In his 1945 autobiography Ein Zeitalter wird besichtigt, Heinrich Mann poignantly and ironically describes the purpose of publishing his volume of essays, Der Haß, twelve years prior: “In 1933, the inaugural year of the thousand-year Reich, I lost no time in honouring it; today I could only make it longer, not add anything to it.” The collection of essays was published – just months after Mann's move into his French exile – by Paris-based publisher Gallimard. The German-language version was released shortly thereafter by Querido Verlag Amsterdam. Mann dedicated the latter edition “to my fatherland”. Publication of the volume was thanks in large part to the French Germanist Félix Bertaux, who encouraged the German writer and friend of his to publicly expose the inhumanity of the Nazi system.

In his work, Mann describes the emotion of hatred as the driving force behind the German dictatorship: “The uprising of the less civilised against reason and its defenders, that is the entire substance of this movement, but its nourishment was a hatred so depraved, so gruesome, that it couldn’t be quelled even when the enemy had been defeated and swallowed by the earth.” In the conformist German press, the book was the target of polemicised broadsides. Die literarische Welt called Der Haß “foul tripe” and Heinrich Mann “one of those writers who for a year now have spent their days slandering the new Germany and inciting other peoples against us.”

[Quotations are editorial translations.]