Hajo Holborn was born in 1902 in Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, to an academic family of Frisian-Hanoverian origin. He studied at the University of Berlin under Friedrich Meinecke, Karl Holl, Adolf von Harnack, and Ernst Troeltsch. His progress in the German historical profession can only be described as meteoric. He received the Ph.D. in 1924 with a dissertation entitled “Deutschland und die Türkei, 1878-1890,” subsequently published in 1926. Habilitation came in 1930 with the publication of his study Ulrich von Hutten. Meanwhile other publications had appeared: He edited Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen of Josef Maria von Radowitz (2 vols.) and wrote Bismarcks Europäische Politik zu Beginn der siebziger Jahre und die Mission Radowitz and also produced various essays on Hutten and modern diplomatic history. His journeyman years as university lecturer were spent at Heidelberg (1926-31). In 1931 Holborn was appointed Carnegie Professor of History and International Relations at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin and, simultaneously, to a lectureship in history at the University of Berlin. He was only twenty-nine.