Tetens, Friedrich Tete Harens, 1899-1976.

Biographical note: German emigre political journalist and pamphleteer.

Tetens was born in Berlin and lived in nearby Caputh. In 1927 as editor of "Deutschen Tabak-Zeitung" (a trade publication for the German tobacco industry) in Eberswalde, Tetens accused the Reemtsma Zigarettenfabriken (based in Hamburg-Altona) and its proprietor Philipp F. Reemtsma of political corruption. He fell into political difficulty with the Nazi regime in 1933 on account of continued charges against the "tobacco trust", a case that he pursued until into the 1950s. After being held in the Oranienburg concentration camp and in prison in Potsdam, he fled to Switzerland in 1934.

Tetens became a staff writer for the "National Zeitung" of Basel in 1934 and went to Buenos Aires as its correspondent in 1936. During his two-year stay in Argentina, he gathered information about the Nazi influence in Latin America. In the 1930s he wrote such political tracts as "Whither Hitler" and "Christianity, Bolchevism and Hitlerism." He immigrated to the United States from 1939 and worked personally for Bernard Baruch as a researcher. In 1943-45 he and fellow emigre Prof. Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster were successfully defended by attorney Louis Nizer in a libel suit brought by Victor F. Ridder and the "New York Staats Zeitung." With support from Foerster, Tetens directed a "Library on Germanic and Related International Problems" at Columbia University, 1945-46. From the 1950s he was active in such anti-war groups as the Society for the Prevention of World War III. He lived in New York City and Cooperstown, New York and in later life New Jersey, working sporadically as a political writer and a public speaker on Nazis, pan-Germanism, militarism, and other subjects. He also wrote under the pseudonym Anton Pettenkofer.

From the description of Friedrich Tete Harens Tetens papers, 1925-1976. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 122528677