Haufe was born in Dresden in 1931 and died in Weimar in 2013. He studied German philology, history and art history in Leipzig, was assistant to H. A. Korff and Hans Mayer and was expelled in 1958 for "political inappropriateness". He became a contributor to the Schiller National Edition, met Johannes Bobrowski, whose complete works he edited and commented on.
During and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Haufe was politically active, becoming a member of the Weimar City Council in 1990 and its first vice-president, until he retired in 1993 after yet another stroke.
In 1992 Haufe was politically rehabilitated as a professor at Leipzig University, which once had expelled him.
The philosopher Manfred Riedel later said that for Haufe, leaving the GDR was never “up for discussion”, instead he was among those who kept up the tradition of intellectual Germany and remained.

His publication Schriften zur deutschen Literatur (Edited by Heinz Härtl and Gerhard R. Kaiser with the assistance of Ursula Härtl) was published at Wallstein of Göttingen, 2011.

His editional works include:

Johannes Bobrowski, Gesammelte Werke in sechs Bänden (1998-99)

Wilhelm von Humboldt. Aus den Briefen und Werken gesammelt von Eberhard Haufe, Weimar: Kiepenheuer 1963

Carl Gustav Jochmann: Die unzeitige Wahrheit. Aphorismen, Glossen und der Essay "Über die Öffentlichkeit". Weimar: Kiepenheuer 1976 

Deutsche Mariendichtung aus neun Jahrhunderten. Berlin: Union Verlag 1960

Wir vergehn wie Rauch von starken Winden. Deutsche Gedichte des 17. Jahrhunderts. 2 Bände. Berlin: Rütten & Loening / München: Beck 1985