by Ian Kershaw
The Men’s Home was a big step up from the Meidling hostel. The 500 or so residents were not down-and-out vagrants, but, for the most part, a mixed bunch of individuals, some – clerks and even former academics and pensioned officers – just down on their luck, others simply passing through, looking for work or in temporary employment, all without a family home to go to. Unlike the hostel, the Men’s Home, built a few years earlier, funded by private donations (some from wealthy Jewish families), offered a modicum of privacy, and for an overnight price of only 50 Heller. Residents had their own cubicles, which had to be vacated during the day but could be retained on a more or less indefinite basis. There was a canteen where meals and alcohol-free drinks could be obtained, and a kitchen where they could prepare their own food; there were washrooms and lockers for private possessions; in the basement were baths, along with a cobbler’s, a tailor’s, and a hairdresser’s, a laundry, and cleaning facilities; there was a small library on the ground floor, and on the first floor lounges and a reading-room where newpapers were available. Most of the residents were out during the day, but a group of around fifteen to twenty, mainly from lower-middle-class backgrounds and seen as the ‘intelligentsia’, usually gathered in a smaller room, known as the ‘work-room’ or ‘writing-room’, to undertake odd jobs – painting advertisements, writing out addresses and the like.232 This is where Hanisch and Hitler set up operations.
Hanisch’s role was to hawk Hitler’s mainly postcard-size paintings around pubs. He also found a market with frame-makers and upholsterers who could make use of cheap illustrations. Most of the dealers with whom he had a good, regular trade were Jewish. Hitler’s view, according to Hanisch, was that Jews were better businessmen and more reliable customers than ‘Christian’ dealers.233 More remarkably, in the light of later events and his own claims about the importance of the Vienna period for the development of his antisemitism, his closest partner (apart from Hanisch) in his little art-production business, Josef Neumann, was also a Jew – and one with whom Hitler was, it seems, on friendly terms.234
Hitler invariably copied his pictures from others, sometimes following visits to museums or galleries to find suitable subjects. He was lazy and had to be chivvied by Hanisch, who could offload the pictures faster than Hitler painted them. The usual rate of production was about one picture a day, and Hanisch reckoned to sell it for around 5 Kronen, split between him and Hitler. In this fashion, they managed to make a modest living.235
Politics was a frequent topic of conversation in the reading-room of the Men’s Home, and the atmosphere easily became heated, with tempers flaring. Hitler took full part.236 His violent attacks on the Social Democrats caused trouble with some of the inmates.237 He was known for his admiration for Schönerer and Karl Hermann Wolf (founder and leader of the German Radical Party, with its main base in the ‘Sudetenland’).238 He also waxed lyrical about the achievements of Lueger.239 When he was not holding forth on politics, Hitler was lecturing his comrades – keen to listen or not – on the wonders of Wagner’s music and the brilliance of Gottfried Semper’s designs of Vienna’s monumental buildings.240
Whether politics or art, the chance to involve himself in the reading-room ‘debates’ was more than sufficient to distract Hitler from working.241 By summer, Hanisch had become more and more irritated with Hitler’s failure to keep up with orders.242 Hitler claimed he could not simply paint to order, but had to be in the right mood. Hanisch accused him of only painting when he needed to keep the wolf from the door.243 Following a windfall from the sale of one of his paintings, Hitler even disappeared from the Men’s Home for a few days in June with Neumann. According to Hanisch, Hitler and Neumann spent their time sight-seeing in Vienna and looking around museums.244 More likely they had other ‘business’ plans, which, then, quickly fell through, possibly including a quick visit to the Waldviertel to try to squeeze a bit more money out of Aunt Johanna.245 Hitler and his cronies in the Men’s Home were at this time prepared to entertain any dotty scheme – a miracle hair-restorer was one such idea – that would bring in a bit of money.246 Whatever the reason for his temporary absence, after five days, his money spent, Hitler returned to the Men’s Home and the partnership with Hanisch. Relations now, however, became increasingly strained and the bad feeling eventually exploded over a picture Hitler had painted, larger than usual in size, of the parliament building. Through an intermediary – another Jewish dealer in his group in the Men’s Home by the name of Siegfried Löffner – Hitler accused Hanisch of cheating him by withholding 50 Kronen he allegedly received for the picture, together with a further 9 Kronen for a watercolour. The matter was brought to the attention of the police, and Hanisch was sentenced to a few days in jail – but for using the false name of Fritz Walter. Hitler never received what he felt was owing to him for the picture.247
With Hanisch’s disappearance, Hitler’s life recedes into near obscurity for two years or so. When he next comes into view, in 1912–13, he is still in residence in the Men’s Home, now a well-established member of the community, and a central figure among his own group – the ‘intelligentsia’ who occupied the writing-room.248 He was by now well over the depths of degradation he experienced in 1909 in the doss-house, even if continuing to drift aimlessly.249 He could earn a modest income from the sale of his pictures of the Karlskirche and other scenes of ‘Old Vienna’.250 His outgoings were low, since he lived so frugally.251 His living costs in the Men’s Home were extremely modest: he ate cheaply, did not drink, smoked a cigarette only rarely, and had as his only luxury the occasional purchase of a standing place at the theatre or opera (about which he would then regale the writing-room ‘intellectuals’ for hours).252 Descriptions of his appearance at this time are contradictory. A fellow resident in the Men’s Home in 1912 later described Hitler at the time as shabbily dressed and unkempt, wearing a long greyish coat, worn at the sleeves, and battered old hat, trousers full of holes, and shoes stuffed with paper. He still had shoulder-length hair and a ragged beard.253 This is compatible with the description given by Hanisch which, though not precisely dated, appears from the context to refer to 1909–10.254 On the other hand, according to Jacob Altenberg, one of his Jewish art dealers, in the later phase at least in the Men’s Home Hitler was clean-shaven, took care to keep his hair cut, and wore clothes which, though old and worn, were kept neat.255 Given what Kubizek wrote about Hitler’s fussiness about personal hygiene when they were together in 1908, and what was later little short of a cleanliness fetish, Altenberg’s testimony rings truer than that of the anonymous acquaintance for the final period in Meldemannstraße.
But, whatever his appearance, Hitler was scarcely enjoying the lifestyle of a man who had come by a substantial windfall – what would have amounted to a king’s ransom for someone living in a men’s hostel. Yet this is what was long believed. It was suggested – though based on guesswork, not genuine evidence – that towards the end of 1910 Hitler had become the recipient of a sizeable sum, perhaps as much as 3,800 Kronen, which represented the life-savings of his Aunt Johanna.256 Post-war inquiries indicated that this was the amount withdrawn from her savings account by Johanna on 1 December 1910, some four months before she died, leaving no will.257 The suspicion was that the large sum had gone to Adolf. This feeling was enhanced by the fact that his half-sister Angela, still looking after his sister Paula, soon afterwards, in 1911, staked a claim to the whole of the orphan’s pension, still at that time divided equally between the two children. Adolf who, ‘on account of his training as an artist had received substantial sums from his aunt, Johanna Pölzl’, conceded that he was in a position to maintain himself, and was forced to concede the 25 Kronen a month which he up to then received from his guardian.258 But, as we have already noted, the household account-book of the Hitler family makes plain that Adolf, alongside smaller gifts from ‘Hanitante’, received from her a loan – amounting in reality to a gift – of 924 Kronen, probably in 1907 and providing him with the material basis of his first,
relatively comfortable, year in Vienna.259 Whatever became of Aunt Johanna’s money in December 1910, there is not the slightest indication that it went to Hitler. And the loss of the 25 Kronen a month orphan’s pension would have amounted to a serious dent in his income.260
Though his life had stabilized while he had been in the Men’s Home, during the time he had been trafficking in paintings, Hitler seems to have remained unsettled. He was still, as has been rightly said, ‘more threatened by than threatening to the social order’ in which he lived.261 He was disdainful about the quality of his own ‘dilettante’ paintings, as he described them, and felt he still needed to learn how to paint. He seems, indeed, for a time in 1910 to have entertained yet a further attempt to enter the Academy in Vienna, but nothing came of it, and his bitterness and anger about his rejection remained unabated.262
Karl Honisch – keen to distance himself from his near-namesake Hanisch, of whom he had heard nothing good – knew Hitler in 1913. His account, written in the 1930s for the NSDAΡ –Hauptarchiv, was consciously intended to portray Hitler in the best light possible, but for all that paints a plausible picture of him towards the end of his stay in the Men’s Home. Honisch described Hitler at the time as slight in build, poorly nourished, with hollow cheeks, dark hair flopping in his face, and wearing shabby clothes. Hitler was rarely absent from the Home and sat each day in the same corner of the writing-room near the window, drawing and painting on a long oak-table. This was known as his place, and any newcomer venturing to take it was rapidly reminded by the other inmates that ‘this place is taken. Herr Hitler sits there.’263 Among the writing-room regulars, Hitler was seen as a somewhat unusual, artistic type. He himself wrote later: ‘I believe that those who knew me in those days took me for an eccentric.’264 But, other than his painting skills, no one imagined he had any special talents. Though well regarded, he had a way, noted Honisch, of keeping his distance from the others and ‘not letting anyone come too close’. He could be withdrawn, sunk in a book or his own thoughts. But he was known to have a quick temper. This could flare up at any time, particularly in the frequent political debates that took place. Hitler’s strong views on politics were plain to all. He would often sit quietly when a discussion started up, putting in the odd word here or there but otherwise carrying on with his drawing. But if he took exception to something said, he would jump up from his place, hurling his brush or pencil on the table, and heatedly and forcefully make himself felt before, on occasion, breaking off in mid-flow and with a wave of resignation at the incomprehension of his comrades, taking up his drawing again. Two subjects above all roused his aggression: the Jesuits and the ‘Reds’ – at whose hands it was well known that he had suffered unpleasant experiences.265 No mention was made of tirades against the Jews.
The criticism of the ‘Jesuits’ suggests that some embers of his former enthusiasm for Schönerer’s vehement anti-Catholicism were still warm, though the Schönerer movement had by this time effectively collapsed.266 His hatred for the Social Democrats was also long established by now. His own version in Mein Kampf of the emergence of this hatred tells the story – as we have already suggested, almost certainly fictional – of the victimization and personal threats he allegedly experienced, on account of his rejection of their political views and refusal to join a trade union, at the hands of Social Democrat workers when he was employed for a short time on a building site.267 If Hitler had suffered physical maltreatment, perhaps while living rough or later in the Men’s Home, through making no secret of the evidently strong aversion he already felt towards Social Democracy, it might have been expected that he would have spoken about it to his cronies. Yet none of those who later recounted anecdotes of Hitler at the time refers to it – with the exception of Josef Greiner, whose account is a plain fabrication, no more than an elaborated and embellished variant of the Mein Kampf story.268
There is, in fact, no need to look beyond the strength of Hitler’s pan-German nationalism as an explanation of his detestation of the internationalism of the Social Democrats. The radical nationalist propaganda of Franz Stein’s pan-German ‘working-class movement’, with its repeated shrill attacks on ‘social democratic bestialities’ and ‘red terror’, and its boundless agitation against Czech workers, was the type of ‘socialism’ soaked up by Hitler.269 A more underlying source of the hatred most likely lay in Hitler’s pronounced sense of social and cultural superiority towards the working class that Social Democracy represented.270 ‘I do not know what horrified me most at that time,’ he later wrote of his contact with those of the ‘lower classes’: ‘the economic misery of my companions, their moral and ethical coarseness, or the low level of their intellectual development’.271 In a further telling passage in Mein Kampf Hitler wrote:
The environment of my youth consisted of petty-bourgeois circles, hence of a world having very little relation to the purely manual worker… The cleft between this class… and the manual worker is often deeper than we imagine. The reason for this hostility… lies in the fear of a social group, which has but recently raised itself above the level of the manual worker, that it will sink back into the old despised class, or at least become identified with it. To this, in many cases, we must add the repugnant memory of the cultural poverty of this lower class, the frequent vulgarity of its social intercourse; the petty bourgeois’ own position in society, however insignificant it may be, makes any contact with this outgrown stage of life and culture intolerable.272
Though Hitler’s account of his first encounter with Social Democrats is almost certainly in the main apocryphal, status-consciousness runs through it, not least in his comment that at that time ‘my clothing was still more or less in order, my speech cultivated, and my manner reserved’.273 As we noted, Hitler’s appearance and lifestyle while with Kubizek were anything other than proletarian.274 Later, in the Men’s Home, his status as an ‘artist’ in the ‘intellectual’ group that frequented the writing-room preserved his distance from the manual workers in the Home. Given such status-consciousness, the level of degradation he must have felt in 1909–10 when the threat of social decline into the proletariat for a time became dire reality can be readily imagined. But far from eliciting any solidarity with the ideals of the working-class movement, this merely sharpened his antagonism towards it. Not social and political theories, but survival, struggle, and ‘every man for himself marked the philosophy of the doss-house.275
Hitler went on in Mein Kampf to stress the hard struggle for existence of the ‘upstart’, who had risen ‘by his own efforts from his previous position in life to a higher one’, that ‘kills all pity’ and destroys ‘feeling for the misery of those who have remained behind’.276 This puts into context his professed interest in ‘the social question’ while he was in Vienna. His ingrained sense of superiority meant that, far from arousing sympathy for the destitute and the disadvantaged, the ‘social question’ for him amounted to a search for scapegoats to explain his own social decline and degradation. ‘By drawing me within its sphere of suffering’, the ‘social question’, he wrote, ‘did not seem to invite me to “study”, but to experience it in my own skin’.277
Similarly, Hitler’s views on Social Democracy were shaped by personal experience. Hitler not only hated Social Democracy; he feared it. We noted earlier his anxiety at watching ‘the gigantic human dragon’ of marching workers through the streets of Vienna.278 The threat he sensed in Social Democracy left its lasting mark in an ‘understanding of the importance of physical terror’.279 Hitler’s ‘gut feeling’ – truly a visceral hatred – that arose from his status-consciousness and first-hand experience of Social Democracy was ‘confirmed’ by voracious but one-sided reading. Whether he read any serious theoretical works may be doubted. His understanding of Marxism was probably for the most part picked up in Social Democratic literature, such as the Arbeiterzeitung which he read, and in anti-Marxist articles in the nationalist and bourgeois press.280 By the end of his Vienna period, it is unlikely that Hitl
er’s detestation of Social Democracy, firmly established though it was, had gone much beyond that which had been current in Schönerer pan-German nationalism – apart from the additional radicality deriving from his own bitter first-hand experiences of the misery and degradation that enhanced his utter rejection of international socialism as a solution. That his hatred of Social Democracy had already by this date, as Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf, married with a racial theory of antisemitism to give him a distinctive ‘world-view’ that remained thereafter unchanged, can be discounted.
V
Why and when did Hitler become the fixated, pathological antisemite known from the writing of his first political tracts in 1919 down to the writing of his testament in the Berlin bunker in 1945? Since his paranoid hatred was to shape policies that culminated in the killing of millions of Jews, this is self-evidently an important question. The answer is, however, less clear than we should like. In truth, we do not know for certain why, nor even when, Hitler turned into a manic and obsessive antisemite.
Hitler’s own version is laid out in some well-known and striking passages in Mein Kampf. According to this, he had not been an antisemite in Linz. On coming to Vienna, he had at first been alienated by the antisemitic press there. But the obsequiousness of the mainstream press in its treatment of the Habsburg court and its vilification of the German Kaiser gradually led him to the ‘more decent’ and ‘more appetizing’ line taken in the antisemitic paper the Deutsches Volksblatt. Growing admiration for Karl Lueger – ‘the greatest German mayor of all times’ – helped to change his attitude towards the Jews – ‘my greatest transformation of all’ – and within two years (or in another account a single year) the transformation was complete.281 Hitler highlights, however, a single episode which opened his eyes to the ‘Jewish Question’.