Sebastian Haffner

Sebastian Haffner (December 27 1907, Berlin – January 2, 1999, pseudonym for Raimund Pretzel) was a German journalist and author. He wrote mainly about recent German history.

In 1938 he emigrated from Nazi Germany with his Jewish fiancée to London, where he intended to work as an author and journalist. He adopted the pseudonym Sebastian Haffner so that his family, who remained in Germany, would not be endangered by his writing. The name he took from the title of Mozart's "Haffner Symphony" and later he used the signature of this piece (KV 385) on his Vehicle registration plate.

Under the auspices of his mentor, David Astor, Haffner 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.

He then wrote for a German newspaper, Die Welt, until 1962, and from then until 1975 was a columnist for the "Stern" magazine. Haffner was a frequent guest on the television show Internationalen Frühschoppen (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 as one of the most successful German authors on the history of the 19th and 20th century written for a broad, nonacademic audience.

He wrote most of his works in German, some of which have been translated into English. The manuscript of Defying Hitler, discovered posthumously by his son, is an insightful 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 3-930-27804-9
• 1964 Die sieben Todsünden des deutschen Reiches im Ersten Weltkrieg
• 1967 Winston Churchill, Biography (German language) ISBN 3-463-40413-3
• 1968 Der Verrat (about the revolution in November 1918 in Germany)
• 1978 The Meaning of Hitler ISBN 0674557751, translated from Anmerkungen zu Hitler, Publishing house. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 3-596-23489-1.
• 1979 Preußen ohne Legende
• 1980 Ueberlegungen eines Wechselwaehlers, Publishing house. Kindler GmbH, Muenchen. 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, Muenchen. ISBN 3-463-40003-0
• 1989 Der Teufelspakt: Die deutsch-russischen Beziehungen vom Ersten zum Zweiten Weltkrieg,.Publishing house Manesse, Zuerich. ISBN 3-717-58121-X
• 1995 Der Verrat: Deutschland 1918/19. Publishing house 1900, Berlin. ISBN 3-930-27800-6
• 1997 Zwischen den Kriegen. Essays zur Zeitgeschichte, ISBN 3-930-27805-7
• 2000 Defying Hitler: A Memoir ISBN 0312421133, translated from Geschichte eines Deutschen. Die Erinnerungen 1914-1933. (Written in approximately 1940, was published after he died) ISBN 3-423-30848-6 Book review by Charles Taylor in the webmagazine www.Salon.com
• 2000 Der Neue Krieg, (contains an email from Juergen Kuttner), Publishing house Alexander, Berlin. ISBN 3-895-81049-5
• 2002 Die Deutsche Frage: 1950 - 1961: Von der Wiederbewaffnung bis zum Mauerbau, Publishing house Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 3-596-15536-3

Biography

• Uwe Soukup: Ich bin nun mal Deutscher. Sebastian Haffner. Eine Biographie, Berlin (Aufbau-Verlag) 2001 - ISBN 3-351-02526-2

External links

• "Stern words from Berlin" published in The Guardian days after Haffner's death, retelling his life (January 14, 1999)