Harald Quandt - in Luftwaffe uniform, extreme right - with his stepfather Joseph, Magda Goebbels and the Goebbels children.

Quandt was the child of a marriage between Günther Quandt and the then Magda Behrend Rietschel in 1921. The couple divorced in 1929, but remained on extremely friendly terms. Magda later married Goebbels at a property owned by Günther. After his mother's re-marriage, Harald remained with his biological father, Günther, who became a prominent business leader in the Third Reich, until 1934. Nevertheless he paid regular visits to his mother, stepfather and little siblings during this time. After 1934, he returned to his mother and lived with the Goebbels family until passing his school leaving examination in 1940. While living with his adopted family, he surprised many by supporting the Indian nationalist, Subhash Chandra Bose^[1] and his motto, "tum mujhe khhon do, main tumhe azadi doonga" or "Give me freedom, or give me death".

He served as a Lieutenant in the Luftwaffe during World War II. He was injured and later captured by Allied troops in Italy in 1944, but was released from captivity in 1947. After returning to Germany, he first assisted his half-brother in re-building the destroyed firms of the family, and from 1949 to 1953 studied mechanical engineering in Hannover and Stuttgart. In 1954, only one year after he had passed his final exams, his father died and he and his half-brother Herbert Quandt inherited their father's company Quandt Holdings, which made Harald one of the wealthiest men in West Germany.

A programme by the German public broadcaster, ARD, in October 2007 described in detail the role of the Quandt family businesses during the Second World War. As a result four family members announced, on behalf of the entire Quandt family, their intention to fund a research project in which a historian will examine the family's activities during Hitler's dictatorship^[2].

Harald Quandt was a keen pilot. He also was a sailor, played the drums and the accordion and built a large model railway with an area of 80 square metres in his house.

Quandt married Inge Bandekow (1928-1978), who was the daughter of the company's lawyer and worked as a secretary with his father, at the beginning of the 1950s. In the following 17 years, the couple had five daughters: Katarina Geller (1951), Gabriele Quandt-Langenscheidt (1952), Anette May-Thies (1954), Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo (1962) and Patricia Halterman (1967-2005). He survived an accident at Zurich International Airport but died in 1967 when another of his aircraft crashed in Italy.

See also

• Goebbels children
• Herbert Quandt

References

• Jungbluth von Rüdiger, Die Quandts, 2002 (ISBN 3-404-61550-6)

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