German · 1907–1999
Sebastian Haffner was the pen name of Raimund Pretzel, a German journalist, lawyer and historian. Born in Berlin in 1907, he trained as a jurist and worked as a junior lawyer until the Nazi takeover made his position untenable. In 1938 he emigrated to England with his Jewish fiancée, and he worked there as a journalist, writing for The Observer among other papers. He used a pseudonym to protect relatives left in Germany. He returned to West Germany in 1954 and wrote for Stern and Die Welt. His books include The Meaning of Hitler, The Rise and Fall of Prussia and Failure of a Revolution, about 1918-19. His memoir of the 1930s, Geschichte eines Deutschen, was written in 1939 but only published in 2000, after his death, and it became a bestseller in Germany. He died in Berlin in 1999.