Hellmut G. Haasis

Haasis was born in Mühlacker, a town in the Swabia region of Germany, and has written two novels in Swabian dialect as well as a collection of poetry.

His father was a Protestant pastor who was killed in 1944 during an Allied Forces bombing raid on Strasbourg where he was serving as a purser on German military hospital trains.

[2] Initially intending to become a clergyman,[3] Hellmut Haasis studied Protestant theology, history, sociology and political science at universities in Tübingen, Marburg and Bonn from 1961 to 1966.

His observation of a major series of strikes at Fiat's Mirafiori plant led to his 1976 article, "Fiat–Legende und Wirklichkeit" which discussed the company's "reorganization in the name of humanization" as an attempt to destroy its militant work groups.

The book is a fictionalized account of the life of Reinhold Haussler (aka Heisel Rein) who was murdered in 1940 at the Grafeneck Euthanasia Centre.