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2 days ago
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‘Parting' by Sebastian Haffner: A forgotten German novel of the early 1930s that became a bestseller
Abschied (Parting) by Sebastian Haffner (1907–1999) is dominating the bestseller charts in Germany. It has been published posthumously, over 25 years after his death, after the manuscript was found in a drawer. The novel is a love story between Raimund, a young non-Jewish German student of law from Berlin, and Teddy, a young Jewish woman from Vienna. Raimund and Teddy meet on August 31, 1930, in Berlin and the novel covers the time they spend in Berlin and Paris together. Abschied was written between October 18 and November 23, 1932, just before the Nazi takeover. It reads in the breathless, immediate manner in which it was clearly conceived. It also gives a personal insight into the zeitgeist of the final months of the Weimar Republic. Haffner was born Raimund Pretzel in Berlin, where he trained as a lawyer. He disagreed with the Nazi regime and emigrated to London in 1938. There, in order to protect his family in Germany from potential Nazi retribution he changed his name. It is estimated that around 80,000 German-speaking refugees from Nazism lived in the UK by September 1939. Most of these refugees were Jewish, but there was also a sizeable number who, like Haffner, had fled for political reasons. Many politically committed exiles arrived soon after 1933 but this was not the case for Haffner. In the 1930s he was busy being a young man in Berlin, training as a lawyer and enjoying himself. Haffner's father was an educationalist who had a library with 10,000 volumes. As a young man Haffner liked reading, and toyed with the idea of becoming a writer and journalist, but his father advised him to study law and aim for a career in the civil service. Political developments in Germany made this option increasingly unpalatable. Initially, Haffner found it difficult to see a way out. As he wrote in Defying Hitler: 'Daily life […] made it difficult to see the situation clearly.' In the book, he also describes how he and other Germans acquiesced to the new regime. Haffner was disgusted with his own reaction to the SA (the Nazi party's private army) entering the library of the court building where he was a pupil, asking those present whether they were Aryan and throwing out Jewish members of the court. When questioned by an SA man, Haffner replied that he was indeed Aryan and felt immediately ashamed: 'A moment too late I felt the shame, the defeat. I had said, 'Yes'. […] What a humiliation to have answered the unjustified question whether I was Aryan so easily, even if the fact was of no importance to me.' Haffner never really took up his career as a lawyer, because it would have meant upholding Nazi laws and Nazi justice. Instead, he started working as a journalist and writer, first in Germany and after his escape in 1938 in the UK. Life in the UK Soon after his arrival in the UK, Haffner finished a book titled Defying Hitler (1939). The memoir was both autobiographical and a political history of the period – but after the outbreak of the Second World War it was considered not polemical enough, and was dismissed as an unsuitable explanation for the rise of Nazism at the time. But the intermingling of private and public history is of great interest to readers in the 21st century. Defying Hitler was published posthumously in German (2000) and in English (2003) and became a bestseller in both languages. After Defying Hitler, Haffner turned to writing another book, Germany: Jekyll and Hyde (1940). It was more clearly anti-Nazi and focused on his journalism – during the war, he worked for the Foreign Office on anti-Nazi propaganda and he was later employed by The Observer as a political journalist. The book was a success, and Winston Churchill is said to have told his cabinet to read it. The German critic Volker Weidemann who wrote the epilogue to Parting toys with the idea that it was never published because its focus on the love story was considered a bit too trivial for such a great writer. Thanks to his work for The Observer after 1941, Haffner was a well-regarded political journalist and historical biographer. He became the paper's German correspondent in 1954, and was well known for his column in West Germany's Stern magazine and for his biographies, including one on Churchill (1967). The perspective of a young non-Jewish German living a relatively ordinary life in the early 1930s makes Abschied a fascinating read. Academics have been exploring everyday life under Nazi rule for nearly half a century now, but it seems that modern readers are still keen to learn about it today. Perhaps the novel resonates with so many German readers because we live in a time where many struggle with the inevitable continuation of everyday life while politics is becoming ever more extraordinary. Andrea Hammel is Professor of German, Aberystwyth University.
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2 days ago
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Andrea Hammel, The Conversation
Stories written by 'Parting' by Sebastian Haffner: A forgotten German novel of the early 1930s that became a bestseller It was published posthumously, over 25 years after Haffner's death, after the manuscript was found in a drawer. Andrea Hammel, The Conversation
Express Tribune
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Nazi-era novel tops charts
A young and restive Sebastian Haffner was typical of a generation of German writers and journalists who left their homeland in the 1930s to escape Nazi rule. Relocating to London, Haffner described the headwinds of dictatorship in his historical memoir, Defying Hitler — a book he shelved at the time, but was published to much fanfare in 2002. That foreboding story of a young man coming-of-age in interwar Germany was preceded by a novel conceived when the writer was only 24. Titled Abschied, or Parting, the long-forgotten manuscript was discovered by the writer's son, Oliver Pretzel, after the author's death in 1999. It took almost a quarter of a century to get published. But the tale of young love torn between Berlin and Paris topped the German bestseller list only a week after it was published in June. Glimmer of light Parting was written in a few weeks in late 1932 as a troubled Weimar Republic was being supplanted by fascism and as Hitler worked on his rise to power. The author's name was then Raimund Pretzel; he took the pseudonym Sebastian Haffner to protect his identity after arriving in the UK in 1938. Haffner was then a liberal trainee lawyer at a Berlin court who would witness Jewish and social-democratic judges being expelled as the Nazis took power. But despite the novel's pervading sense of doom, the autobiographical love story retained a sense of hope. Florian Kessel, the book's publisher at Hanser Verlag, called it "a wonderfully free novel, full of smoking and hanging out together and falling in love to the point of ecstasy." Yet it is also "full of allusions to the violent history of the decade that was unfolding." According to author and literary critic Volker Weidermann, who contributed the novel's epilogue, the story echoed Haffner's own love for a woman in Berlin who left for Paris in the early 1930s before he followed. But the love affair between Raimund and Teddy is "basically already over" when he arrives in Paris and tries to rekindle a late summer romance. She saw the writing on the wall as Germany became more nationalistic and antisemitic. He hung around in Berlin until it was too late. Teddy's real name was Gertrude Joseph, a Vienna-born Jewish woman who Haffner met in Berlin before she went to study at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1930. They met again in the German capital in 1933, whence she informed him she was getting married and would never return. It was then that Haffner decided to follow her to Paris. Joseph ultimately had a family in Sweden, though the two maintained correspondence throughout their life, according to Weidermann. Long wait The Parting manuscript was found in a drawer next to History of a German, the non-fiction work that became Defying Hitler. Yet it was published 23 years later, partly due to "different views in the family about publishing the manuscript," Oliver Pretzel recounted in an interview with Republik Magazin. "He hadn't written anything about it in his will," said Pretzel of his father. But Haffner's son, along with his nephew, who inherited the rights to it from his mother, finally agreed to publish the book - which Pretzel himself edited. Haffner's heirs were understandably "worried" that this "early, light, youthful text" might muddy the "good reputation of the serious historian," wrote Weidermann. But it was precisely this "rapturous" and "breathless" novel that "describes the source of the grief on which his later books rest on," he added. The literary critic was referring to texts like Germany: Jekyll & Hide (1940), the story of how German society embraced Nazism after it reacted to defeat in World War One with "resentment, defiance, and spite." Printed hastily before the Nazi invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands in the hope of influencing German readers, the New York Times in 1941 called the book an "excellent analysis of Germany's ills," and of a population's willingness to "hitch its wagon to an evil star." In Defying Hitler, Haffner described a scene at his high court office that typified his insightful and prophetic journalistic oeuvre. "Then, not particularly loudly, somebody else said, 'They're throwing out the Jews,' and a few others laughed. At that moment this laughter alarmed me more than what was actually happening. With a start I realised there were Nazis working in this room." Literary rebirth In his journalistic and historical writings, Haffner, who returned to Germany in 1954, was perceived as "a forensic scientist of the German soul [who] works with a scalpel," according to Swiss author and literary critic Matthias Zehnder. "His novel, on the other hand, is dabbed on with impressionistic lightness." The publication of Parting hints at a talent for fiction that was never allowed to flourish. "What a novelist Sebastian Haffner would have been!" wrote Weidermman, referring to the author's "tremendous powers of observation, his enormous wit, sentence after sentence." Oliver Pretzel described how he discovered both Denying Hitler and Parting in the same drawer after his father's death, but how both were very different. "I particularly liked Parting because it has such a light tone and is basically still full of joie de vivre, which is somewhat lacking in Defying Hitler." he said in an interview with publisher Hanser. "You get the feeling that he takes a gloomy view of the world, whereas in Parting it is a hopeful view."
DW
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- DW
Lost Nazi-era novel becomes bestseller – DW – 07/01/2025
Historian and journalist Sebastian Haffner was 24 when he penned an unpublished romance novel set amid Hitler's ominous rise to power. Almost a century later, it's a literary sensation. A young and restive Sebastian Haffner was typical of a generation of German writers and journalists who left their homeland in the 1930s to escape Nazi rule. Relocating to London, Haffner described the headwinds of dictatorship in the historical memoir, "Defying Hitler" — a book he shelved at the time, but was published to much fanfare in 2002. That foreboding story of a young man coming-of-age in interwar Germany was preceded by a novel conceived when the writer was only 24. Titled "Abschied," or "Parting," the long-forgotten manuscript was discovered by the writer's son, Oliver Pretzel, after the author's death in 1999. It took almost a quarter of a century to get published. But the tale of young love torn between Berlin and Paris topped the German bestseller list only a week after it was published in June. "Parting" was written in a few weeks in late 1932 as a troubled Weimar Republic was being supplanted by fascism and as Hitler worked on his rise to power. The author's name was then Raimund Pretzel; he took the pseudonym Sebastian Haffner to protect his identity after arriving in the UK in 1938. Haffner was then a liberal trainee lawyer at a Berlin court who would witness Jewish and social-democratic judges being expelled as the Nazis took power. But despite the novel's pervading sense of doom, the autobiographical love story retained a sense of hope. Florian Kessel, the book's publisher at Hanser Verlag, called it "a wonderfully free novel, full of smoking and hanging out together and falling in love to the point of ecstasy." Yet it is also "full of allusions to the violent history of the decade that was unfolding." According to author and literary critic Volker Weidermann, who contributed the novel's epilogue, the story echoed Haffner's own love for a woman in Berlin who left for Paris in the early 1930s before he followed. But the love affair between Raimund and Teddy is "basically already over" when he arrives in Paris and tries to rekindle a late summer romance. She saw the writing on the wall as Germany became more nationalistic and antisemitic. He hung around in Berlin until it was too late. Teddy's real name was Gertrude Joseph, a Vienna-born Jewish woman who Haffner met in Berlin before she went to study at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1930. They met again in the German capital in 1933, whence she informed him she was getting married and would never return. It was then that Haffner decided to follow her to Paris. Joseph ultimately had a family in Sweden, though the two maintained correspondence throughout their life, according to Weidermann. The "Parting" manuscript was found in a drawer next to "History of a German," the non-fiction work that became "Defying Hitler." Yet it was published 23 years later, partly due to "different views in the family about publishing the manuscript," Oliver Pretzel recounted in an interview with . "He hadn't written anything about it in his will," said Pretzel of his father. But Haffner's son, along with his nephew, who inherited the rights to it from his mother, finally agreed to publish the book — which Pretzel himself edited. Haffner's heirs were understandably "worried" that this "early, light, youthful text" might muddy the "good reputation of the serious historian," wrote Weidermann. But it was precisely this "rapturous" and "breathless" novel that "describes the source of the grief on which his later books rest on," he added. The literary critic was referring to texts like "Germany: Jekyll & Hide" (1940), the story of how German society embraced Nazism after it reacted to defeat in World War One with "resentment, defiance, and spite." Printed hastily before the Nazi invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands in the hope of influencing German readers, the in 1941 called the book an "excellent analysis of Germany's ills," and of a population's willingness to "hitch its wagon to an evil star." In "Defying Hitler," Haffner described a scene at his high court office that typified his insightful and prophetic journalistic oeuvre. "Then, not particularly loudly, somebody else said, 'They're throwing out the Jews,' and a few others laughed. At that moment this laughter alarmed me more than what was actually happening. With a start I realized there were Nazis working in this room." In his journalistic and historical writings, Haffner, who returned to Germany in 1954, was perceived as "a forensic scientist of the German soul [who] works with a scalpel," according to Swiss author and literary critic Matthias Zehnder. "His novel, on the other hand, is dabbed on with impressionistic lightness." The publication of "Parting" hints at a talent for fiction that was never allowed to flourish. "What a novelist Sebastian Haffner would have been!" wrote Weidermman, referring to the author's "tremendous powers of observation, his enormous wit, sentence after sentence." Oliver Pretzel described how he discovered both "Denying Hitler" and "Parting" in the same drawer after his father's death, but how both were very different. "I particularly liked 'Parting' because it has such a light tone and is basically still full of joie de vivre, which is somewhat lacking in 'Defying Hitler.'" he said in an interview with publisher Hanser. "You get the feeling that he takes a gloomy view of the world, whereas in 'Parting' it is a hopeful view." To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
The Guardian
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Unknown novel by writer who charted Hitler's rise becomes German bestseller
A previously unknown novel by one of Europe's most influential postwar journalists which captures the heady yet fragile spirit of the final days of the Weimar Republic has been published in Germany after his children discovered the hand-written manuscript in his desk. More than nine decades after he wrote it, Sebastian Haffner's Abschied or Parting has soared to the top of the Spiegel bestseller list following its debut earlier this month. Haffner, who fled Nazi Berlin with his Jewish fiancee in 1938, achieved instant recognition in 1940 with his penetrating prewar classic Germany: Jekyll and Hyde. Winston Churchill is said to have told his cabinet to read it in order to comprehend the Nazi threat. Haffner, who changed his name in the UK from Raimund Pretzel in order to protect family still living in Germany, went on to work as a journalist in London for the Observer. He was recognised as one of the commanding analysts of nazism and what brought Hitler to power, returning to Berlin for the Observer in 1954, and later becoming a prominent columnist for the news magazine Stern. His son, Oliver Pretzel, 86, said his family had deliberated for years over whether to release Parting after Haffner's death in Berlin aged 91 in 1999. They had been concerned, he said, that the work, a love story, might have seemed too slight, and overshadowed their father's towering reputation as a heavyweight commentator. 'My sister didn't think the novel was very good,' Pretzel, a professor of mathematics based in London, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. 'I initially shared this view somewhat. But when I re-read it and since I set about translating it into English, I suddenly realised how ingeniously constructed it is.' Happily, the critics seem to agree. In Germany they have heaped praise on the 181-page work, calling it 'a literary windfall', an 'incredibly fast-paced, light, and lively text', and 'a beautiful book of youthful sparkle and great emotional impact'. Set on the last day of a two-week sojourn in Paris by the protagonist and his love interest, Teddy, before he has to return to a Berlin overcome by a growing sense of fear and political uncertainty, the novel was 'shockingly lucid', Marie Schmidt wrote in the Süddeutsche. The novel reflected the same 'keen historical awareness that astonished and fascinated the world' in Haffner's other posthumous work, History of a German, she added. That book was written in 1939 but only published for the first time in German in 2000, and in English, under the title Defying Hitler, in 2002. It was praised for its clear-sighted scrutiny and credited with extinguishing the repeated assertions of Haffner's contemporaries that they had not known about Nazi crimes. Jekyll and Hyde was first published in Germany in 1996 under the title: 1939 – Deutschland von innen betrachtet (Germany observed from within). Both books also topped the German bestseller lists when they were published. Haffner was 24 when he wrote Parting in just a few weeks in October and November 1932, just months before the Nazis came to power. His attempts to get it published failed. Its narrator, Raimund, is an apprentice lawyer who smokes Gitanes Rouge and reads Aldous Huxley. In Paris in the spring of 1931 he meets Teddy, who has left Berlin, describing it as a time in which 'crisis had not yet been invented'. Teddy is thought to have been based on Gertrude Joseph, a Jewish woman from Vienna with whom Haffner had been in love. He described in his autobiographical book History of a German how she had returned to Nazi Berlin from Paris for the last time in the summer of 1933, bringing with her 'an air that one could breathe, and which one breathed in greedily'. Raimund in the novel describes the growing foreboding of having to 'leave for a cold Berlin'. Haffner and Joseph, who ended up in Sweden, kept in touch until the end of their days. Twenty letters from him to her were found in her possession on her death. In an epilogue to the novel, the literary critic Volker Weidermann says the family's fears about its publication were unfounded. 'It [Parting] completes the historical picture that Haffner has presented to us in his … historical writings because it describes the root cause of the grief on which his later books lean, of everything of a good Germany that was lost – cosmopolitanism, tolerance, and humanity. Haffner himself repeatedly emphasised that history unfolds in private micro stories that, together, make up greater world history. In Parting he has set out this core idea.' An English-language edition of Parting, translated by Oliver Pretzel, is expected to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
