Thus, an early death had deprived Klara Hitler of four of her six children. Perhaps her mother’s heart was broken by these terrible trials. Only one thing remained, the care of the two surviving children, a care which she had to bear alone after the death of her husband. Small comfort that Paula was a quiet, easily led child; all the greater was the anxiety over the only son, an anxiety that only ended with her death.
Adolf really loved his mother. I swear to it before God and man. I remember many occasions when he showed this love for his mother, most deeply and movingly during her last illness; he never spoke of his mother but with deep affection. He was a good son. It was beyond his power to fulfill her most heartfelt wish to see him started on a safe career. When we lived together in Vienna he always carried his mother’s portrait with him in a locket. In Mein Kampf he wrote definitively of his parents: ‘I honoured my father, but I loved my mother.’
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Chapter 5
Portrait of His Father
Although his father had been dead nearly two years when I first met Adolf, he was still ‘ever present’ to his family. The mother perpetuated his personality in every way, for with her malleable nature she had almost entirely lost her own, and what she thought, said and did was all in the spirit of the dead father. But she lacked the strength and energy to put into effect the father’s will. She, who forgave everything, was handicapped in the upbringing of her son by her boundless love for him. I could imagine how complete and enduring the influence of this man had been on his family, a real partriarchal father-of-the-family, whose authority was unquestioningly respected. Now his picture hung in the best position in the room. On the kitchen shelves, I still remember, there were carefully arrayed the long pipes which he used to smoke. They were almost a symbol in the family of his absolute power. Many a time, when talking of him, Frau Hitler would emphasise her words by pointing to these pipes as though they should bear witness how faithfully she carried on the husband’s tradition.
Adolf spoke of his father with great respect. I never heard him say anything against him, in spite of their differences of opinion about his career. In fact he respected him more as time went on. Adolf did not take it amiss that his father had autocratically decided on his son’s future career, for this he considered his right, even his duty. It was quite a different matter when Raubal, his step-sister’s husband, this uneducated person, who was himself only a little revenue official, arrogated to himself this right. Adolf would certainly not permit him to interfere in his personal affairs. But the authority of his father still remained, even after his death, the force in the struggle with which Adolf developed his own powers. His father’s attitude had provoked him first to secret, then to open, rebellion. There were violent scenes, which often ended in the father giving him a good hiding, as Adolf told me himself. But Adolf matched this violence with his own youthful obstinacy, and the antagonism between father and son grew sharper.
The customs official, Alois Hitler, showed a marked sense of ceremony all his life. Consequently we have good pictures showing him at various stages of his life. Not so much at his weddings, which were always under an unlucky star, but at the various promotions in his career when he had his picture taken. Most of the pictures show him, with his dignified civil servant’s face, in gala uniform of white trousers and dark tunic, on which the double row of highly polished buttons gleamed. The man’s face is impressive with a broad, massive head, the most notable feature being the side-whiskers, modelled on those of his supreme master, the Emperor. The expression of the eyes is penetrating and incorruptible, the eyes of a man who, as a customs official, is obliged to view everything with suspicion. But in most pictures dignity prevails over the ‘inquisitiveness’ of the gaze. Even the pictures taken at the time when Alois Hitler had already retired, show that this man was, in spirit, still on duty. Although he was past sixty he did not show any of the typical signs of age. One of the pictures, probably the last one, which can also be seen on his grave at Leonding, shows Alois Hitler as a man whose life consisted of service and duty. To be sure there is also an earlier photograph, dating from his Leonding days which, emphasising his private life, depicts him as a comfortable well-to-do citizen, fond of good living.
Alois Hitler’s rise from the illegitimate son of a poor servant girl to the position of a respected civil servant is the path from insignificance and inferior status to the highest rank open to him in the service of the state.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote of his father:
As the son of a poor, small trader he had never thought of following in his father’s footsteps. When still only thirteen, he left the Waldviertel and, ignoring the advice of ‘worldly’ villagers, made his way to Vienna to learn a craft. That was in the 1850s. It must have been a desperate decision to set out for the unknown with just three guides for upkeep. By the age of seventeen he had served his apprenticeship but this gave him no satisfaction, rather the opposite. The long period of poverty and unending misery gave him a resolve to look for something ‘higher’. Where once the village priest had seemed to the poor to be the incarnation of the highest possible achievement, in the capital this role was filled by the civil servant. With the tenacity of a boy ‘grown old’ in late childhood, the seventeen-year-old immersed himself in his new endeavour – and became a civil servant. I think it took him twenty-three years before he had met the conditions he had laid down for his return – he had sworn never to go back to the village until he had ‘made something of himself’. He was pensioned off by decree on 25 June 1895 at the age of fifty-eight after nearly forty years of uninterrupted service.
His colleagues in the customs service describe him as a precise, dutiful official who was very strict and had his ‘weak spots’. As a superior Alois Hitler was not very popular. Out of office he was considered a liberal-minded man who did not conceal his convictions. He was very proud of his rank. Every day he would pay his morning visit to the inn with an official’s punctuality. His regular drinking companions found him good company but he could flare up over trifles and become rude, displaying both his inborn violence and the sternness that he had acquired in his job.
Outwardly the father’s civil service career had been no different from that of thousands of others who worked within the discipline of the Austro-Hungarian customs service, but when the private side is looked at, another picture emerges. Mein Kampf was a political tome and not an autobiography, and in it Adolf Hitler said only as much about himself as seemed appropriate for the political purposes of the book. Understandably he might wish to gloss over the fact that he was a child of his father’s third marriage; that his father was illegitimate; that his mother was a niece once removed of his father; that he was the progeny of inbreeding; that he was not the first born but the fourth child of his parents; and was one of two survivors of six siblings.
The illegitimate birth of Alois Hitler is conclusively proved by the church register of the Strones parish, according to which the 42-year-old servant maid Anna Maria Schicklgruber gave birth to a son on 7 July 1837 christened Alois. The godfather was her employer, the peasant Johann Trummelschlager, in Strones. As far as is known the child was her first and only one. The identity of the father was not revealed by the mother.
Anna Maria Schicklgruber married the mill worker Johann Georg Hiedler in 1842 when the illegitimate child was already five years old. The Döllersheim church register contains the following entry:
The undersigned hereby confirm that Georg Johann Hiedler [sic], who is well known to the undersigned witnesses, has acknowledged paternity of the child Alois of Anna Maria Schicklgruber and requests that his name be entered in the baptismal register.
The entry is signed by the parish priest and four witnesses.
Johann Georg Hiedler again acknowledged his paternity in an official document concerning some inheritance in 1876 before the notary in Weitra. He was then eighty-four years old, the child’s mother had been dead for over thirty years and Alois Schicklgruber hi
mself had been a customs official in Braunau for many years.
As the boy was not officially adopted after his mother’s wedding, his name remained Schicklgruber. He would have kept this name throughout his life had not Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, Johann Georg’s younger brother, made a will and left a modest sum to the illegitimate son of his brother. But he made it a condition that Alois should assume the surname Hiedler, and on 4 June 1876 the name Alois Schicklgruber in the Döllersheim parish register was altered to Alois Hiedler; the local government authority in Mistelbach ratifying this alteration on 6 January 1877. From now on Alois Schicklgruber called himself Alois Hitler, a name which meant as little as the other, but which secured him his legacy.
Once when we were talking about his relatives Adolf told me the story of his father’s change of names. Nothing the ‘old man’ ever did pleased him as much as this, for Schicklgruber seemed to him so uncouth, so boorish, apart from being so clumsy and unpractical. He found ‘Hiedler’ too boring, too soft; but ‘Hitler’ had a good ring to it and was easy to remember.
It is typical of his father that instead of accepting the version ‘Hiedler’ as did the rest of his relations, he invented the new spelling ‘Hitler’. It was in keeping with his mania for ceaseless change. His superiors had nothing to do with this, for in all his forty years of service he was transferred only four times. The towns to which he was posted, Saalfelden, Braunau, Passau and Linz, were so favourably situated that they formed the ideal setting for a customs official’s career. But hardly had he settled down in one of these places than he began to move house. During his period of service in Braunau there are recorded twelve changes of address; probably there were more. During the two years in Passau he moved house twice. Soon after his retirement he moved from Linz to Hafeld, from there to Lambach – first in the Leingarner Inn, then to the mill of the Schweigbach forge, that is to say two changes in one year – then to Leonding. When I first met Adolf he remembered seven removals and had been to five different schools. It would not be true to say that these constant changes were due to bad housing conditions. Surely the Pommer Inn – Alois Hitler was very fond of living in inns – where Adolf was born was one of the finest and most presentable buildings in the whole of Braunau. Nevertheless, the father left there soon after Adolf’s birth. Actually he often moved from a decent dwelling into a poorer one. The house was not the important thing, but the moving. How can one explain this strange mania?
Perhaps Alois Hitler simply hated to remain in one spot, and as his service forced on him a certain stability, he at least wanted some change in his own sphere. As soon as he had got used to certain surroundings, he grew weary of them. To live meant to change one’s conditions, a trait which I experienced in Adolf too.
Three times Alois remodelled his family. It is perhaps true that this was due to outside circumstances. But if so, certainly fate played strangely into his hands. We know that his first wife, Anna, suffered very much from his restlessness, which eventually led to their separation and was partly responsible for her unexpected death. For while his first wife was still alive, Alois Hitler already had a child by the woman who became his second wife. And again when his second wife fell gravely ill and died, Klara, the third wife, was already expecting his child. Just sufficient time elapsed for the child to be born in wedlock. Alois Hitler was not an easy husband. Even more than from Frau Hitler’s occasional hints, could one gather this from her weary, drawn face. This lack of inner harmony was perhaps partly due to the fact that Alois Hitler never married a woman his own age. Anna was 14 years older, Franziska 24 years younger, and Klara 23 years younger.
This strange and unusual habit of the father’s, always to change his circumstances, is all the more remarkable as those were peaceful, comfortable times without any justification for such change. I see in the father’s character an explanation of the strange behaviour of the son, whose constant restlessness puzzled me for so long. When Adolf and I strolled through the familiar streets of the good, old town – all peace, quiet and harmony – my friend would sometimes be taken by a certain mood and begin to change everything he saw. That house there was in a wrong position; it would have to be demolished. There was an empty plot which could be built up instead. That street needed a correction in order to give a more compact impression. Away with this horrible, completely bungled tenement block! Let’s have a free vista to the castle. Thus he was always rebuilding the town. But it was not only a matter of building. A beggar, standing before the church, would be an occasion for him to hold forth on the need for a state scheme for the old, which would do away with begging. A peasant woman coming along with her milk cart drawn by a miserable dog – occasion to criticise the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals for their lack of initiative. Two young lieutenants sauntering through the streets, their sabres proudly clanking, sufficient reason for him to inveigh against the shortcomings of a military service which permitted such idleness. This inclination to be dissatisfied with things as they were, always to change and improve them, was ineradicable in him.
And this was by no means a peculiarity which he had acquired through external influences, by his upbringing at home or at school, but an innate quality which was also apparent in his father’s unsettled character. It was a supernatural force, comparable to a motor driving a thousand wheels.
Nevertheless, father and son were affected by this quality in different ways. The father’s unruly nature was bridled by one steadying factor – his position. The discipline of his office gave his volatile character purpose and direction. Again and again he was saved from complications by the hard exigencies of his duties.
The uniform of the customs official served as a cover for anything that may have gone on in the stormy sphere of his private life. In particular, being in the service, he unreservedly accepted the authority on which the service was built. Although Alois Hitler was inclined to liberal views – which was not uncommon in the Austrian civil service – he would never have questioned the authority of the state, symbolised in the person of the Emperor. By fully submitting to this accepted authority, Alois Hitler was able to steer safely through all the dangerous reefs and sandbanks of his life on which otherwise he might have foundered.
This also throws a different light on his obstinate efforts to make a civil servant of Adolf. It was for him more than a father’s usual preoccupation for his son’s future. His purpose was rather to direct his son into a position which necessitated submission to authority. It is quite possible that the father himself did not realise the inner reason for his attitude. But his determination in insisting on his point of view shows that he must have felt how much was at stake for his son. So well did he know him.
But with equal determination Adolf refused to comply with his father’s wishes, although he himself had only very hazy ideas about his future. To become a painter would have been the worst possible insult to his father, for it would have meant just that aimless wandering to which he (the father) was so much opposed.
With his refusal to enter the civil service Adolf Hitler’s path diverged sharply from that of his father; it took a different course, final and irrevocable. It was, indeed, the great decision of his life. The years that followed it I spent at his side. I could observe how earnestly he tried to find the right path for his future, not merely a job that would provide a livelihood, but real tasks for which his talents were fitted.
Shortly before his death, his father had taken the thirteen-year-old Adolf to the Linz customs office in the vain hope of showing his son his future work environment. At heart, beyond the stubborn refusal to follow his father’s career, stood Adolf’s rejection of the existing state’s authority and therefore that power which was absolute in the eyes of the father. The path beyond it led into the unknown and ended with Adolf Hitler becoming the embodiment of all state authority in a country whose soil was not his own. It seems as if the dual qualities which shaped his character, the remorseless march down one path on the one hand, and th
e mania to change the existing order on the other, are contradictory. But they were really complementary. Although he brought everything around him into a state of flux, he remained in the eye of the whirlwind, unchanged.
Alois Hitler died suddenly. On 3 January 1903 – he was sixty-five and still strong and active – he went, as usual, punctually at ten o’clock in the morning to have his drink. Without warning he collapsed in his chair. Before a doctor or priest could be called, he was dead.
When the fourteen-year-old son saw his dead father he burst out in uncontrollable weeping, proof that Adolf’s feelings for his father went much deeper than is commonly assumed.
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Chapter 6
Adolf’s Schooldays
When I first met Adolf Hitler he had already abandoned his education. Actually he was still attending the Realschule at Steyr, from where he made visits home on Sundays, but it was only for his mother’s sake that he had agreed to undertake this ‘last ditch effort’ to make something of his school-days.
From school sources there is abundant authentic material describing his school performance. In primary school he was always near the top of the class. He learnt quickly and made good progress without much effort. His schooling, as I was once briefly informed, was as follows:
Fischlham bei Lambach, age 6, single-class primary school, started 2 May 1895
Teacher Karl Mittermaier gave him a report full of grade As. Mittermaier was still alive in 1938 and, when asked for his recollections of his former pupil, said that he remembered the pale, weakly little boy brought to school every day from Hafeld by his twelve-year-old half-sister Angela; little Adolf did as he was told and kept his things tidy, otherwise he had nothing to add. In 1939, as Reich Chancellor, when Hitler revisited the single-class school he sat at the same desk where he had learned to read and write. Of course, he had to change everything, and so bought the old, well-maintained schoolhouse and ordered a new building to be erected there. The lady teacher who had taken over from old Mittermaier was invited to visit Obersalzberg with her class.
The Young Hitler I Knew Page 6