Ernst Haffner was a German social worker, journalist, and novelist whose only known novel, ''Blood Brothers'', originally titled “Jugend auf der Landstrasse Berlin” (“Youth on the Road to Berlin”), was published in 1932 to critical acclaim by

Bruno Cassirer Bruno Cassirer (12 December 1872 – 29 October 1941Barbara Falk: ''No Other Home: an Anglo-Jewish family in Australia 1833–1987'', Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1988.) was a publisher and gallery owner in Berlin who had a considerable influence on ...

and banned by the Nazis one year later. Sometime over the course of World War II, all traces of Haffner were lost, including any professional and personal records that may have helped to indicate what led to his disappearance. There is just a single entry for him in the Berlin registry, where Haffner lived between 1925 and 1933. At the end of the 1930s, it is documented that he was summoned to appear at the Nazi ''Reichsschrifttumskammer'' (a writer’s union affiliated with the Third Reich), after which the details of his life remain unknown.

Work

Published in the last year before Hitler’s rise to power, ''Blood Brothers'' received a positive review by famed sociologist and philosopher

Siegfried Kracauer Siegfried Kracauer (; ; February 8, 1889 – November 26, 1966) was a German writer, journalist, sociologist, cultural critic, and film theorist. He has sometimes been associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. He is notable for a ...

in the ''

Frankfurter Zeitung The ''Frankfurter Zeitung'' () was a German-language newspaper that appeared from 1856 to 1943. It emerged from a market letter that was published in Frankfurt. In Nazi Germany, it was considered the only mass publication not completely controlle ...

'' upon publication. The book was subject to the 1933

Nazi book burnings The Nazi book burnings were a campaign conducted by the German Student Union (, ''DSt'') to ceremonially burn books in Nazi Germany and Austria in the 1930s. The books targeted for burning were those viewed as being subversive or as representin ...

. ''Blood Brothers'', titled ''Blutsbrüder'' in German, was reissued in 2013 by the German publishing house Metrolit Verlag (Berlin) . The first English edition, titled ''Blood Brothers'', translated by

Michael Hofmann Michael Hofmann (born 25 August 1957) is a German-born poet who writes in English and is a translator of texts from German. Biography Hofmann was born in Freiburg into a family with a literary tradition. His father was the German novelist Ger ...

was published in 2015. Book Review

References

External links

* English language magazine published in Berlin. * German online culture magazine article (in German). * German-American Opinion: Politics and Culture blog (in English). Year of birth missing Year of death missing German social workers 20th-century German novelists German male novelists 20th-century German male writers {{Germany-writer-stub