Adolf Halfeld

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Adolf Friedrich Wilhelm Halfeld (born September 14, 1898 in Hanover ; died November 23, 1955 there ) was a German journalist , author of political books and editor-in-chief of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ).

Life

America and Americanism (1927)
The "Athenia" case. England's Real Face (1939)
Germany and the Western Powers (1940)
UNITED STATES. reaches into the world (1941)

Adolf Halfeld was the son of a businessman and graduated from the Leibniz School in Hanover in 1917 . He had been a soldier in the First World War since 1916 and studied political science in Berlin from the winter semester of 1918 , then in Heidelberg and was in Hamburg in 1921 with a study of the beekeeping trade in the 17th and 18th centuries in the older Hanoverian regions under Friedrich von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld PhD . From 1924 he worked as a foreign correspondent in the USA for, among others, the Hamburger Fremdblatt and the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten . In 1927 he published the book America and Americanism in Eugen Diederichs Verlag , which had a second edition in the following year and was praised by the right-wing conservative press. It is considered an influential example of anti-Americanism critical of civilization . In 1929 he moved to London for the same newspapers .

In 1932 Adolf Halfeld returned to Germany and after the " seizure of power " took over the editorial management of the Berlin office of the Hamburger Fremdblatt . Halfeld joined the NSDAP in 1939 . In 1943 at the latest he became the newspaper's chief editor. Halfeld was called in by the press department of the Reich Foreign Ministry for the “Wednesday round” of important Berlin correspondents in the domestic and foreign press; he worked for the magazine Volk und Reich. Political monthly journals with and wrote for the journal Berlin Rome Tokyo . Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels also had a good impression of him after he had invited Halfeld to his place in a small group. Adolf Halfeld put himself in the service of Nazi propaganda and wrote the propaganda brochure Der "Athenia" Fall for the Reich Foreign Ministry , after 117 deaths, including 28 US citizens, shortly after the start of the war on September 3, 1939, when the passenger ship Athenia sank . had given. Halfeld attributed the cause of the ship's sinking to a British conspiracy: The United States should be drawn into the war with the loss of US citizens. The propaganda script was translated by the Reich Foreign Ministry into the languages ​​of the German allies (Italy, Japan) and into French, English, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.

After the war, Halfeld used his language skills and translated writings by Victor Gollancz , Charles Terrasse, Vita Sackville-West , Douglas Woodruff and a (posthumous) book about Mahatma Gandhi by George Catlin into German. In 1950 Adolf Halfeld became editor-in-chief of the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ); he died in 1955.

Fonts (selection)

  • The beekeeping trade in the 17th and 18th centuries in the older Hanoverian parts of the country, taking into account its special position as money-seeking market production in the farm household. An investigation into the economic history of Lower Saxony . Dissertation. o. O. 1921.
  • Cultures and Revolutions. European issues of the present . Dürr & Weber, Berlin 1924.
  • America and Americanism . E. Diederichs, Jena 1927.
  • England - Decline or Rise? Diederichs, Jena 1933.
  • The "Athenia" case. England's real face . People and Reich, Berlin 1939.
  • Germany and the Western Powers . Diederichs, Jena 1940.
  • USA reaches out to the world . Broschek, Hamburg 1941.
  • The Yankee civilization . In: Friedrich Schönemann , Adolf Halfeld, Friedrich Kegel, Otto Koischwitz , Willy Gierlichs, Eduard Ahlswede, KF Hermann, Alexander Jason, Th. Von Bippen (eds.): Culture in USA. The reality of a mass madness . Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1943, pp. 49–86.
  • Douglas Woodruff: Plato's American Republic. English satire on the United States . Edited and introduced by Adolf Halfeld. Broschek, Hamburg 1943.

literature

  • Egbert Klautke: Unlimited possibilities: “Americanization” in Germany and France . Wiesbaden: Steiner, 2003. Zugl .: Heidelberg, Univ., Diss., 1999
  • Egbert Klautke: Key witnesses of anti-Americanism in Germany and France. Adolf Halfeld and Georges Duhamel . In: Wolfgang Eßbach (Ed.): What modernity? Intellectual discourses between Germany and France in the field of tension between national and European identity images . Berlin: Spitz, 2000, ISBN 3-8305-0062-9 , pp. 173-191.
  • Frank-Rutger Hausmann : English and American Studies in the “Third Reich” . Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2003

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date of birth according to Herrmann AL Degener (Ed.): Who is it? Our contemporaries , 10th edition 1935, p. 345, accessed via World Biographical Information System .
  2. ↑ a b Life data until 1945 in Egbert Klautke, 2000, p. 174f.
  3. ↑ reviews listed at Egbert Klautke, 2000, p 176, fn. 10 and S. 189, fn. 53
  4. ↑ Klaus Schwabe: German anti-Americanism in the twenties , in: Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann (ed.): Geschistorbilder: Festschrift for Michael Salewski for his 65th birthday . Stuttgart: Steiner, 2003 ISBN 3-515-08252-2 , pp. 106–118, here p. 114
  5. ↑ Peter Longerich : Propagandists in War. The press department of the Foreign Office under Ribbentrop . Oldenbourg, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-486-54111-0 , p. 316
  6. ↑ Peter Longerich: Propagandists in War. The press department of the Foreign Office under Ribbentrop . Oldenbourg, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-486-54111-0 , p. 260
  7. ↑ Adolf Halfeld: Union Jack and Stars and Stripes , in: Paul Schmidt (Ed.): Berlin Rome Tokyo - Monthly for the deepening of the cultural relations of the peoples of the world-political triangle . Issue No. 11 November 1941 Volume 3
  8. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels, completed Part I: Notes 1923-1941 . Volume 7, p. 373, March 21, 1940
personal data
SURNAME Halfeld, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Halfeld, Adolf Friedrich Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and book author
DATE OF BIRTH September 14, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH November 23, 1955
Place of death Hanover