Hans Hartmut Weil collection

Hans Hartmut Weil (1918-1957) was born in Bad Kreuznach, Rhineland Palatinate. His father, a secular Jew, Maximillian David Weil, was the manager of a leather goods factory and a town councillor. His mother, Dorothee Elisabeth Weil née Taubert came from a Protestant Prussian family. The parents met during World War One when his father was an officer and his mother was matron in charge of a field hospital in Belgium.  

  

Hartmut was expelled from the Wickersdorf free School in Thuringia for anti- Nazi activities- the head master, Döring was a Nazi. After finishing his schooling in Switzerland, he then began studying German literature at the Sorbonne. At the age of twenty-one, he began a diary written in German intended for a young Scots woman, June Paterson, with whom he was in love. The diary begins in early September 1939 as he volunteers for the French Army, and covers only a few weeks into October as he and other similar volunteers are gradually moved south, only to find themselves enrolled in the French Foreign Legion in North Africa.  After later internment there by the Vichy Government, they were freed by the Allies, and he finished his War service in the Royal Navy, ending as a Petty Officer on Arctic Convoys. 

After the war he was reunited with his father and sister, Brigitte, both resident in London. He also met up again with June but she later went on to marry someone else as did Hartmut. Hartmut went on to become an academic, specialising in 17th century German literature. He died of a brain tumour in May 1957.