Jakob Schaffner

[1] Born on 14 November 1875 in Basel, both his father and his mother, a native of the State of Baden, died when he was young, leaving him to be reared in an orphanage.

[1][2] His early experiences inspired his most celebrated novel Johannes (sometimes known as Roman einer Jugend), which was published in 1922 and was a semi-autobiographical story of life in an orphanage.

[1] For a time Schaffner was a member of the Bund Treuer Eidgenossen Nationalsozialistischer Weltanschauung [de], a pro-Nazism group established by Henne, Oehler and others on the extreme wing of the National Front.

[6] Schaffner had initially been a sceptic about Nazism but soon became a strong supporter of Adolf Hitler, feeling that he could spearhead a renovation of Europe.

Having formerly been widely regarded as a writer, his reputation in German-speaking literary circles was damaged significantly after the war due to his support for Nazism.