Egon Hanfstaengl

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Egon Ludwig Sedgwick Hanfstaengl (born February 3, 1921 in New York ; † March 21, 2007 in the USA) was a German art publisher.

Life

Hanfstaengl was the son of Ernst Hanfstaengl , a partisan and advisor to Adolf Hitler , and the German Helene Hanfstaengl, née Niemeyer, who lived in the USA . Hitler became his godfather . He had a sister, Hertha, who died at the age of five. He received his school education in England and Germany, where he also joined the Hitler Youth (HJ).

He went to the United States to study, and was an American citizen from birth . As the son of a prominent former top functionary of the NSDAP, about whom the American press reported regularly, Egon Hanfstaengl also came into the focus of the reporting. The New York Times announced the admission of the 18-year-old to Harvard University . The newspaper also reported that he volunteered for the United States Army Air Corps in early 1941 . The news of Egon Hanfstaengl's entry into the US Army was also noticed by Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , who made an entry in his diary.

The journalist John Franklin Carter , who, as advisor to the US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had psychological assessments of the Nazi leaders made, also asked Hanfstaengl father and son about it. When Egon Hanfstaengl began working on a book about the Hitler Youth, Roosevelt, who knew his father Ernst Hanfstaengl from studying at Harvard, spontaneously dictated several paragraphs for a foreword after Carter's report. According to American files, Egon Hanfstaengl offered to travel to Hitler at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden in 1943 to carry out an attack on him, but the White House ignored this proposal.

After World War II, Egon Hanfstaengl was a lecturer in European and American history at Brooklyn College in New York. From 1958 until its dissolution in 1980 he was managing director of the art and publishing house Franz Hanfstaengl in Munich. As the godchild of Adolf Hitler , he appeared in several documentaries about Hitler.

literature

  • Ulrich Chaussy : Twice America and back to Bavaria: the eventful life of Egon Hanfstaengl. Bavarian Radio, 2000.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter Conradi, Hitler's Piano Player, 2006, p. 34
  2. ↑ Hitler Ex-Aide's Son at Harvard. In: New York Times , September 23, 1939.
  3. ↑ Hanfstaengl Jr. In Army; Harvard Man, Son of Ex-Nazi, Enlists in American Forces. In: New York Times, January 30, 1941.
  4. ^ Carlos Widmann , Play it again, Putzi . Der Spiegel , 10/1999.
  5. ^ The diaries of Joseph Goebbels. Ed. Elke Fröhlich. T. I, Vol. 9. Munich 1998, p. 119.
  6. ↑ Joseph E. Persico: Roosevelt's Secret War. FDR and World War II Espionage. New York 2002, p. 232.
  7. ↑ Joseph E. Persico: Roosevelt's Secret War. FDR and World War II Espionage. New York 2002, p. 332.
  8. ↑ Egon Hanfstaengl in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Hanfstaengl, Egon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hanfstaengl, Egon Ludwig Sedgwick
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German art publisher
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH new York
DATE OF DEATH March 21, 2007
Place of death United States