Sebastian Haffner (* December 27th, 1907 in Berlin as Raimund Werner Martin Pretzel) is an emigrated German Author.
His father was the principal of the primary school he went to. Then, he went to two different Gymnasiums, one with many leftist and/or Jewish students, one with many rightist ones, both of which shaped him. Afterwards, he studied Laws, making a Ph.D. as well. In the fall of 1933, he had to participate in the Referendarlager (trainee lawyers' camp) Jüterbog for ideological Schooling and military education. Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, and Karl Carstens had to participate in this camp as well.
In Nazi Germany, he didn't want to work as a lawyer, so he started to write unpolitical Feuilleton and Magazine articles. However, he thought that everybody living in Germany was somehow helping the Regime, even if doing unpolitical work. So he started looking for possibilities to emigrate.
In August 1938, he went to England. There, he asked for and got political Asylum - his pregnant fiancee Erika Schmidt-Landry (* 1899) had gone there before him and was classified as Jewish in Germany, so their relationship was forbidden there, and they couldn't return.
In 1939, he started writing down his memories of his youth, Geschichte eines Deutschen/Defying Hitler: A Memoir, telling about his experiences during the years 1914 to 1933. He had planned to make it an educational pamphlet about Nazi Germany, but quit working on it. As a weapon against National Socialism, it was insufficient. Instead, he began working on the manual-like Germany. Jekyll & Hyde, in which he developed a Sociogram of the Nazi State. In this book, Haffner explained to British readers the relationship network of the contemporary German population, categorized into „Nazis“ (20 % of the population), „loyal population“ (40 %), „illoyal population“ (35 %) and „Opposition“ (5 %). He characterises the diverse Groups and explains how the Brits may fight those or influence them by Propaganda. Additionally, he did Portraits about Adolf Nazi and other Nazi leaders, plus „the little Nazis“.
In early 1940, he published Germany. Jekyll & Hyde under the Pseudonym Sebastian Haffner. He chose this name referring to Johann Sebastian Bach and the Haffner Symphony by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the foreword, he justified using a Pseudonym by hinting that his book certainly would be noticed by the Gestapo. In Great Britain, the book had a very positive Echo: War prime minister Winston Churchill was so impressed he had the Ministers of his War Cabinet read it. Haffner kept the Pseudonym for the Rest of his Life.
After World War II started, and once more in 1940, he and his wife were interned as "Enemy Aliens".
The Haffner couple has two common Kids, Oliver (* 1938) and Sarah (* 1940).
