Albrecht Georg Haushofer (7 January 1903 – 23 April 1945) was a German
geographer
A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...
, diplomat, author and member of the
German Resistance to Nazism
Many individuals and groups in Germany that were opposed to the Nazi Germany, Nazi regime engaged in active resistance, including assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler, attempts to remove Adolf Hitler from power by assassination or by overthro ...
.
Life
Haushofer was born in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
, the son of the retired World War I general and geographer
Karl Haushofer
Karl Ernst Haushofer (27 August 1869 – 10 March 1946) was a German general, professor, geographer, and politician. Through his student Rudolf Hess, Haushofer's conception of Geopolitik influenced the development of Adolf Hitler's expansio ...
(1869–1946) and his wife Martha, née Mayer-Doss (1877–1946). Albrecht had one brother, Heinz. He studied geography and history at
Munich University
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...
. In 1924 he graduated with his thesis ''Paß-Staaten in den Alpen,''
Erich von Drygalski
Erich Dagobert von Drygalski (; February 9, 1865 – January 10, 1949) was a German geographer, geophysicist and polar scientist, born in Königsberg, East Prussia.
Between 1882 and 1887, Drygalski studied mathematics and natural science at t ...
(1865–1949) was his supervisor. Haushofer then worked as an assistant for
Albrecht Penck
Albrecht Penck (25 September 1858 – 7 March 1945) was a German geographer and geologist and the father of Walther Penck.
Biography
Born in Reudnitz near Leipzig, Penck became a university professor in Vienna, Austria, from 1885 to 1906, ...
.
A fellow student in
geopolitics
Geopolitics (from Greek γῆ ''gê'' "earth, land" and πολιτική ''politikḗ'' "politics") is the study of the effects of Earth's geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to ...
was
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (Heß in German; 26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a German politician and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, Hess held that position unt ...
, a very early follower of
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
and close friend of his Haushofer's father, Karl. Karl Haushofer was a frequent visitor to
Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west-southwest of Munich and south of Augsburg. It is best known as the prison where Adolf Hitler was held in 1924, a ...
, where Hitler and Hess were jailed after the failed 1923
Beer Hall Putsch
The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch,Dan Moorhouse, ed schoolshistory.org.uk, accessed 2008-05-31.Known in German as the or was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party ( or NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler, Erich Ludendorff and othe ...
and ''
Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
'' was written. Later, under the
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of th ...
of 1935 (effective from 1936), Albrecht Haushofer was categorized as a ''
Mischling
(; " mix-ling"; plural: ) was a pejorative legal term used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of mixed "Aryan" and non-Aryan, such as Jewish, ancestry as codified in the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. In German, the word has the general denota ...
;'' however Hess,
Deputy Führer
Rudolf Walter Richard Hess (Heß in German; 26 April 1894 – 17 August 1987) was a German politician and a leading member of the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. Appointed Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, Hess held that position unt ...
since 1933, succeeded in having him issued a
German Blood Certificate
A German Blood Certificate (German: ''Deutschblütigkeitserklärung'') was a document provided by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to ''Mischlinge'' (those with partial Jewish heritage), declaring them ''deutschblütig'' (of German blood). This practice w ...
.
Albrecht Haushofer was made secretary general of the ''
Gesellschaft für Erdkunde'' geographical society in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
and the editor of its periodical. He held this position from 1928 to 1938. Haushofer traveled the world in his official capacity, lecturing and gaining a wide experience of international affairs.
![Gedenkstele Kurzebracker Weg 40 (Heilg) Albrecht Haushofer](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Gedenkstele_Kurzebracker_Weg_40_%28Heilg%29_Albrecht_Haushofer.jpg)
He started teaching geopolitics at the ''
Deutsche Hochschule für Politik The Deutsche Hochschule für Politik (DHfP), or ''German Academy for Politics'', was a private academy in Berlin, founded in October 1920. It was integrated into the Faculty for Foreign Studies (''Auslandswissenschaftliche Fakultät'') of the Humbol ...
'' (German Academy for Politics) in 1933, which had lost many of its teachers with the Nazi
ascent to power. When the Academy was incorporated into the
University of Berlin
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (german: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a German public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin. It was established by Frederick William III on the initiative o ...
in 1940, he was made a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
at the Faculty for Foreign Studies (''Auslandswissenschaftliche Fakultät''). He also served as an advisor at the ' of the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
from 1934 until 1938, when the bureau was disbanded upon the appointment of
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop (; 30 April 1893 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and diplomat who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nazi Germany from 1938 to 1945.
Ribbentrop first came to Adolf Hitler's not ...
as Foreign Minister. Haushofer then until 1941 sometimes worked at the propaganda department of the German
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* Unit ...
(''Informationsabteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes'').
Obtaining an insight in Nazi politics, Haushofer from the mid 1930s onwards approached two German resistance circles. Following the outbreak of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Haushofer joined the conservative opponents around the Prussian finance minister
Johannes Popitz
Johannes Popitz (2 December 1884 – 2 February 1945) was a Prussian finance minister and a member of the German Resistance against the government of Nazi Germany. He was the father of Heinrich Popitz, an important German sociologist.
Life ...
; he also met with
Peter Yorck von Wartenburg
Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg (13 November 1904 – 8 August 1944) was a German jurist and a member of the German Resistance against Nazism. He studied law and politics in Bonn and Breslau from 1923 to 1926, gaining his doctorate in Breslau in ...
and
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke (11 March 1907 – 23 January 1945) was a German jurist who, as a draftee in the German Abwehr, acted to subvert German human-rights abuses of people in territories occupied by Germany during World War II. He w ...
from the
Kreisau Circle
The Kreisau Circle (German: ''Kreisauer Kreis'', ) (1940–1944) was a group of about twenty-five German dissidents in Nazi Germany led by Helmuth James von Moltke, who met at his estate in the rural town of Kreisau, Silesia. The circle was com ...
opposition as well as people from the
Red Orchestra group, whose Berlin leaders
Arvid Harnack
Arvid Harnack (; 24 May 1901 in Darmstadt – 22 December 1942 in Berlin) was a German jurist, Marxist economist, Communist, and German resistance fighter in Nazi Germany. Harnack came from an intellectual family and was originally a humanist. He ...
and
Harro Schulze-Boysen
Heinz Harro Max Wilhelm Georg Schulze-Boysen (; Schulze, 2 September 1909 – 22 December 1942) was a left-wing German publicist and Luftwaffe officer during World War II. As a young man, Schulze-Boysen grew up in prosperous family with two sibli ...
had also taught at the ''Hochschule für Politik''.
Haushofer was involved in Hess' attempts to negotiate peace with the French and British, acting as an intermediary. It has been speculated that he may have encouraged Hess's 1941 flight to Scotland, after which Haushofer's fortune changed. Under suspicion to have helped Hess he was put in prison for some weeks and then kept under ''
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...
'' surveillance. High-ranking members of the Nazi Party looked disapprovingly upon his half-
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
mother.
He came to agree that the only way to prevent complete military and political disaster was to remove Hitler. After the failed 1944
bomb plot
A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the Exothermic process, exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-t ...
Haushofer went into hiding, but was arrested at a farm in
Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
on 7 December 1944.
![Von-allem-leid panorama w3795](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Von-allem-leid_panorama_w3795.jpg)
Incarcerated in Berlin
Moabit
Moabit () is an inner city locality in the borough of Mitte, Berlin, Germany. As of 2016, around 77,000 people lived in Moabit. First inhabited in 1685 and incorporated into Berlin in 1861, the former industrial and working-class neighbourhood i ...
Prison, he wrote his ''Moabit Sonnets'', posthumously published in 1946. In the night of 22/23 April 1945, as
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
troops already entered Berlin, Albrecht Haushofer and other inmates like
Klaus Bonhoeffer
Klaus Bonhoeffer (5 January 1901 – 23 April 1945) was a German jurist and German resistance to Nazism, resistance fighter against the Nazism, Nazi régime who was executed after the 20 July Plot, July 1944 plot to kill Hitler.
Early life
Klaus ...
and
Rüdiger Schleicher
Rüdiger Schleicher (14 January 1895 – 23 April 1945) was a German legal academic and resistance fighter against the Nazi régime.
Life
Born in Stuttgart, Württemberg, Schleicher was married to Ursula Bonhoeffer (1902–1983), Karl B ...
were shot in the neck by ''
SS'' troopers on nearby
Invalidenstraße
The Invalidenstraße is a street in Berlin, Germany. It runs east to west for through the districts of Mitte and Moabit. The street originally connected three important railway stations in the northern city centre: the Stettiner Bahnhof (today N ...
. His body was discovered by his brother Heinz on 12 May 1945.
Moabit Sonnets
One of the sonnets, titled ''Schuld'' or "Guilt", was on his person at the time of his execution. It reads as follows:
:::
See also
*
Duke of Hamilton
Duke of Hamilton is a title in the Peerage of Scotland, created in April 1643. It is the senior dukedom in that peerage (except for the Dukedom of Rothesay held by the Sovereign's eldest son), and as such its holder is the premier peer of Sco ...
and the Hess affair
Footnotes
External links
Biography(in German), website of the
Deutsches Historisches Museum
The German Historical Museum (german: Deutsches Historisches Museum), known by the acronym DHM, is a museum in Berlin, Germany devoted to German history. It describes itself as a place of "enlightenment and understanding of the shared history o ...
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haushofer, Albrecht
1903 births
1945 deaths
German resistance members
German people of Jewish descent
Executed members of the 20 July plot
Geopoliticians
People from Munich
People from the Kingdom of Bavaria
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin faculty
People from Bavaria executed by Nazi Germany
Executed German people
People executed by Nazi Germany by firing squad
German-language poets