Thomas Harlan

Thomas Christoph Harlan (19 February 1929 – 16 October 2010) was a German author and director of French-language films.

Harlan was the son of the director Veit Harlan and the actress Hilde Körber. He was raised in Berlin. Through his father's prominence in the Nazi regime, he met Joseph Goebbels. At eight years old, he was brought along to visit Adolf Hitler. In 1942 the family was evacuated to Zakopane, then to a country estate in Sławno. He returned to Berlin in 1945.

In 1947 he began studying philosophy at the University of Tübingen, where he met Michel Tournier.

In 1948 he moved to Paris after receiving a three-month stipend to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he continued his studies in philosophy and mathematics. He also began working for the French radio. He lived with Gilles Deleuze and Michel Tournier, and later Pierre Boulez. He met Armand Gatti and Marc Sabathier-Levêque.

In 1952 he traveled to Israel with Klaus Kinski. The following year he premiered his first play, Bluma, and visited the Soviet Union. In 1955 he wrote his first poems in German. Harlan co-wrote the screenplay Verrat an Deutschland (Betrayal to Germany) with his father, who directed it. The collaboration with his father broke down and his contribution to the screenplay was distorted. In 1958, Harlan founded the Junge Ensemble (Young Company) in Berlin. The premiere of his play Ich selbst und kein Engel -- Chronik aus dem Warschauer Ghetto (I myself and no angel -- A Chronicle from the Warsaw Ghetto) led to a scandal, which the author Hans Habe treats in his novel Christoph und sein Vater (Christopher and his Father).

In 1959 Harlan was the target of a series of libel lawsuits. This included, among others, Ernst Achenbach, a member of the parliament for the Free Democratic Party at the time, and Franz Alfred Six, the co-founder of the BND.

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