Background

Ethnicity: Sarah Haffner's father came from Germany, and her mother was Jewish.

Margaret C. Pretzel was born on February 27, 1940, in Cambridge, United Kingdom. She was the daughter of Raimund Pretzel (alias Sebastian Haffner) and Erika Schmidt-Landry.

Education

Sarah Haffner spent a significant part of her childhood in London where her parents moved in 1942.

Haffner attended the first concert of classical music in her life at the age of nine. It was Schubert's String Quartet No. 13 that she had the opportunity to listen to due to her father. As to her artistic talent, it was first noticed by her elder half-brother Peter.

In 1954, the family relocated to Berlin. Against her parents' will, she turned to vocational training of art two years later. After attending Meisterschule für das Kunsthandwerk (currently Kunstgewerbe-und Handwerkerschule, School of Arts and Crafts) in Berlin for a year, Haffner entered the Berlin University of the Arts (Hochschule der Künste or HdK). She was unscripted at the Ernst Schumacher’s course. She had to have a long pause in her studies because of the birth of her son in 1960. Sarah Haffner received her diploma only in 1973.

Career

The start of Sarah Haffner's career can be counted from the middle of the 1960s when she began to earn her living as a freelance artist in Berlin. By the end of the decade, she fled to her place of birth, the United Kingdom, from the agitation related to the Paris events of May 1968. In 1969, Haffner joined the teacher's staff of the Watford School of Art.

The life of a freelance artist in London wasn't easy because of the lack of customers. So, Haffner came back to Germany with her son after a year and three months of teaching at the School.

Upon her return in 1971, she obtained a post at the Staatlichen Fachschule für Erzieher (training academy for educators) and taught "Children's Play and Work" (Kinderspiel und Arbeit) for the next ten years. From 1980 to 1986, she also gave lessons at her alma mater, the Berlin University of the Arts (Hochschule der Künste).

Sarah Haffner built a successful career as a freelance artist as well. She sold about ten abstract landscapes and took part in about five exhibitions a year. The prices on her works increased with the growth of her popularity which became larger day by day. There were hard times in Haffner's artistic career, in particular, shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall and reunification. However, by 1993, when she earned 170,000 Marks from her art, the situation improved.

In 2004, the artist began to use in her paintings the "Tempera and Pastell" method that she elaborated herself.

Sarah Haffner showed herself as a talented author and editor as well. A feminist adherent, she created several projects related to the topic. In 1975, she produced a documentary on violence against women and later penned the book "Violence in Marriage and What Women Do Against It". Besides, she authored several prose and poetry collections as well as the volumes containing her paintings, including "Gray days. Green days" collection of her poems. Haffner contributed articles for anthologies, catalogs, and other periodicals.

Achievements

• Sarah Haffner was an accomplished artist who managed to realize her artistic ambitions and talent for writing at the same time. An active participant in the artistic community life, she influenced cultural and social development in West Berlin in the second part of the 20th century.
  
  Haffner's 1975 documentary about the violence against women in the United Kingdom accompanied by a book "Gewalt in der Ehe und was Frauen dagegen tun" led to the foundation of the first shelter for women suffering from domestic violence in West Berlin. Haffner served as a volunteer in that center for six months.
  
  Haffner's artworks are acquired by such public collections as the Berlinische Galerie, the Bundestag, the German Historical Museum, Berlin, and the Jewish Museum Berlin.

Works

More photos

• artwork

  • Untitled

  • Untitled

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• book

  • Unterwegs: Bilder und Texte

    (A German edition of one of the books by Sarah Heffner.)

    1986

• painting

  • An der Bahn – Winter

  • Fenster

  • Plattenbild

  • Christopher Isherwood in Berlin 1930

  • S-Bahn im Schnee (Teil der S-Bahn Trilogie)

  • S-Bahn im Regen (Teil der S-Bahn Trilogie)

  • S-Bahn in der Sonne (Teil der S-Bahn Trilogie)

  • Selbstbildnis

  • Untitled

Views

Sarah Haffner was a convinced feminist. In her writings, interviews, and other works, she discussed such questions as the choice between motherhood and career ambitions, gender stereotypes, and violence against women.

In 1975, she produced a documentary that told about the shelters for women who suffered from domestic violence in the United Kingdom. The movie was accompanied by a book "Gewalt in der Ehe und was Frauen dagegen tun".

Quotations: "I am one and a half people. I am half German, half English and half Jewish. In that order."

Personality

Margaret C. Pretzel's surname Haffner derives from the pseudonym her father adopted during the early years of his stint in the United Kingdom as a political refugee. 'Haffner' referred to the 35th Symphony of Mozart.

As to the name, it derives from the name 'Sara' that the Nazis used to designate every Jewish woman.

Sarah Haffner stayed active in both professional and everyday life until the detection of the first symptoms of an incurable disease.

Interests

• Writers

  Christopher Isherwood

• Music & Bands

  Johann Sebastian Bach, the Beatles

Connections

Sarah Haffner was married to an artist Andreas Brandt from 1960 to 1962. The family produced one child named David who chose the career of a photographer.

Father:

Sebastian Haffner

Mother:

Erika Schmidt-Landry

Ex-husband:

Andreas Brandt

Son:

David Brandt

Half-brother:

Peter Schmidt-Landry