Allright my red buddies, please fasten your seatbells, because this is gonna sound very outstretched. I mean very. Normaly I only base my theories on what happens in the episodes themselves (I wrote some stuff about the two Haffner-episodes before) and I certaintly do not take anything from the internet/interviews etc. into account. But then I found some interesting facts from a historical perspective.
1) It turns out Bruno Heller's father, Lukas Heller, was a screenwriter as well, and came from Germany. He was a teenager during the War and also Jewish, so we can assume that this period affected him much.
Bruno was always inspired by his father, even intimidated because at first it seemed impossible to him to do better as a writer. One of his fathers movies was called What ever happened to baby Jane? (fun fact: baby Jane killed someone too).
2) One of Germany's most famous political writers and journalists was Raimond Pretzel. His pseudonym (to protect his family) was Sebastian Haffner. He wrote many books and articles, often about the Nazi-regime and the second World War, in his own particular style. He had to flee to the UK in the late 30ies because from Nazi-perspective he was too critical. I assume Lukas Heller knew his works.
The pseudonym comes from a contraction between Sebastian Bach and Haffner, one of Mozarts masterpieces. He was also known for his typical German blond hair and blue eyes. Later on he wrote about the Russian politics, but also Churchill & Tatcher (the Iron Lady).
I found this review after the man's death from http://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/jan/14/guardianobituaries :
Haffner could seem intimidating, especially to Germans who were alarmed or scandalised by his ideas. His eyes had a strange, hypnotic brilliance, under the vast dome of his brow. His presence as a solo TV performer was electrifying.
But in private he could be both witty and tender, and his kindness was remarkable; few people knew, for example, that he had been something like a foster-father to the young Ulrike Meinhoff, before she turned to the urban terrorism which eventually ended in her death.
He was almost devoid of personal ambition; in any case, his views were far too original to fit into the safe categories of the Bonn republic. He was certainly touchy and easy to offend, and yet modest about his own achievement; Haffner's view was that the journalist's job was Zuspitzung - dramatising routine political events until they seized the imagination of the reader.
Sebastian Haffner died listening to Bach, after a long and depressing illness. He leaves two children, Oliver and Sarah, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
So: maybe Lukas Heller idolised Sebastian Haffner, and young Bruno had to hear about it so many times that he started fantasising about a descendant of that praised German man - one with a dark side in his heart.
This is my most speculative and least relevant theory so far, but it would give the whole Red John story kind of a historical aura :)
