The book "Abschied" ("Farewell") was recently published in a new edition, after a decision by Haffner's children who found the handwritten manuscript on their father's desk, according to The Guardian. Now the novel is among other things at the top of Der Spiegel's bestseller list, and is praised by critics as "shockingly clear-sighted".
This is a love novel, which Haffner wrote in 1932, shortly before the Nazis came to power. He never managed to get it published. In 1938, he fled to the United Kingdom with his Jewish fiancée, where he became a prominent expert on Hitler and the emergence of Nazism. The book has, however, been published previously under the title "Defying Hitler".
Haffner was actually named Raimund Pretzel. His 86-year-old son Oliver Pretzel said that the family deliberated for years on whether to publish the book after Haffner's death in 1999, because they were afraid it was too lightweight.
The German literary critic Volker Weidermann writes, however, in an afterword that Haffner often emphasized that history takes place in private micro-stories that make up the greater world history. This book portrays this his fundamental idea, according to Weidermann.
