Roland Hill (journalist)

{{About|the journalist|the postal reformer|Rowland Hill}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2016}}

{{Use British English|date=September 2016}}

{{infobox person

| honorific_prefix =

| name = {{nowrap|Rowland Hill}}

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| birth_date = {{birth date|df=y|1920|12|2}}

| birth_place = {{nowrap|Hamburg, Germany}}

| birth_name = Roland Hess

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|2014|6|21|1920|12|2}}

| death_place = London, England

| resting_place =

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| father = {{nowrap|Rudolf Hess}}

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| occupation = {{nowrap|Journalist}}

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| known_for = Biographer of Lord Acton

| module = {{infobox military person

| embed = yes

| allegiance = {{flag|United Kingdom}}

| branch = {{army|United Kingdom}}

| serviceyears = 194?-45

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| battles = World War II

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Roland Hill (2 December 1920 – 21 June 2014)[http://announcements.telegraph.co.uk/deaths/178838/hill Roland Hill - Daily Telegraph death announcement] was a German-born British journalist and author of the first modern biography of Lord Acton.{{cite web|title=Lord Acton (review)|author=Josef Lewis Altholz|accessdate=9 April 2016|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/vic/summary/v044/44.1altholz.html|publisher=Project Muse, MD}}

He was born in Hamburg to Rudolf Hess (a sugar trader) and to his mother, an opera singer. Both his parents were Jews but they brought Roland up as a Lutheran. After Hitler's rise to power, the family moved successively to Prague, Vienna and then Milan. In 1937, in Vienna, he was received into the Catholic Church. He took up journalism and at the outbreak of the Second World War he was in London, working for Austrian and German newspapers. In 1940 he was briefly interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien. He later joined a Scottish Infantry regiment in the British Army,{{cite web|url=https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/politik/absolute-macht-korrumpiert-absolut-1516964.html|title=Absolute Macht korrumpiert absolut: Roland Hill, erster F.A.Z.-Korrespondent in London, blickt auf ein bewegtes Leben zurück (book review of Roland Hill: A Time Out of Joint. A Journey from Nazi Germany to Post-War Britain, 2007)|publisher=Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung|author=Lothar Kettenacker|date=25 January 2008|accessdate=9 April 2016}} changing his name in case he was captured.Christopher Howse, ‘[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643461/In-and-out-of-Hitlers-Reich.html In and Out of Hitler's Reich]’, 20 October 2007.

In London, where he died, he worked for The Tablet and as correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Presse and others.