Wikipedia

Sebastian Haffner

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

Raimund Pretzel (27 December 1907 – 2 January 1999),[1] better known by his pseudonym Sebastian Haffner, was a German journalist and historian. As a wartime émigré in Britain, Haffner argued that an accommodation was impossible not only with 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 (1962), and his contributions to the "anti-fascist" rhetoric of the student New Left, sharply raised his profile.

Following his departure from 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 (Defying Hitler: a Memoir) (2003)[4] won him new readers in Germany and abroad.

Early life

School years

Haffner was born in 1907 as Raimund Pretzel in Berlin. During war years, 1914-18, he attended the primary school (Volkschule) of which his father Carl Pretzel was the principal. Of these years he recalls not the privations, but the army bulletins read with the excitement of a football fan following match scores. Haffner believed that it was from this experience of war by a generation of schoolboys as a "game between nations", more enthralling and emotionally satisfying than anything peace could offer, that Nazism was to draw much of its "allure": "its simplicity, its appeal to the imagination, and its zest action; but also its intolerance and its cruelty towards internal opponents".[5]

After the war Haffner attended first a city-centre grammar school, the Königstädtisches Gymnasium Berlin in Alexanderplatz. Here he befriended children of the city's leading Jewish families in business and the liberal professions. They were precocious, cultivated and left-leaning.[6] His adolescent politics, however, took a turn rightward after he moved, in 1924, to the Schillergymnasium in Lichterfelde heavily subscribed to by families in the military. Haffner was later to remark that: "My whole life has been determined by my experiences in these two schools".[7]

Hitler and exile

After January 1933, Haffner witnessed as a law student the deployment of the SA's as an "auxiliary police force" and, after the March Reichstag fire, their hounding of Jewish and democratic jurists from the courts. What shocked him most in these events was the complete absence of "any act of courage or spirit". In the face of Hitler's ascent it seemed as if "a million individuals simultaneously suffered a nervous collapse". There was disbelief, but no resistance.[8]

Doctoral research allowed Haffner to take refuge in Paris, but unable to gain a foothold in the city he returned to Berlin in 1934. Having already published some shorter fiction, he was able to make a living writing for arts pages and for life-style magazines. But the tightening of political controls and, more immediately, the pregnancy of his journalist girlfriend, classed as Jewish under the Nuremburg Laws, urged emigration. In 1938 Erika Schmidt-Landry (1899-1969) was able to join a brother in England, and Haffner, on a commission from the Ullstein Press, was able to follow her. They married weeks before the birth of their son Oliver Pretzel.[9]

Britain's declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939 saved Haffner from deportation. As enemy aliens Haffner and his wife were interned, but in August 1940 they were among the first to be released from camps on the Isle of Man. In June, George Orwell's publisher Fredric Warburg had released Germany, Jekyll and Hyde, Haffner's first work in English and the first for which, to protect his family in Germany, he used the names he was to retain: Sebastian (from Johann Sebastian Bach) and Haffner (from Mozart's Haffner Symphony). In the House of Commons questions had been asked as to why the author of so important a book should not have been free to contribute further to the war effort.[10]

Political émigré

Germany: Jekyll and Hyde

In a polemic that rehearsed the themes of his later historical work, Haffner argued that Britain was naïve in declaring its "quarrel" to be with Hitler only and not with the German people. Hitler had "gained more adherents in Germany and come nearer to absolute power than anyone before him", and had done so by "more or less normal means of persuasion and attraction." This did not mean that "Hitler is Germany", but it was rash to assume that beneath Germany's vaunted unity there existed nothing but "discontent, secret opposition and repressed decency".[11]

Germans had entered the war divided. Less than one in five were true devotees, the "real Nazis". No consideration, not even the "Bolshevik menace", could reconcile this "morally inaccessible" section of the New Germany to a stable Europe. The anti-Semitism that is their "badge" had outrun its original motive: the venting of Hitler's private resentments, the scapegoating of a minority as a safety valve for anti-capitalist sentiment. It functions rather as "a means of selection and trial", identifying those who are prepared, without pretext, to persecute, hunt and murder and thus be bound to the Leader by "the iron chains of a common crime". Hitler, in turn, (a "potential suicide par excellence") recognises only devotion to his own person.[12]

A greater number of Germans--perhaps four in ten--wish only to see the back of Hitler and the Nazis. But "unorganised, dispirited and often in despair", very few identified with the submerged political opposition, itself divided and confused. Side-by-side they live with a roughly equal of Germans who, dreading a further Versailles, bear "the surrender of personality, religion and private life" under Hitler as a "patriotic sacrifice". Through their generals, these Reich loyalists might eventually seek terms with the Allies, but Haffner urged caution. Anything less than a decisive break with the status quo ante would merely return to "a latent and passive state" the Reich's animating spirit of aggrandizement and "vulgar worship of force".[13]

For there to be security in Europe, Haffner insisted (in original italics) that "[The] German Reich must disappear, and the last seventy-five years of Germany history must be erased. The Germans must retrace their steps to the point where they took the wrong path--to the year 1866" (the year when, on the battlefield of Königgrätz, Prussia removed Austrian protection from the smaller German states). Articulating a thesis he was to defend at length his last major opus, Von Bismarck zu Hitler (1987), Haffner maintained that "No peace is conceivable with the Prussian Reich which was born at that time, and whose last logical expression is no other than Nazi Germany".[14] Germany should be returned to an historical pattern of regional states bound by confederal arrangements that are European and not exclusively national.[15]

At the same time, Haffner admitted that part of the attraction for Germans would be that, repurposed as Bavarians, Rhinelanders and Saxons, they might escape Allied retribution. "We cannot", he reasoned, "both get rid of the German Reich and, identifying its 'Succession States', punish them for its sins". If the Allies wished the Reich mentality to die--"of which there was every possibility after the catastrophe of Nazism"--then the new states had to be given "a fair chance".[16]

Churchill

There was a story that Churchill ordered every member of his war cabinet to read Haffner's book. If true, the regard would have been mutual. Of all his subsequent works, Haffner was to say that his short biography, Winston Churchill (1967), was his favourite.[17] When in 1965 Churchill died, Sebastian Haffner wrote "it seemed as if not a mere mortal was buried, but English history itself".

Yet Haffner was disappointed that Churchill did not take up his ideas for a German Freedom Legion, a German academy in exile and a German committee. The Prime Minister was prepared to use anti-Nazi Germans as advisors, technical experts and agents in the special forces, but there was to be no London equivalent of the Moscow-based "National Committee for a Free Germany". Neal Ascherson nonetheless believes it possible that some of Churchill's ideas about post-war Germany had "roots in sections of Haffner's book".[18]

Post-war journalism

Germany's division

In 1941 David Astor invited Haffner to join The Observer as political correspondent, while Edward Hulton recruited him as contributor to the popular Picture Post. The Observer's foreign editor and an influential opinion former in England, in 1948 Haffner become a naturalized British citizen. On his return from war service, David Astor took a more active part in editorial matters, and there were clashes of opinion. Haffner was not willing to dismiss as bluff the March 1952 Stalin Note with its offer of Soviet withdrawal in return for German neutrality. In 1954 he accepted a financially generous offer to transfer to Berlin as the The Observer's German correspondent.[19]

Writing for the conservative Springer Press titles, Die Welt and Christ und Welt, Haffner supported the government of Konrad Adenauer on NATO membership and "German rearmament".[20] When in September 1961, Haffner urging greater Western protest against the building of the Wall found himself, again, at odds with Astor he resigned from The Observer.[19]

Consistent with his post-Reich vision of 1940, Haffner was not opposed to the existence of a second German state. In 1960 he had speculated on the future of the GDR as a "Prussian Free State" giving play, perhaps, to the National Bolshevist ideas Ernst Nie­kisch.[21] But after the consolidation of the wall, he was to see no alternative but to formally recognise a Soviet-Bloc East Germany. From 1969 Haffner supported the Ostpolitik of the new Social-Democratic Chancellor, Will Brandt.[22]

The Spiegel affair

On 26 October 1962, the Hamburg offices in Hamburg of Der Spiegel were raided and closed by police. The publisher, Rudolf Augstein, along with the weekly's two editors-in-chief and a reporter were arrested. Defence minister Franz Josef Strauss levelled accusations of treason (Landesverrat) in respect of an article detailing a NATO projection of "imaginable chaos" in the event of a Soviet nuclear strike and criticising the Government's lack of preparedness. In a statement he was later obliged to recant, Strauss denied himself initiating the police action.[23]

Springer offered it presses, teletypes and office space so Der Spiegel could keep on publishing.[24] But it was at the cost of his column in Die Welt that Haffner, in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (8 November 1962 ), pronounced on the violation of press freedom and constitutional norms. Invoking the spectre of the republican collapse in 1933, Haffner argued that German democracy was in the balance. Identified with what was to be seen a key turning point in the culture of the Federal Republic away from deference demanded by the old Obrigkeitsstaat (authoritarian state)[25] Haffner found a new, and more liberal, readership with the weekly Stern.[19]

Student protest and anti-Springer campaign

Together with young writers and activists of a new post-war generation, Haffner believed that the Federal Republic was paying a price for Adenauer's pragmatic refusal to press for an accounting of Nazi-era crimes. With implicit reference to these, in Stern Haffner denounced as "a systematic, cold-blooded, planned pogrom" a police riot in West Berlin in which a student protester, Benno Ohnesorg, was shot dead.[26]

On June 2, 1967, rallied by Ulrike Meinhof's exposure in the New Left journal konkret of German complicity in the Pahlavi dictatorship, students had demonstrated against the visit of the Shah of Iran. When Iranian counter-demonstrators, including agents of the Shah's intelligence service, attacked the students, the police joined the affray beating the students into side street where an officer fired his side arm.[27] Contributing himself to konkret, Haffner wrote that "with the Student pogrom of 2 June 1967 fascism in West Berlin had thrown off its mask".[28][29]

Increasingly focussed on the war in Vietnam ("the Auschwitz of our generation"),[30] many, including Haffner's daughter Sarah,[31] directed their anger at his former employer, Axel Springer. After the attempted assassination the socialist student leader Rudi Dutschke on April 11, 1968 Springer titles, Bild ("Stop the terror of the Young Reds-Now!")[32] and Berliner Morgenpost (“Langhaarige ausmerzen“--eradicate the longhaired ones), were again accused of incitement.[29] The Morgenpost responded to a protest blockade of its presses by itself proposing parallels to "brown" violence, to Kristallnacht: "back then the Jews were robbed of their property; today it is the Springer concern that is threatened".[33]

Ulrike Meinhof

Haffner's contribution to this pushing of "differences to the top" ("Zuspitzung")[3] was not appreciated by Brandt's Social Democrats or by Stern,[17] and especially not after Meinhof took what she regarded as a next logical step in a struggle with "fascism". "Protest", she wrote, "is when I say I don’t like this. Resistance is when I put an end to what I don’t like.”[34] On 19 May 1972, the Red Army Faction (the "Baader Meinhof Gang") bombed Springer's Hamburg headquarters injuring 36 people. Five days later they claimed what was to be the first of 34 victims murdered over 28 years, two American soldiers killed in an explosion at a military base in Heidelberg.[35]

As did the novelists Heinrich Böll and Gunther Grass, Haffner sought to keep his distance from Meinhof's new ideas and methods while putting her deeds in perspective.[36] "No one", Haffner argued, "has planted the seeds of violence more keenly than Springer journalism".[37][36]

From Bismarck to Hitler

In 1975, Stern separated itself from Haffner, and at 68 he decided to devote himself to historical studies.[19] Already some of his serialisations in Stern had been worked into best sellers. Die verratene Revolution (1968), Haffners indictment of Social Democrats in the collapse of 1918 as Reich loyalists, ran into thirteen editions. Like all his work, it remained without footnotes, written for a popular audience (Haffner claimed to hate books you couldn't take to bed).[38] Anmerkungen zu Hitler (1978) (published in English as The Meaning of Hitler) sold a million copies. Enlarging on his wartime "psychogram of the Führer" in Germany: Jekyll and Hyde, it placed Hitler in the shadow of the revolution Ebert and Noske betrayed.[39]

Summarised in Haffner's final (dictated) book, Von Bismarck zu Hitler (1987), the broader thesis remained. Like the "German Revolution" of 1918-1919, the "National-Socialist Revolution" of 1933-1934 was largely myth making. The Reich persisted with the same animating conviction, borne partly out of its geo-political exposure, that it would either be a great power or collapse.[40] Given their experience of the Reich, Haffner was confident that Germany's neighbours never would allow a successor: "alarm bells would go off if a new 80-million-strong power bloc were to rise up again at their borders.”[41]

Death and family

When, in short order, the Wall fell and in 1990 East Germany was incorporated into the Federal Republic, Haffner, according to his daughter Sarah, was pleased but, perhaps, made to feel more keenly that he had outlived his time.[17] Haffner died on January 2, 1999 at the age of 91.

Christa Rotzoll, a journalist whom Haffner had married after he had been widowed in 1969, predeceased him in 1995. Haffner was survived by his two children with Erika Schmidt-Landry. Sarah Haffner (1940–2018) was a painter and a feminist documentary-film maker.[42] She believed that her own political involvement may have played some part in her father's engagement with the student movement in the 1960s.[17] His son, Oliver Pretzel (1938- ), was Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College London. After his father's death he collated the memoir started early in 1939 but abandoned for the more urgent propaganda value of Germany: Jekyll & Hyde, and arranged for its publication as Geschicthe eines Deutschen/Defying Hitler.

Selected works

  • 1940 Germany: Jekyll & Hyde, Secker and Warburg, London. 2008, Germany, Jekyll & Hyde: A Contemprary Account of Nazi Germany. Abacus, London.
  • 1941 Offensive Against Germany – Searchlight Books, London
  • 1964 Die sieben Todsünden des deutschen Reiches im Ersten Weltkrieg. Nannen Press, Hamburg.
  • 1967 Winston Churchill, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg. ISBN 3-463-40413-3
  • 1968 Die verratene Revolution – Deutschland 1918/19, Stern-Buch, Hamburg. 2006, 13th edition: Die deutsche Revolution – 1918/19. Anaconda Verlag, 2008, ISBN 3-86647-268-4
  • 1978 Anmerkungen zu Hitler, Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 3-596-23489-1. The Meaning of Hitler, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA (1979). ISBN 0-674-55775-1,
  • 1979 Preußen ohne Legende, Gruner & Jahr, Hamburg.
  • 1980 Überlegungen eines Wechselwählers, Kindler GmbH, München. ISBN 3-463-00780-0
  • 1982 Sabastian Haffner zur Zeitgeschichte. Kindler, Munich. ISBN 978-3463008394
  • 1985 Im Schatten der Geschichte: Historisch-politische Variationen,. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart. ISBN 3-421-06253-6
  • 1987 Von Bismarck zu Hitler: Ein Rückblick, Kindler, Munich. ISBN 3-463-40003-0. 1989, The Ailing Empire, International Publishing, NY. ISBN 0-88064-136-3
  • 1989 Der Teufelspakt: die deutsch-russischen Beziehungen vom Ersten zum Zweiten Weltkrieg. Manesse Verlag, Zurich. ISBN 3-7175-8121-X
  • 1997 Zwischen den Kriegen. Essays zur Zeitgeschichte, Verlag 1900.ISBN 3-930278-05-7

Published posthumously

  • 2000 Geschichte eines Deutschen. Die Erinnerungen 1914–1933. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich. ISBN 3-423-30848-6. Defying Hitler: A Memoir, Wiedenfeld & Nicholson, London. ISBN 0-312-42113-3
  • 2000 Der Neue Krieg, Alexander, Berlin. ISBN 3-89581-049-5
  • 2002 Die Deutsche Frage: 1950 – 1961: Von der Wiederbewaffnung bis zum Mauerbau, Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 3-596-15536-3
  • 2003 Schreiben für die Freiheit, 1942-1949. Als Journalist im Sturn der Ereignisse. Frankfurt-am-Main.
  • 2004 Das Leben der Fußgänger", Hanser, Carl GmbH & Co. ISBN 3-4462-0490-3
  • 2016 Der Selbstmord des Deutschen Reichs, Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main. ISBN 3-596-31002-4

References

Notes

  1. ^ Neil Ascherson (14 January 1999). "Sebastian Haffner obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 May 2019.
  2. ^ Sebastian, Haffner (2005). Germany, Jekyll and Hyde: a Contemporary Account of Nazi Germany (Second ed.). London: Abacus. p. 265. ISBN 9780349118895.
  3. ^ a b "German Journalist, Author Dies". AP News. 4 January 1999. Retrieved 5 February 2021.
  4. ^ Haffner, Sebastian (2003). Defying Hitler: a Memoir. London: Phoenix. ISBN 9781842126608.
  5. ^ Haffner, Defying Hitler, pp. 3, 16
  6. ^ Sebastian Haffner: Als Engländer maskiert. Ein Gespräch mit Jutta Krug über das Exil. btb Verlag, 2008, S. 16. Leseprobe. (PDF) Klaus Wiegrefe (2002), "Rezension", Der Spiegel, 10 February (27)
  7. ^ Klaus Wiegrefe (2002), "Zeitgeschichte: Ein wendiger Infotainer", Der Spiegel, 10 February (27)
  8. ^ Haffner (2005), Defying Hitler, pp. 103-104
  9. ^ Bernd Sobolla (publisher). "Raimund Pretzel – Der Mann, der Sebastian Haffner wurde". Bernd Sobolla – Gespräche über Film und Gesellschaft. Retrieved 13 September 2018.
  10. ^ Otto Pretzel, afterword to Defying Hitler", p. 246
  11. ^ Haffner, Germany, Jekyll and Hyde, pp. 3, 56
  12. ^ Haffner, Germany, Jekyll and Hyde, pp. 63, 66
  13. ^ Haffner, Germany, Jekyll and Hyde, pp. 259-261
  14. ^ Haffner, Germany, Jekyll and Hyde, p. 265
  15. ^ Haffner, Germany, Jekyll and Hyde, pp.291-292
  16. ^ Haffner, Germany, Jekyll and Hyde, p. 290
  17. ^ a b c d Hettinger, Holger (27 December 2007). "„Er hat jede Woche einen ‚Knallfrosch' abgeliefert"". Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Retrieved 10 February 2021.
  18. ^ Neal Ascherson, Introduction to Germany, Jekyll and Hyde, pp. x, xiii-xiv
  19. ^ a b c d Soukup, Uwe (2001). Ich bin nun mal Deutscher. Sabastian Haffner, Eine Biographie. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag. ISBN 3596156424.
  20. ^ Haffner, Sebastian (2002). Die deutsche Frage 1950 - 1961: Von der Wiederbewaffnung bis zum Mauerbau. Berlin: Transit Buchverlag. ISBN 9783887471712.
  21. ^ Haffner, Sebastian; Venohr, Wolfgang (1980). Preußische Profile. Königstein / Ts. pp. 247–249. ISBN 3761080964.
  22. ^ Lange, Nils. Von Kommunisten und Kolumnisten Sebastian Haffner, Matthias Walden und das Problem der Anerkennung der DDR. Ernste Reuter Hefte. ISBN 9783954102150.
  23. ^ Gunkel, Christoph (21 September 2012). "50th Anniversary of the 'Spiegel Affair': A Watershed Moment for West German Democracy". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 26 August 2013.
  24. ^ Blair, Fraser (1 December 1962). "How Adenauer awakened German democracy: he raided the people's paper". Maclean's. Retrieved 13 February 2021.
  25. ^ Taylor, Frederick (2011), Exorcising Hitler, London: Bloomsbury Press, p. 371.
  26. ^ “Es war ein systematischer Kaltblütig geplanter pogrom, begangen von der Berliner Polizei an Berliner Studenten”. Sebastian Haffner, Stern, 25th June 1967
  27. ^ "Stasi Archive Surprise: East German Spy Shot West Berlin Martyr". Spiegel Online International. spiegel.de. 22 May 2009. Retrieved 09/02/2021.
  28. ^ “Mit den Studentenpogrom von 2. Juni 1967 hat der Faschismus in Westberlin seine maske bereits abgeworfen”. Sebastian Haffner, Konkret, July 1967
  29. ^ a b Zorneman, Tom (2010). "The Extent of the German revolutionary left wing groups of the 1960/70´s as a reaction to the Nazi past". GRIN, Wissenschaftlicher Aufsatz. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
  30. ^ ”Vietnam ist das Auschwitz der jungen Generation”. Bernward Vesper, “Nachwort zu Baader, Ensslin, Proll, Söhnlein, Vor einer solchen Justiz verteidigen wir uns nicht. Schlußwort im Kaufhausbrandprozeß,” in Notstandsgesetze von Deiner Hand, Caroline Harmsen, Ulrike Seyer, and Johannes Ullmaier, eds. (2009), Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main. (2009). Cited in translation in Jeremy Varon (2004) Bringing the War Home, University of California Pres, Berkeley, p. 248
  31. ^ "Zum Tod des Studenten Benno Ohnesorg" in Vaterland, Muttersprache: Deutsche Schriftsteller und ihr Staat von 1945 bis heute, eds. Klaus Wagenbach, Winfried Stephan and Michael Krüger. Klaus Wagenbach Berlin, 1980, ISBN 3803101002. p. 247
  32. ^ “Stoppt den Terror der Jung-Roten –Jetzt!”, Bild Zeitung, 7th February 1968
  33. ^ "Es ist keine Studenten", Berliner Morgenpost, 23 April 1968
  34. ^ Meinhof, Ulrike (2008). Everybody Talks About the Weather...We Don't: The Writings of Ulrike Meinhof. New York: Seven Stories Press. p. 242. ISBN 1583228314.
  35. ^ "Red Army Faction: A Chronology of Terror". DW. Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
  36. ^ a b Sedlmaier, Alexander (2014). Consumption and Violence: Radical Protest in Cold-War West Germany. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. pp. 194–195. ISBN 9780472119417. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
  37. ^ Sebastian Haffner, "Blutiges Spiel", Stern, 4 June 1972
  38. ^ Schuster, Jacques. "Das Geheimnis von Sebastian Haffners Erfolg". Kultur: Literarischewelt. Welt.de. Retrieved 12 February 2021.
  39. ^ Neal Ascherson, Introduction to Haffner, Germany, Jekyll and Hyde, pp.291-292
  40. ^ Menzel, Claus (27 December 2007). "Zwischen allen Stühlen". Deutschlandfunk. Retrieved 10 February 2021.
  41. ^ Jacoby, Russell. "The Decline and Reincarnation of the German Reich". Los Angeles Times (29 October 1989). Retrieved 12 February 2021.
  42. ^ Hans Christoph Buch (14 March 2018). "Sebastian Haffner wollte nicht, dass seine Tochter malt". Axel Springer SE (WELT und N24Doku). Retrieved 9 February 2021.

Bibliography

External links

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