Albrecht Haushofer

Albrecht Georg Haushofer (7 January 1903 – 23 April 1945) was a German geographer, diplomat, author and member of the German Resistance to Nazism.

Life Haushofer was born in Munich, the son of the retired World War I general and geographer Karl Haushofer (1869–1946) and his wife Martha, née Mayer-Doss (1877–1946). Albrecht had one brother, Heinz. He studied geography and history at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 1924, he graduated with his thesis Paß-Staaten in den Alpen, Erich von Drygalski (1865–1949) was his supervisor. Haushofer then worked as an assistant for Albrecht Penck.

A fellow student in geopolitics was Rudolf Hess, a very early follower of Adolf Hitler and close friend of Haushofer's father, Karl. Karl Haushofer was a frequent visitor to Landsberg Prison, where Hitler and Hess were jailed after the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch and Mein Kampf was written. Later, under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 (effective from 1936), Albrecht Haushofer was categorized as a Mischling. However, Hess, Deputy Führer since 1933, succeeded in having Haushofer issued a German Blood Certificate.

Albrecht Haushofer was made secretary general of the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde geographical society in Berlin and the editor of its periodical. High-ranking members of the Nazi Party looked disapprovingly upon his half-Jewish 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 Haushofer went into hiding, but was arrested at a farm in Bavaria on 7 December 1944.

Works

Pass-Staaten in den Alpen. Vowinckel, Berlin-Grunewald 1928 Englands Einbruch in China. Junker u. Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1940 Allgemeine politische Geographie und Geopolitik. Band 1, Vowinckel, Heidelberg Scipio. Ein Schauspiel in 5 Akten, Drama, Propyläen-Verlag, Berlin 1934 Sulla. Ein Schauspiel in 5 Akten, Drama, Propyläen-Verlag, Berlin 1938 Augustus. Ein Schauspiel in 5 Akten, Drama, Propyläen-Verlag, Berlin 1939 Chinesische Legende. Eine dramatische Dichtung, Blanvalet, Berlin 1949 Thomas Morus. Unvollendetes tragisches Schauspiel, Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen (ed.), Paderborn u. a., Schöningh, 1985. Moabiter Sonette. Amelie von Graevenitz (ed.), C. H. Beck, München 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-64166-4

Traumgesicht: 50 zeitlose Gedichte. Martin Werhand Verlag, Melsbach 2016, ISBN 978-3-943910-75-9