Haushofer, Albrecht.

Haushofer, Albrecht, born 07-01-1903 in Munich, and his father was the retired General and geographer Karl Haushofer (1869- 1946). His mother was Martha Mechtild Mary (born Mayer-Doss) (1877 – 1946). Albrecht had one brother, Heinz Konrad. who died 18-02-1988, age 81. Albrecht studied geography and history at Munich University. He graduated in 1924 with his thesis “Paß- Staaten in den Alpen”, Erich von Drygalski (1865 – 1949)  was his supervisor. A fellow student in geopolitics was later deputy leader of the Nazi’s Rudolf Hess

         a very early follower of Adolf Hitler (did you know) and later the Führer’s deputy. 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. Albrecht Haushofer was made secretary general of the Gesellschaft für Erdkunde, the geographical society 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. He started teaching geopolitics at the German Institute for Politics  in 1933, which had lost many of its teachers with the Nazi ascent to power. He was made professor at the Berlin University department for foreign studies, when it incorporated the old DHfP in 1940. He also was an adviser at the Dienststelle Joachim von Ribbentrop

 from 1934 to 1938, when Ribbentrop was made foreign minister his old bureau was disbanded. Haushofer then until 1941 sometimes worked at the propaganda department of the foreign ministry.  Following the outbreak of the World War II, 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 senseless flight to Scotland. to initiate peace negotiations with the British government with the mediation of the Duke of Hamilton. Hamilton died age 70 in 1973. Hess jumped from his plane with a parachute and the plan crashed. Haushofer’s fortune changed. Under suspicion to have helped Hess he was put in prison for some weeks and then kept under Gestapo surveillance. High-ranking members of the Nazi party looked disapprovingly upon his half-Jewish mother. Haushofer met with people from the conservative Kreisau Circle opposition and the Red Orchestra group, whose Berlin leader Arvid Harnack, executed age 41, on 22-12-1942, also taught at the DHfP. 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 in December, 1944.

Incarcerated in Berlin-Moabit prison, he wrote his “Moabit Sonnets,” published in 1946.  Albrecht Haushofer and other inmates like Klaus Bonhoeffer and Rüdiger Schleicher, age 50,

  were shot in the neck by SS troopers on nearby Invalidenstraße, Berlin in the night of 22/23 April 1945, as Red Army troops entered Berlin. His body was discovered by his brother Heinz Haushofer on 12-05-1945.  Heinz Konrad Haushofer died age 81, on 18-02-1988 in Munich. Haushofer is buried on the war section of the cemetery of Tiergarten, Berlin.