New bestseller captures life under Hitler’s rule in Germany

A newly discovered novel shedding light on life during Hitler’s regime has swiftly climbed the bestseller charts in Germany.

Written by renowned journalist Sebastian Haffner nearly a century ago, the book offers a vivid and personal glimpse into the turbulent final days of the Weimar Republic, resonating deeply with today’s readers, Caliber.Az reports via foreign media.

A previously unknown novel by one of Europe’s most influential postwar journalists, capturing the intense yet fragile atmosphere of the Weimar Republic’s final days, has been published in Germany after his children uncovered the handwritten manuscript in his desk. More than ninety years after it was written, Haffner’s Abschied (or Parting) quickly rose to the top of the Spiegel bestseller list following its release earlier this month.

Haffner, who escaped Nazi Berlin in 1938 with his Jewish fiancée, gained immediate acclaim in 1940 with his insightful prewar work Germany: Jekyll and Hyde. It is said that Winston Churchill recommended the book to his cabinet to better understand the Nazi threat. Haffner, who changed his name from Raimund Pretzel while in the UK to protect family members still in Germany, went on to build a career as a journalist in London for the Observer. He became widely recognized as a leading expert on Nazism and the factors behind Hitler’s rise to power. In 1954, he returned to Berlin to report for the Observer and later gained prominence as a columnist for the news magazine Stern.

His son, Oliver Pretzel, 86, revealed that the family had debated for years whether to publish Parting following Haffner’s death in Berlin at age 91 in 1999. They worried that the novel—a love story—might be seen as too minor and could be overshadowed by their father’s established legacy as a significant political commentator. “My sister didn’t think the novel was very good,” Pretzel, a mathematics professor living 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.”

Fortunately, critics appear to share this newfound appreciation. In Germany, they have showered praise on the 181-page work, describing it as “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 final day of a two-week stay in Paris shared by the protagonist and his love interest, Teddy, before he must return to a Berlin gripped by mounting fear and political instability, the novel was described as “shockingly lucid” by Marie Schmidt in the Süddeutsche. 

Schmidt noted that the novel exhibits the same “keen historical awareness that astonished and fascinated the world” found in Haffner’s other posthumous work, History of a German. Written in 1939 but only published in German in 2000 and in English as Defying Hitler in 2002, that book was praised for its clear-eyed examination and credited with dispelling claims by Haffner’s contemporaries that they were unaware of Nazi atrocities. 

By Naila Huseynova