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Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstängl (Munich, February 2, 1887 - November 6, 1975) was a friend of Adolf Hitler and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
His mother was Katharine Wilhelmina Heine, daughter of William Heine (lithographer and Union General, possibly pallbearer to Lincoln) and a cousin of John Sedgwick. His godfather was Duke Ernst II.
He attended Harvard University, where he composed football songs, and there became acquainted with Walter Lippmann and John Reed. He graduated in 1909.
While in the Fifth Avenue branch of his father's business—Franz Hanfstaengl, Fine Art Publishing House—he would practice piano at the New York Harvard Club, where he made acquaintance with both Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt.
On February 11, 1920, he married Helene Niemayer/Helen Neemeyer of Long Island. They had one son, Egon Ludwig, almost a year later; he eventually went into the US Army air corps. A daughter, Hertha, died at 5.
Ernst later returned to Germany and became friends with Adolf Hitler, who called him "Putzi". He wrote Brownshirt marches based on his Harvard football songs. After the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch he sheltered Hitler in his attic. Helene reputedly prevented Hitler from killing himself.
He financed the publication of Mein Kampf and claimed to have participated in the firing of the Reichstag. He became head of the Foreign Press Bureau in Berlin, but aside from his official position his importance lay in the fact that he entertained Hitler, who relaxed when "Putzi" played the piano.
William Shirer, a CBS journalist residing in Nazi Germany until 1941 was in frequent contact with Hanfstängl and described him as "[An] eccentric, gangling man, whose sardonic wit somewhat compensated for his shallow mind".
In some accounts he "retired his position" in 1934. In others he was shut out after the Night of the Long Knives and in 1937 told to parachute into the unfriendly side of the Spanish Civil War. Either way, he wound up in Switzerland.
He and Helene divorced in 1936, and he moved to England, where he was imprisoned as an enemy alien after the outbreak of World War II; he was later moved to a prison camp in Canada. In 1942 he was turned over to the U.S. (possibly on Roosevelt's personal intercession), but was handed back to the British in 1944, who returned him to Germany after the end of the war.
He wrote Unheard Witness (1957) about his experiences.
External links
- Neemeyer Genæology (http://www.neemeyer.com/html/more_contacts.html)
- Putzi Lives! (http://www.qedcorp.com/pcr/pcr/si04.html)
- Yale Alumni Magazine (http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/00_03/letters.html)
- Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_08.htm) by Antony C. Sutton
- The Holocaust Gallery (http://alexconstantine.50megs.com/psychic_dictatorship.html)
- ZMag (http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/1999-06/june_4raptis.htm)
- Sedgewick Genæology (http://www.sedgwick.org/na/library/books/sed1961/sed1961-143.html)
- Stars and Stripes (http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=126&article=23989&archive=true), 1971 AP interview