Story of a German

Story of a German. The memories 1914–1933 is a book by the author Sebastian Haffner , written in 1939 in exile in England , but only published posthumously in 2000 , in which he analyzes the development of Germany between 1914 and 1933 and combines it with personal experiences during this period. The typescript of the text had been discovered in Haffner's estate ; even those close to him had not known of its existence until then.

The book was a huge hit. In 2001, the two historians Henning Köhler and Jürgen Paul doubted the year the book was written because of the many future prognoses that had come true (including Hitler's suicide). A short time later, however, they were refuted by a hitherto unpublished interview that Jutta Krug had conducted with Sebastian Haffner in 1989, as well as after philological and forensic investigations.

Thus, the story of a German is the first book that Haffner had already written before he worked on the same subject in a different way in Germany: Jekyll & Hyde , published in England in 1940 .

See also

• ZEIT student library
• Sebastian Haffner: History of a German: the memories 1914-1933 . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 978-3-421-05409-8 .

Web links

• Review notes on the story of a German at perlentaucher.de
• Volker Ullrich : Fascination with the monster. In: The time . March 13, 2003, accessed on January 21, 2019 (No. 12/2003). 
• January 30, 1933 - The takeover of power by the Nazis and Sebastian Haffner's book History of a German. In: web.nli.org.il. The National Library of Israel, accessed January 21, 2019 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Henning Köhler: Notes on Haffner. Haffner's posthumous bestseller “History of a German” is not historically authentic . In: FAZ , August 16, 2001
2. ↑ Do with it what you want . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 2001 ( online - on the historians' dispute).
3. ^ A defense of Sebastian Haffner . Alexander Boulerian on the historians' dispute; on wsws.org
4. ↑ Sebastian Haffner: Masked as an Englishman: A conversation with Jutta Krug about exile (with an afterword by Uwe Soukup ), Stuttgart & Munich 2001 (posthumous)
5. ^ Rudolf Walther: A carefree fraud? In: taz.de . August 18, 2001, accessed January 21, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Joachim Güntner: No evidence of manipulation. Forensic findings on Haffner. (No longer available online.) In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. November 2, 2001, archived from the original on January 19, 2012 ; accessed on January 21, 2019 .