Revisiting Sebastian Haffner’s memoir Geschichte eines Deutschen in the Context of Contemporary Political Trends

Abstract

abstract:Recent years have seen an authoritarian turn on a global scale which has stoked worries about the future of democracy and its institutions. Commentators, particularly in the United States, have made widespread comparisons with the 1920s and 1930s that bred fascism. Via a primary focus on a close reading of the fragmentary memoir Geschichte eines Deutschen by Sebastian Haffner (1907–1999), this article problematizes the drawing of historical analogies and assesses their validity and utility. Re-reading Haffner points to significant differences and also certain parallels between the experience of Weimar Germany and the political landscape of the present-day United States.