Born in Hanover, Germany, he was a radio operator and artillery observer in the Heer (the German Army) during World War II.

Augstein became a member of the West German parliament the Bundestag in 1972 for the Free Democrats for North Rhine-Westphalia, but resigned only a year later, to focus on his duties as a journalist.

It is indeed possible that Stalin was pleased by how Hitler treated his bosom buddy Ernst Röhm and the entire SA leadership in 1934.

It is not possible that Hitler began his war against Poland because he felt threatened by Stalin's regime ... One does not have to agree in everything with Konrad Adenauer.

ones gains an understanding for the point of the view of the nonpatriot Adenauer that Hitler's Reich was the continuation of the Prussian-German regime[2][4]Since Stefan Aust became editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel, Augstein retreated more and more to private life, although he continued to publish commentaries regularly in the magazine almost until his death.

His fifth marriage, solemnized in Tonder on 13 October 2000, was to his long-standing companion, the Hamburg art dealer Anna Maria Hürtgen.