The Young Hitler I Knew

by August Kubizek

After all the commotion, I began to collect myself. Then came the inevitable questions about Stefanie. When I had to confess that I had not been for the evening stroll on the Landstrasse for some considerable time, Adolf told me that I ought to have gone for his sake. Before I could reply there was a knock on the door. A little old woman, withered and altogether of a rather comic appearance, slipped inside.

  Adolf rose and introduced me in his most formal manner: ‘My friend Gustav Kubizek of Linz, a music student.’ ‘Pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you,’ the old woman repeated several times, and announced her own name: Maria Zakreys. From the sing-song tone and peculiar accent, I realised that Frau Zakreys was not a real Viennese. Or rather, she was a Viennese, perhaps even a typical one, but she had not first seen the light of day in Hernals or Lerchenfeld, but rather in Stanislau or Neutitschein. I never asked and never found out – after all, it made no difference. In any case, Frau Zakreys was the only person in this city of millions with whom Adolf and I ever had any dealings.

  Tired as I was this first evening, I remember that Adolf showed me around the city. How could a person who had just come to Vienna got to bed without having seen the opera house? So I was dragged to the opera house. The performance was not yet over. I admired the entrance hall, the magnificent staircase, the marble balustrade, the deep, soft carpets and the gilded decorations on the ceiling. Once away from the humble abode in the Stumpergasse, I felt as though I had been transported to another planet, so overwhelming was the impression.

  Now it was I who insisted on seeing the Stefansdom. We turned in the Kärntnerstrasse. But the evening mist was so thick that the spire was lost to view. I could just make out the heavy, dark mass of the nave stretching up into the grey monotony of the mist, almost unearthly, as though not built by human hands. In order to show me something else special, Adolf took me to the Maria am Gestade church which, compared with the overpowering bulk of the Stefansdom, seemed to me like a delicate Gothic chapel.

  When we got home we each had to pay the grumpy janitor whom we had woken up a Sperrsechserl [a penny for unlocking] to open the big door of the house. Frau Zakreys had made me up a primitive bed on the floor of Adolf’s room. Although midnight was long past Adolf kept talking excitedly. But I stopped listening – it was just too much for me. The moving farewell from my home, my mother’s sad face, the journey, the arrival, the noise, the clamour, the Vienna of the Stumpergasse, the Vienna of the Opera House – worn out, I fell asleep.

  Of course, I could not stay at Frau Zakreys’s. Anyhow, it was impossible to put a grand piano in the little room. So the next morning, when Adolf finally got up, we set out to look for a room. As I wanted to stay as near as possible to my friend we wandered at first along the nearby streets. Once more I saw this alluring city, Vienna, from the ‘other side’. Gloomy courtyards, narrow, ill-lit tenements and stairs, ever more and more stairs. Adolf paid Frau Zakreys ten crowns, and that was what I reckoned to pay. But the rooms we were shown at that price were mostly so small and wretched that it would have been impossible to get a grand piano in them, and when we did find a room that would have been big enough, the landlady would not hear of having a lodger who would be practising the piano in it.

  I was very depressed and low-spirited, full of homesickness. What kind of a big city was this Vienna? Full of indifferent, unsympathetic people – it must be awful to live here. I walked with Adolf, despairing and miserable, along the Zollergasse. Once more we saw a notice ‘room to let’. We rang the bell and the door was opened by a neatly dressed maid who showed us into an elegantly furnished room containing magnificent twin beds. ‘Madame is coming immediately,’ said the maid, curtsied and vanished. We both knew at once that it was too stylish for us. Then ‘madame’ appeared in a doorway, very much a lady, not so young, but very elegant.

  She wore a silk dressing gown and slippers trimmed with fur. She greeted us smilingly, inspected Adolf, then me, and asked us to sit down. My friend asked which room was to let. ‘This one,’ she answered, and pointed to the two beds. Adolf shook his head and said curtly, ‘Then one of the beds must come out, because my friend must have room for a piano.’ The lady was obviously disappointed that it was I and not Adolf who wanted a room, and asked whether Adolf already had lodgings. When he answered in the affirmative she suggested that I, together with the piano I needed, should move into his room and he should take this one. While she was suggesting this to Adolf with some animation, through a sudden movement the belt which kept the dressing gown together came undone. ‘Oh, excuse me, gentlemen,’ the lady exclaimed, and immediately re-fastened the dressing gown. But that second had sufficed to show us that under her silk covering she wore nothing but a brief pair of knickers.

  Adolf turned as red as a peony, gripped my arm and said, ‘Come Gustl!’. I do not remember how we got out of the house. All I remember is Adolf’s furious exclamation as we arrived back in the street. ‘What a Frau Potiphar!’ Apparently such experiences were also part of Vienna.

  Adolf must have realised how hard it was for me to find my way around in this bewildering city, and on our way home he suggested that we should room together. He would speak to Frau Zakreys; perhaps she would fix something up in her own house. In the end he succeeded in persuading her to move into his little room and let us take over the somewhat bigger room that she occupied. We agreed on a rent of twenty crowns monthly. She had nothing against my practising the piano, so this was an excellent solution for me.

  The next morning, while Adolf was still asleep, I went to register at the Conservatoire. I produced my references from the Linz Music School and was examined immediately. First came an oral examination, then I had to sing something at sight and to round off followed a test in harmony. All went well and I was asked to go to the administration office. Director Kaiser – and for me he really was the Emperor – congratulated me and told me about the curriculum. He advised me to register as an extra-mural student at the university and to attend lectures in the history of music. Then he introduced me to the conductor Gustav Gutheil, with whom I should study, amongst other things, the practical side of conducting. In addition to this, I was accepted as a viola player in the Conservatoire orchestra. All this was quite straightforward and soon, in spite of the initial bewilderment, I felt on firm ground. As so often happened in my life, I found help and consolation in music; even more, it now became my whole life. I had finally escaped from the dusty upholsterer’s workshop and could devote myself entirely to my art.

  In the nearby Liniengasse I discovered a piano store called Feigl and inspected the instruments for hire. They were not particularly good ones, of course, but I did finally find a grand piano that was fairly good and I hired it for ten crowns monthly. When Adolf came home in the evening – I did not yet know how he spent his days – he was astonished to see the grand piano. For that comparatively small room an upright model would have been more suitable. But how was I to become a conductor without a grand piano! Admittedly it was not as easy as I thought.

  Adolf immediately took a hand to try out the best place to put it. He agreed that to get enough light, the piano had to stand near the window. After much experiment the contents of the room – two beds, a night-chest, a wardrobe, a washstand, a table and two chairs – were distributed to the best advantage. In spite of this, the instrument took up the whole space of the right hand window. The table was pushed into the other window enclosure. The space between the beds and the piano, as well as that between the beds and the table, was hardly more than one foot wide. And for Adolf, room to stride up and down was every bit as important as playing the piano was for me. At once he tried it out. From the door to the curve of the piano – three steps! That was enough, because three steps one way and three steps the other made six, even though Adolf in his continual pacing up and down had to turn so often that it became almost a case of moving around his own axis.

  The bare, sooty rear side of the house in front was all we could see from our room. Only if you stood v
ery close to the free window and looked sharply upwards would you see a narrow slice of the firmament, but even this modest bit of sky was generally hidden by smoke, dust or fog. On exceptionally lucky days the sun would shine through. To be sure it shone hardly at all on our house, much less in our room, but on the rear of the house facing us streaks of sunshine were to be seen for a couple of hours, and this had to compensate us for the sun that we so sorely missed.

  I told Adolf that I had got through the entrance examination at the Conservatoire quite well and was glad that I was now firmly settled down to my studies. Adolf remarked baldly, ‘I had no idea I had such a clever friend.’ This did not sound very flattering, but I was used to such remarks from him. Apparently he was at a very critical period, was very irritable, and shut me up brusquely when I began to talk about my studies. He finally reconciled himself to the piano. He could practise a bit too, he remarked. I said I was willing to teach him – but here again I had put my foot in it. In ill-temper he snarled at me, ‘You can keep your scales and such rubbish, I’ll get on by myself.’ The he calmed down again and said, in a conciliatory tone, ‘Why should I become a musician, Gustl? After all, I have you!’

  Our circumstances were modest in the extreme. I certainly could not do much with the monthly allowance my father made me. Regularly at the beginning of each month Adolf received a certain sum from his guardian. I do not know how much this was, perhaps only the twenty-five crowns orphan’s pension, of which he had to pay out ten immediately to Frau Zakreys; perhaps it was more, if his guardian was paying out capital in instalments from whatever his parents may have left. Perhaps relatives helped to support him, for instance, the hump-backed Aunt Johanna, but I do not know. I know only that even then Adolf often went hungry, although he would not admit this to me.

  What did Adolf have for an ordinary day’s meals? A bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, some butter. For lunch he often bought a piece of poppy-seed cake or nut cake to add to it. That is what he made do with. Every fortnight my mother sent a food parcel, and then we feasted. But in money matters Adolf was very precise. I never knew how much, or rather, how little, money he had. Doubtless he was secretly ashamed of it. Occasionally anger got the better of him and he would shout with fury, ‘Isn’t this a dog’s life?’ Nevertheless he was happy and contented when we could go once more to the opera, or listen to a concert, or read an interesting book.

  For a long time I could not find out where he ate his lunch. Any enquiries about it would be dismissed crossly – these were not subjects one discussed. As I had some spare time in the afternoon, sometimes I used to come home directly after lunch, but I never found Adolf at home. Perhaps he was sitting in the soup kitchen in the Liniengasse where I sometimes had my midday meal. No, he was not there. I went to the Auge Gottes [a municipal low-cost dining hall]. Neither was he there. When I asked him in the evening why he never came to the soup kitchen, he made a long speech about the contemptible institution of these soup kitchens which only symbolised the segregation of the social classes.

  As an extra-mural student of the university I was permitted to eat in the canteen – it was still the old canteen, for the new one erected by the German Schulverein did not then exist – and I could also procure cheap meal tickets for Adolf, and finally he consented to come with me. I knew how much he liked sweets so, as well as the main dish, I got some cakes.

  I thought he would enjoy this because you could see from his face how hungry he was, but as he sulkily gulped it down, he hissed at me venomously, ‘I don’t understand how you can enjoy anything amongst such people!’ Of course, there used to gather in the canteen students from all the nations of the realm, together with several Jewish students. That was reason enough to stop him going there. But, to tell the truth, in spite of all his determination, he let hunger get the better of him. He squeezed himself in next to me in the canteen, turned his back on the rest and greedily wolfed down his favourite nut cake. Many a time, in my political indifference, I was secretly amused to see him swinging between anti-semitism and his passion for nut cake. For days on end he could live on milk and bread and butter only. I was certainly not spoilt, but this was beyond me.

  We did not make any acquaintances. Adolf would never have permitted me time for anybody but himself. More than ever did he regard our friendship as one that excluded any other relationship. Once, as a result of pure chance, he treated me to a very explicit reproof in this respect. Harmony was my hobby-horse. In Linz I had shone at it, and here I got on swimmingly. One day Professor Boschetti called me to the office and asked me whether I would like to do some coaching in the subject. Then he introduced me to my future pupils: the two daughters of a brewer in Kolomea, the daughter of a landowner in Radautz, and also the daughter of a businessman in Spalato.

  I was most depressed by the startling difference between the good class boarding house in which these young ladies lived and our wretched hole that always stank of paraffin. Usually, at the end of the lesson, I partook of a tea so substantial that it served me for supper as well. When there was added to the group the daughter of a cloth manufacturer from Jägerndorf in Silesia and the daughter of a magistrate in Agram, my half-dozen pupils together represented every corner of the widespread Habsburg Empire.

  And then the unexpected happened. One of them, the girl from Silesia, found she could not get on with some written homework, and came round to me in the Stumpergasse to ask for my help. Our good old landlady raised her eyebrows when she saw the pretty young girl. But that was all right, I was indeed only concerned with the musical example which she had not understood, and I explained it to her. As she copied it down quickly, Adolf came in. I introduced him to my pupil, ‘My friend from Linz, Adolf Hitler.’ Adolf said nothing. But hardly had the girl got outside than he went for me wildly – for since his unfortunate experience with Stefanie he was now a woman hater. Was our room, already spoilt by that monster, that grand piano, to become the rendezvous for this crew of musical women? he asked me furiously.

  I had a job to convince him that the girl was not suffering from the pangs of love, but from examination pains. The result was a detailed speech about the senselessness of women studying. Like blows the words fell on me, as though I were the cloth manufacturer or the brewer who had sent his daughter to the Conservatoire. Adolf got himself more and more involved in a general criticism of social conditions. I cowered silently on the piano stool while he, enraged, strode the three steps along and the three steps back and hurled his indignation in the bitterest terms, first against the door, and then against the piano.

  Altogether, in these early days in Vienna, I had the impression that Adolf had become unbalanced. He would fly into a temper at the slightest thing. There were days when nothing I could do seemed right to him, and he made our life together very hard to bear. But I had known Adolf now for over three years. I had gone through terrible days with him after the wreck of his scholastic career, and also after his mother’s death. I did not know what this present mood of deep depression was due to, but I thought that sooner or later it would improve.

  He was at odds with the world. Wherever he looked, he saw injustice, hate and enmity. Nothing was free from his criticism, nothing found favour in his eyes. Only music was able to cheer him up a little as, for instance, when we went on Sundays to the performances of sacred music in the Burgkapelle. Here one could hear at no expense soloists from the Vienna Opera House and the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Adolf was particularly fond of the latter and he told me again and again how grateful he was for that early musical training he had received at Lambach. But in other ways at that time to remember his childhood was particularly painful to him.

  All this time he was ceaselessly busy. I had no idea what a student at the Academy of Arts was supposed to do – in any case, the subjects must be exceedingly varied. One day he would be sitting for hours over books, then again he would sit writing till the small hours, or another day would see the piano, the table, his bed and mine, and even the floor,
completely covered with designs. He would stand, staring down tensely at his work, move stealthily on tiptoe amongst the drawings, improve something here, correct something there, muttering to himself all the time and underlining his rapid words with violent gestures. Woe betide me if I disturbed him on these occasions. I had great respect for this difficult and detailed work, and said I liked what I saw of it.

  When, getting impatient, I opened the piano, he would shuffle the sheets quickly together, put them in a cupboard, grab up a book and make off to the Schönbrunn. He had found a quiet bench there amongst the lawns and trees where no one ever disturbed him. Whatever progress he made with his studies in the open air was accomplished on this seat. I, too, was fond of this quiet spot, where one could forget one lived in a metropolis. Often in later years I visited this lonely bench.

  It seemed that a student in architecture could spend much more time in the open air and work more independently than could a Conservatoire student. On one occasion when he had once more written all hours of the night – the ugly, smoky little paraffin lamp had nearly burnt out and I was still awake – I asked him bluntly what was going to be the end of all this work. Instead of answering, he handed me a couple of hastily scribbled sheets. Astounded I read:

  Holy mountain in the background, before it the mighty sacrificial block surrounded by huge oaks: two powerful warriors hold firmly by the horns the black bull which is to be sacrificed and press the beast’s mighty head against the hollow in the sacrificial block. Behind them, erect in light coloured robes, stands the priest. He holds the sword with which he will slaughter the bull. All around, solemn, bearded men, leaning on their shields, their lances ready, are watching the ceremony intently.

  I could not see any connection between this extraordinary description and the study of architecture, so I asked what it was supposed to be. ‘A play,’ replied Adolf. Then, in stirring words, he described the action to me. Unfortunately, I have long since forgotten it. I remember only that it was set in the Bavarian mountains at the time of the bringing of Christianity to those parts. The men who lived on the mountains did not want to accept the new faith. On the contrary, they had bound themselves by oath to kill the Christian missionaries. On this was based the conflict of the drama.