by A G Mogan
“Rant somewhere else, Adolf. Maybe your friends, Josef Neumann or that boss-eyed Simon Robinson would find interesting what you have to say about them.” I look at him quizzically. “Ah! Didn’t you know? Yes, my friend, they are both Jewish.”
“You son of a whore!” I seethe and lunge for his throat. “I’ll find out your secret, rest assured. Why have you changed your name from Reinhold Hanisch? Huh? What are you hiding? Are you also a Jew? Surely! And you steal like one! Don’t fool yourself into thinking that I don’t know about the Parliament painting!”
“You’re delirious again.”
I grab him by the collar. “Am I? You sold it for more money than you said and pocketed the rest! Bloody rascal!” I shout and push him against the wall.
“You’re having one of your wacky moods again! Let go of me!”
“Bloody traitor! I’ll settle your hash, rest assured!”
“Do whatever you like. In the end, you are but a hungry artist!”
“And you a bloody house servant!” I say, on my way out. I go straight to the police station and declare my friend’s treachery. I tell everything about his fake name and the money he stole from me. My business partner gets seven days in jail. I feel damn good.
With the money earned from selling the postcards, I buy myself a winter coat from a pawnshop. I move for the last time into a different shelter, this time in the Brigittenau aria, and continue to spend my days indoors. The police force has an eye on the homeless, not in order to help them, but to send them to the asylum, or in the case of those who do not appertain to Vienna, to expulse them. So, I must stay inside, as I have neither a residence permit, nor the right to receive social assistance in this city.
It doesn’t take long after I move to the new shelter to find out that it is financed from “The Emperor Franz Joseph I Jubilee Fund” and supported through donations by some Jewish families, such as that of Baron Nathaniel Rothschild’s and the Guttmann’s. Fritz was somewhat right and I immediately detest such realization. I hate myself for having to live off the pity of the Jews. This information, however, serves as further evidence of who really holds my country’s financial monopoly.
The new shelter provides the occupants with a small library and a spacious room for studying. The latter is the place I will be hanging around for the next three years of my life, sitting at the oak table near the window, painting postcards and reading books, pamphlets, and newspapers. The other fellows earn their living in some similar creative ways. One is cutting out postcards from cardboard, and then selling them in taverns; another is making little signboards and price bills; and yet a third is copying addresses of betrothed couples from the newspapers in order to sell them to the firms interested in the trade of newlyweds. The lazier ones read newspapers, play cards, chess, domino, tell stories or simply look at those who work.
I decide that now, with my new winter coat, I look rather respectable, and summon up the courage to go outside and get on with the business of selling my own painted postcards. I soon take advance-orders, with the most popular being the representations of Stephen’s Cathedral, the Minorities churches, Schottenkirche, Karlskirche, the Town Hall and the Parliament House.
I have become my own business representative and need Reinhold Hanisch no longer.
Risen
On 20 April 1911, comes my twenty-second birthday. I should be glad, let alone celebrating, yet I am rather depressed. I spend the day brooding over happy memories from the time Mother was alive. She always made this day the most special day of the entire year, spoiling me and reminding me of how loved I was. Besides Christmas, this day was, for her, the most important day to celebrate. She always prepared the most sumptuous feast there was: stove-roasted meat, potatoes soaked in butter and sprinkled with mushroom gravy, cream éclairs, apple strudels, and her specialty: cinnamon plum cakes. And, of course, there were the long-awaited presents, which never failed to surprise me. That was my mother, the only person who ever loved me, the only person I ever loved.
I clasp the locket around my neck in my fist and allow bitter tears to wash my face. Only an orphan could understand me now, more so, an orphan who had reached the lowest step on the poverty’s ladder. Birthdays can never be quite the same again.
“Letter, Hitler,” shouts the shelter administrator, extending his arm from the doorway to hand it over to me.
It’s from my sister, Angela, and I wonder how on earth she found out where I was. She must have learned it from the police, when I had to register my address after Hanisch denounced me. He took his revenge by telling the police that I lied about my profession in the registration papers and used it abusively. To his chagrin, I got away with only a warning.
I open the envelope and sense my sister’s peevish mood from her first words.
Dear brother,
Had you the willingness to inquire after your family’s welfare, you would have learned that your good aunt, Johanna, passed away earlier this year, after a long struggle with her illness. Not that you would really care but you might be curious nonetheless to know that she marked the 48th year of her life shortly before life saw fit to dismiss her. Only a short year older than our late mother was when God took her, and already in a late stage diabetes. We buried her in Spital, where she was permanently residing after her foolish decision to part with her life savings in your favor, and where she had to spend her remaining days working as a servant for her own sister, your other aunt. I only hope you spent her money wisely, although I sincerely doubt it. If I were now able to count, I would guess that had you limited yourself to your diet of milk and bread you would have been able to go on sans souci for at least six years. However, as I was saying before, I am convinced that you starved yourself in favor of your late night gazing at some play or opera, and wasted poor Aunt Johanna’s money on watercolors. Are you free of your artistic delusions yet?
I also have less depressing news, and it might cheer you up. Last year, in the month of January I brought into this world another daughter, Elfriede Maria, thus you now have a nephew and two nieces, and I four children to raise. The difference is that this time, however, I will have to do it alone, as now I am being not only an orphan but a widow as well. My beloved Leo joined the land of the departed a few months after our little Friedl joined ours.
It must be eight months now that I struggle like a beggar with the pittance I receive as pension. I must feed five mouths, and you couldn’t care less about us. And then there is Paula, who’s your sister, too, and an extra expense for me, now that she must go to high-school. Thus, I went to the Court of Linz and started the legal formalities to transfer your share of the survivor’s pension to Paula from now on. The hearing had been set for May 5th, therefore you must be at the District Court of Vienna-Leopoldstadt on that date without fail.
On a final note, you might like to know that Leo had grown wise and strong like his father, and Geli, as you insist on calling her, is a very joyful and beautiful child, babbles away all day and amazes me with her sharp, quick mind, which she undoubtedly took after both her parents. I miss my beloved Leo so much …
Anyway, you better show yourself at the Court on the 5th, and I beg of you, in the name of our father who always took care of us, don’t make a scene!
Your sister,
Angela Raubal
What a wonderful gift! I whisper sarcastically and crumpling the letter in my hand, I throw it against the wall. It isn’t even Christmas yet. Are my birthdays also to become occasions for the latent tragedies to unfold? I pick up the crumpled paper from the floor and read it again in the light of the electric bulb. Yes. Electric bulb. What a fascinating discovery! The days of the poisonous kerosene lamp are gone and forgotten.
I am sad, utterly sad. I never knew my aunt was a servant for her sister. I suppose that working for a sister isn’t as bad as it would be working for a total stranger. Poor Aunt Johanna … she always wished me well. May God take good care of her soul.
I detest my sister’s mocki
ng tone and her arithmetic disgusts me. Whether it is her destitution, or my conduct, or her fate, all she does is complain. Not once had she asked for my welfare, not once! Of us two, who is the real beggar?
The news of Raubal’s passing neither surprises nor moves me. Is the earth poorer now that a disgusting drunkard left it? Would the Austrian State go on strike for having lost one of its many civil servants? I should think not. There is always another one, like Raubal and Father, to fill in his post.
I find it very difficult to give up my share of survivor’s pension, which covered, up until now, my fee for the single room at the Brigittenau asylum. But having no saying in the matter, I do what I must. Now I really have to rely solely on my postcard painting to pay for my living. I now paint to satisfy my physical needs and read to satisfy my spiritual ones.
The following day, bored with my habitual activities, I decide to visit the Hof Museum. To be able to purchase my entrance ticket I must starve for the day, of course. But the longing for von Stuck paintings is much greater than my hunger.
Once inside the great museum hall I feel, after such a long time, at home. I realize that being among the paintings at the museum or being caressed by the beautiful notes of some Wagnerian opera are the only ways to rekindle a sense of belonging in me.
I again begin to investigate, greedily and meticulously, every detail in the works of my favorite artist, and in the far right corner of the hall, I notice a new painting of his. The museum must have acquired it after my last visit. I scrutinize it for a few moments from afar and, suddenly, have one of those moments in which I can neither stay away nor get closer. I rub my eyes in disbelief and wonder … I don’t even know what I wonder. Nagged by a mounting curiosity, I approach the painting, and the closer I get to it the greater my astonishment grows.
The painting depicts … it depicts me! It is really me!
Although a little different, hair arranged on the left side of the forehead and a strange, tiny mustache, trimmed just to the sides of the nose. It is, nonetheless, my own image. Bewildered, I look at the pose von Stuck chose for me … sitting on horseback, sword in my right hand, galloping furiously. I am leading a hunt, which seems to be of … people. At the bottom corner of the painting I observe the artist’s signature and the year the painting was created …1889. The year of my birth.
I instantly understand the prophecy.
I run back to the shelter and burst into the study room. Scanning through the books, I pray in my head to find one with the paintings of von Stuck. This time my prayer works and halfway through the volume with contemporary paintings, I find what I am looking for. The colorful sheet of paper reveals the odd painting in which I am depicted. I read its description aloud: Wild Chase, Wotan, the German God of all Gods, the mad hunter, the personification of destruction and death, riding into the night leaving behind the horror of horrors.
I glide my fingers over the glossy sheet, unable to speak or to breathe. I feel the other occupants’ quizzical stares on me, while their annoying questions fall on deaf ears.
Putting the book back in its place, I return to my room. Unable to sit still, I begin pacing the room far and wide. I am stunned. I knew all about the predictions of great men such as Nostradamus and Martin Luther.
Nietzsche’s own words heralded the arrival of a savior: an anti-christ and anti-nihilist, this conqueror of God and nothingness – some day he must come. And of course, Richard Wagner who, in creating Siegfried prophesied: He will herald a new heroic faith to succeed the old Christianity!
I knew from all those prophecies that the imminent birth of a superior being was fast approaching; a being that would fight against the interbreeding of the races, which is the true original sin of mankind; a being that would revive the ancient race of purebred warriors and clean it of the poisonous growths and the putrefaction that subjugated it for millennia. Christianity destroyed it, but now I know, now I am certain that the time has come to raise the sword and severe the head of the Devil. I knew that humanity was in need of a Superman, the newspapers raved about his coming, and Darwin himself had scientifically demonstrated it, through his survival-of-the-fittest theory. The prophesies of these great men of genius are so evident that my last trace of doubt is dispelled.
I head to the kitchen, and after much supplication, receive what I need: a small bottle of cooking oil and a pair of scissors. Locking myself in my room, I pull out my pocket mirror and place it on the tiny corner table. I stare into it for how long I do not know. Time ceases to exist, as the past becomes the present. I pour a few drops of cooking oil in my hand, then rub it into my hair, parting it on the left. Grabbing the pair of scissors, I cut the corners of my mustache, leaving only a small patch of hair under my nose.
The resemblance with the painting is so astounding that I think there never was a greater prophet in the history of mankind than Franz von Stuck. I continue to stare into the mirror and what I am seeing is too difficult to put into words.
Rienzi, Christ, Wotan have risen.
The Worst And Greatest News In The Holy Land
My eyes are finally open. I am now firmly convinced that I should finally succeed in reaching the goal I had marked out for myself, the goal the Goddess of Fate marked out for me. So convinced am I of my destiny, that I resolve to follow its course with the assurance of a sleepwalker. Gone are the fears and doubts, gone is the frustration I kept so long on my bosom, gone is the time when I only looked back at my miseries.
The positive assurance I constantly feel brings with it another realization: Austria is the past, Germany is the future. The more I pay special attention to questions of foreign policy, the more the conviction grows upon me that this phantom State would surely bring misfortune on the Germans. I realize that the destiny of the German nation could not be decisively influenced from here, but only within the German Empire itself.
I decide in favor of my heart, which always belonged with the German Empire, not the Austrian Monarchy. The Motherland needs me and there I must be.
On May 24, 1913, I gather, for the last time, the few things I own and leave the mens’ hostel and my home country forever. Around noontime, as I step on pure German soil, I fall to my knees, kissing and soaking the holy land with my tears. Munich, the city of my final destination, fills me with fanatical adoration. Ay, a German city! I say to myself. How different to Vienna! It is with a feeling of disgust that my imagination reverts to that Babylon of races.
I walk through the city, lost in the adoration I feel, smiling at everyone around. I feel as if I have returned home, where everyone is my acquaintance. They are my people, my blood, pure Germans. I don’t remember smiling this much in my entire life. It has been many years since I’ve felt so much happiness, so much enthusiasm and love.
In Schwabing, a district known for its famous inhabitants, artistic spirits, and bohemian souls, I see the sign I was searching for: Renting fully furnished rooms to respectable men. Here is the place where I will live for the next year, at the bosom of Herr Popp’s family, pure Germans. Gone are the Polish, Czech, or other races landlords.
I have finally found my place in this world.
I try, for the sake of art, to apply at the School of Painting, this time in Munich, only to find the demands here are even higher than at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Their rejection does not surprise me, nor does it offend me. Probably the fact that I am rejected by a true German and not by a dirty Jew, softens my disappointment.
I must continue to support myself from postcards sales, but that’s quite fine now. I begin to dress better, thanks to the kindness of Herr Popp, who is a tailor, and a magnanimous one it turns out. Out of his desire to have admirable, respectable tenants, he offers me custom-made suits he designs and produces in his personal tailor shop.
I spend the following months in a state of absolute euphoria. The only other time I felt this way was after Father died and I was allowed to quit school, when Mother was still alive and well. I paint and read my days
away, and when the cold weather settles on majestic Munich, I spend my time at the library.
But, as I should have expected, but in my state of serenity failed to see coming, long periods of happiness are not allowed to me. My luck proves to have short legs again.
On the morning of 18 January 1914, heavy knocks on my bedroom door make me jerk awake. I throw the blanket over my shoulders and hurry to open the door.
A massive uniformed policeman stands before me.
“Adolf Hitler?”
I instantly realize the purpose of his visit. “Yes.”
“You are under arrest for evading military service!” he sneers and ties my hands at the back in handcuffs. I do not resist his action, as I am not surprised.
I’ve pondered on whether I should disclose the other reason for my leaving Austria so abruptly. I indeed left my home country to avoid the military service. I am no coward, quite the contrary, but I found it unimaginable to fight for a country I no longer believe in. I cannot lay my life at the Habsburg Monarchy’s feet, even if that means I shall forever be regarded as a traitor. I can go on living as a deserter in the eyes of Austria, but I could not as a betrayer of—myself.
When I registered my address at the Munich Police office, I had to ponder over the question of nationality, and what I was to answer to that. At last, I wrote down: stateless; then laughed at the irony … stateless … like the status of every disgusting Jew.
With my address dutifully recorded, I was very easy to track down. And here I am now, detained by the police, who soon transfer me to the Austrian consulate in Munich. Yet I am not afraid, for nothing bad could ever happen to me as long as the Goddess of Fate watches over me.
Early the next morning, I am interrogated by the Consul, a short man of good humor, who softens visibly at the sight of my poor physical condition. He suggests I write a letter to the Magistrate of Linz to justify my conduct and defend my action. I sit at the table, gathering all the diplomacy I can muster, and begin writing the letter.