • 12th edition: Die deutsche Revolution – 1918/19. rororo Taschenbücher, 2004, ISBN 3-499-61622-X
  • 13th edition: Die deutsche Revolution – 1918/19. Anaconda Verlag, 2008, ISBN 3-86647-268-4
  • 1978 The Meaning of Hitler ISBN 0-674-55775-1, translated from Anmerkungen zu Hitler, Publishing house. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 3-596-23489-1.
  • 1979 Preußen ohne Legende
  • 1980 Überlegungen eines Wechselwählers, Publishing house. Kindler GmbH, München. ISBN 3-463-00780-0
  • 1985 Im Schatten der Geschichte: Historisch-politische Variationen,. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart. ISBN 3-421-06253-6
  • 1987 Von Bismarck zu Hitler: Ein Rückblick, Publishing house Kindler GmbH, München. ISBN 3-463-40003-0
  • 1989 The Ailing Empire, English translation of Von Bismarck zu Hitler. Fromm International Publishing, New York. ISBN 0-88064-136-3
  • 1989 Der Teufelspakt: Die deutsch-russischen Beziehungen vom Ersten zum Zweiten Weltkrieg, Manesse Verlag, Zürich. ISBN 3-7175-8121-X
  • 1997 Zwischen den Kriegen. Essays zur Zeitgeschichte, ISBN 3-930278-05-7
  • 2000 Defying Hitler: A Memoir ISBN 0-312-42113-3, translated from Geschichte eines Deutschen. Die Erinnerungen 1914–1933. (Written in approximately 1940, was published after he died) ISBN 3-423-30848-6
  • 2000 Der Neue Krieg, (contains an email from Juergen Kuttner), Publishing house Alexander, Berlin. ISBN 3-89581-049-5
  • 2002 Die Deutsche Frage: 1950 – 1961: Von der Wiederbewaffnung bis zum Mauerbau, Publishing house Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 3-596-15536-3

References

Notes

  1. Neil Ascherson (14 January 1999). "Sebastian Haffner obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 May 2019.
  2. Afterword by Oliver Pretzel in Defying Hitler (2002)
  3. Orwell, George (2010) The Orwell DiariesLondon: Penguin
  4. "Defying Hitler" by Sebastian Haffner – Salon.com Archived 2011-07-01 at the Wayback Machine

Bibliography

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