Hans Bernd von Haeften
| Hans-Bernd August Gustav von Haeften | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
18 December 1905 Berlin, Germany |
| Died | 15 August 1944 (aged 38) Berlin, Germany |
| Cause of death | Execution by hanging |
| Occupation | Diplomat |
| Known for | German Resistance |
Hans-Bernd August Gustav von Haeften (18 December 1905 – 15 August 1944) was a German jurist and member of the German Resistance against Adolf Hitler.
Haeften was born in Berlin, the son of Hans von Haeften (1870-1937), an army officer and President of the Reichsarchiv, and his wife the former Agnes von Brauchitsch (1869-1945), a relation of Walther von Brauchitsch. His siblings were Elisabeth (1903-1980) and Werner (1908–1944). He passed his Abitur in 1924 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf and then studied law, which took him as an exchange student to the University of Cambridge.
He married Barbara Curtius (1908–2006), daughter of Julius Curtius, on September 2, 1930. The couple had five children: Jan, Dirk, Verena, Dorothea, and Ulrike.
After University, he worked for the Stresemann Foundation and then in 1933 joined the Foreign Service. He worked mainly for the cultural-political department of the Foreign Office and as a cultural attaché in Copenhagen, Vienna, and Bucharest.
In 1940, Haeften became the department's leader, but refused to join the Nazi Party. From 1933, he belonged to the Confessing Church. He had contacts with the Kreisau Circle, especially through Ulrich von Hassell and Adam von Trott zu Solz. He refused on religious and moral grounds to have anything to do with any attempt on Adolf Hitler's life, but supported the attempt to overthrow Hitler and stood ready to take power at the Foreign Ministry for the plotters. In January 1944 he stopped his brother, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, from shooting Hitler with a pistol with the argument that this would break the Fifth Commandment.
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