Sebastian Haffner | |
|---|---|
 Haffner on book cover Germany: Jekyll & Hyde | |
| Born | Raimund Pretzel 27 December 1907 Berlin, German Empire |
| Died | 2 January 1999 (aged 91) Berlin, Germany |
| Occupation | Journalist and historian |
| Subject | Prussia, Otto von Bismarck, World War I, Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, World War II |
| Children | Oliver Pretzel; Sarah Haffner |
Raimund Pretzel (27 December 1907 – 2 January 1999),[1] better known by his pseudonym Sebastian Haffner, was a German journalist and historian. As an émigré in Britain during World War II, Haffner argued that accommodation was impossible not only with Adolf Hitler but also with the German Reich with which Hitler had gambled. Peace could be secured only by rolling back "seventy-five years of German history" and restoring Germany to a network of smaller states.[2]
As a journalist in West Germany, Haffner's conscious effort "to dramatize, to push differences to the top",[3] precipitated breaks with editors both liberal and conservative. His intervention in the Spiegel affair of 1962, and his contributions to the anti-fascist rhetoric of the student New Left, sharply raised his profile.
After parting ways with Stern magazine in 1975, Haffner produced widely read studies focussed on what he saw as fateful continuities in the history of the German Reich (1871–1945). His posthumously published pre-war memoir, Geschichte eines Deutschen: Die Erinnerungen 1914–1933 ("History of a German", published in English as Defying Hitler: A Memoir) (2003)[4] won him new readers in Germany and abroad.
- ^ Neil Ascherson (14 January 1999). "Sebastian Haffner obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 May 2019.
- ^ Sebastian, Haffner (2005). Germany, Jekyll and Hyde: a Contemporary Account of Nazi Germany (Second ed.). London: Abacus. p. 265. ISBN 9780349118895.
- ^ "German Journalist, Author Dies". AP News. 4 January 1999. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
- ^ Haffner, Sebastian (2003). Defying Hitler: a Memoir. London: Phoenix. ISBN 9781842126608.