Eva Braun

by Heike B. Görtemaker

  “Herr Wolf”

  Eva Braun’s job at Photohaus Hoffmann seems to have been primarily behind the counter. In any case, the various statements about her actual duties are contradictory. For example, Henriette von Schirach—Hoffmann’s daughter and a friend of Eva Braun’s the same age as she, who was thus in a position to know—says at one point in her memoir that Braun was an “apprentice in [Hoffmann’s] photo lab,” but mentions elsewhere that Braun sold “roll films” in her father’s “photo store.”13 In fact, both were true. Eva Braun, Heinrich Hoffmann later wrote, had been a “novice and shop assistant” and worked for him “in the office, as a salesgirl, and also in the laboratory.” From 1933 on, after Braun was “more established” in the business, she worked exclusively “in photography.”14

  To be a photographer was a very respected and enviable career for a woman at the time. The field was new and modern and the idea of becoming a fashion or portrait photographer attracted many women. Eva Braun was especially interested in fashion. Her first task at Hoffmann’s, though, was to learn how to use a camera and develop pictures. From the beginning, her duties included running small errands for Hoffmann and his clients and working behind the counter. Along with press photography, the rise in amateur photography offered a steadily growing market, so Photohaus Hoffmann not only took photographs but also sold photographic equipment, which was now readily available to the public. In addition, it sold pictures and postcards of its own, and Eva Braun was also responsible for those sales, according to Baldur von Schirach, Hoffmann’s son-in-law and the future Youth Leader of the Nazi Party.15 Hoffmann’s preferred motifs and images included his fellow Party members and, especially, portraits of its leader, Adolf Hitler.

  Eva Braun probably met Hitler for the first time in October 1929, a few weeks after starting her job.16 She was apparently working late, organizing papers, when Hoffmann introduced her to one “Herr Wolf” and asked her to fetch some beer and sausages for him and his friend, and for herself as well, from a nearby restaurant. During the meal together that followed, the stranger was “devouring” her “with his eyes the whole time,” and he later offered her “a lift in his Mercedes.” She refused. Finally, before she left the studio, Eva Braun’s boss, Hoffmann, asked her: “Haven’t you guessed who that gentleman is; don’t you ever look at our photos?” After she said no, Hoffmann said: “It’s Hitler! Adolf Hitler.”17

  This account appears in the first published biography of Eva Braun, from 1968, by the Turkish-American journalist whose birth name was Nerin Emrullah Gün. According to Gün, Eva Braun told one of her sisters—presumably Ilse, the oldest of the three sisters—about this first meeting with Hitler, which occurred “on one of the first Fridays in October,” either October 4 or October 11, 1929. But how reliable is Gün? His work is quoted extensively even today, and it tends to give the impression that Eva Braun dictated her story directly to him. From whom did he get his information, and how? And what are we to make of his own thoroughly enigmatic history?

  Gün worked in the press department of the Turkish embassy in Budapest during World War II. Shortly before the end of the war, on April 12, 1945, the secret police ordered his arrest for allegedly being an enemy of the German state; he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp. Two weeks later, on April 29, 1945, he was liberated along with the other prisoners by the American Seventh Army. Gün moved to the United States, simplified his name to Gun, and later wrote a book about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. That was presumably why the CIA suspected him, as a member of the Communist Party, of being involved himself in the assassination of President Kennedy and charged him with having committed espionage and falsified documents in Europe.18

  In the mid-1960s, on the occasion of the anniversary celebration of the liberation of Dachau, Gun visited West Germany. That was apparently when he arranged to meet Eva Braun’s family and other former members of Hitler’s inner circle. He tracked down Franziska Braun, Eva’s mother, in her house in Ruhpolding, Bavaria, and also questioned Eva’s sisters, Ilse and Margarete (who was called Gretl), as well as Eva’s best friend, Herta Schneider (née Ostermayr). Gun obtained access to Eva Braun’s private photographs and letters, and these were published for the first time in his book. However, Gun does not give precise details about the sources of his information, and he switches freely back and forth between invented anecdotes and factual testimony from actual witnesses in a way that makes it impossible for the reader to determine which is which.

  Ilse Hess, Rudolf Hess’s wife, wrote in a letter to Albert Speer on June 25, 1968, that Gun, “the author of the book about Everl [her nickname for Eva Braun],” had stayed with her, Ilse Hess, “for weeks” in Hindelang, since he was now planning to write a biography of her husband; she wrote that she now called him only by the name “Mr. I pay all” (in English), since that was his “favorite expression.”19 This remark shows the lack of respect she had for him; Gun apparently had little background knowledge and Ilse Hess did not take him seriously. Presumably, Gun likewise stayed with the Braun family the year before while he was researching his book on Eva Braun, although there is no concrete evidence either way.

  Thus we cannot say that the sequence of events at the first meeting between Eva Braun and Hitler has been established with certainty, even if matters may well have played out the way Gun describes. It is certainly unclear why Hoffmann would have introduced his prominent friend and Party colleague under the fake name “Wolf.”20 (Hitler did often use that name for himself, especially when traveling.) Possibly Hoffmann was trying to forestall a nervous, or even hysterical, reaction from the young woman. In any case, nothing could stop the attraction that apparently sprang up spontaneously on both sides. From then on, Hitler, already forty years old, remembered himself to the seventeen-year-old Eva Braun with compliments and little gifts every time he visited the studio.

  Such visits were not at all difficult for Hitler to arrange. Photohaus Hoffmann, on the corner of Amalienstrasse and Theresienstrasse, was directly across the street from Café Stephanie, a favorite spot for the leading Nazi politicians. Before World War I, it had been a meeting point for the bohemians of the Schwabing district, including such figures as Heinrich Mann, Erich Mühsam, Eduard Graf von Keyserling, and Paul Klee. The Party’s headquarters were just a side street away, at 50 Schellingstrasse, the same street where the editorial and printing offices of the Völkischer Beobachter were located a few houses farther on. At 50 Schellingstrasse itself was the building where Heinrich Hoffmann and his family used to live, and Hoffmann’s “workshop” was located next door. That was where he photographed Hitler, Göring, and other Party leaders.21 Also on Schellingstrasse was the Osteria Bavaria, the oldest Italian restaurant in Munich, where Hitler and his fellow Party members often used to go; it is still there today, under the name Osteria Italiana. Henriette von Schirach described the restaurant as a “cool, small winery with a little courtyard painted in Pompeian red and a ‘temple,’ that is, an alcove with two columns in front of it,” which was kept reserved for Hitler. However, Hitler’s later secretary, Traudl Junge, said that the Nazi leader’s regular table was the “least comfortable table all the way in the back, in the corner.”22

  Hitler rarely ate alone. His constant companions from the early 1920s on included not only Heinrich Hoffmann but also Ernst F. Sedgwick Hanfstaengl,23 a German-American who was named head of the Party’s Foreign Press Bureau in 1931. Ernst was the younger brother of the art publisher Edgar Hanfstaengl, who had taken over the family business, “Franz Hanfstaengl Art Publishers,” in 1907; he led the New York branch of the publishing house until the end of World War I and then returned to Munich. Hitler’s Munich circle in the early years also included Adolf Wagner, the powerful Gauleiter[3] of the Munich–Upper Bavaria region, called the “despot of Munich”; Julius Schaub, Hitler’s personal assistant; Christian Weber, a “potbellied former horse trader” (in Joachim Fest’s words) and good friend of Hitler’s; and Hermann Esser, a founding member of th
e NSDAP, whom Goebbels called “the little Hitler.” Later additions included the young Martin Bormann (a Party member since 1927), Otto Dietrich (press chief of the NSDAP since 1931), SS General Joseph “Sepp” Dietrich, Max Amann, and Wilhelm Brückner (an SA-Obergruppenführer and Hitler’s chief adjutant since 1930).24

  Eva Braun in Photohaus Hoffmann, posing on a desk, 1930 (Illustration Credit 1.1)

  Eva Braun was only occasionally invited out by Hitler—to a meal, a movie, the opera, or a drive in the Munich region. Henriette von Schirach recalled, about the beginning of the acquaintance between her father’s friend and Eva Braun, that Hitler could “give the most thrilling compliments”: “May I invite you to the opera, Miss Eva? I am always surrounded by men, you see, so I know very well how much the pleasure of a woman’s company is worth.” Who, she said, “could withstand” that?25 Although their relationship seemed to be a rather superficial one at first, Hitler immediately had the girl investigated. Martin Bormann, at whose wedding Hitler had recently been a witness, was given the assignment as early as 1930 to determine whether the Braun family was “Aryan,” that is, had no Jewish ancestors.26 Bormann, who had meanwhile risen to the SA Supreme Staff, was to remain one of Hitler’s closest and most trusted friends from 1933 until Hitler’s death.27

  Eva Braun, still a minor at that point, presumably did not suspect a thing about Bormann’s vetting. It is easy to imagine that this girl was impressed by her new acquaintance’s prominence and was open to his political ideas. There is no evidence as to whether she herself, or her parents, held anti-Semitic views. Since Ilse Braun, four years older than her sister Eva, worked as a receptionist for a Jewish doctor who was also a close friend of hers, there seem not to have been ideological prejudices in Braun’s family. Photographs of Eva Braun from her early years working in Hoffmann’s photography store show a very childish-seeming girl, who obviously liked to be photographed and was not shy about striking poses in the office rooms.28 Her relationship with Hitler is said to have remained purely “platonic” until 1932. Heinrich Hoffmann, in his memoir Hitler Was My Friend (London, 1955; German translation, 1974), claimed that his employee had pursued the relationship and had let it be known that “Hitler was in love with her and she would definitely succeed in getting him to marry her.”29 He did not perceive any “intense interest” on Hitler’s part at first, though. In truth, what Hoffmann’s observations reveal is the difference between a young woman—still a teenager, in fact—and a bachelor rather more advanced in years: while she spontaneously and enthusiastically expressed her feelings, he set store by the utmost discretion.

  Trustee in Personal Matters

  The mutual trust between Hitler and Hoffmann—indispensable for the long sittings in the portrait studio and attested by the countless photographs in which Hitler struck uninhibited poses—extended to their private lives.30 Henriette von Schirach later recalled that her family moved into a “tremendously modern apartment in Bogenhausen” in 1929, “which Hitler liked” to visit. He ate spaghetti there, with “a little muscat, tomato sauce on the side, then nuts and apples,” and improvised on the piano after the meal.31 Hitler felt “at home” with Hoffmann and his family, according to Albert Speer in Inside the Third Reich. In the garden of the photographer’s villa in Munich-Bogenhausen, Hitler could, as Speer observed in the summer of 1933, behave without the slightest formality, “lie down on the grass in shirtsleeves” or recite from “a volume of Ludwig Thoma.”32

  Hitler practicing oratorical poses, photographed by Heinrich Hoffmann, 1926 (Illustration Credit 1.2)

  By that point Hoffmann and Hitler had been friends for at least a decade. Hoffmann’s son-in-law Baldur von Schirach later reported that Hitler had come to know “family life” with Hoffmann; Hoffmann’s first wife, Therese (Lelly); and their children, and that he had been taken in as a member of the family.33 The photographer and his family were, so to speak, the core of the private circle around the unmarried NSDAP leader. After Therese Hoffmann’s early death in 1928, the bond between the two men seemed to grow even stronger. During Hitler’s many trips in the service of the Nazi Party’s ambitions, not only Hoffmann himself but also—at Hitler’s request—Hoffmann’s daughter Henriette accompanied him, to bring a little youthful freshness into the company of men.34 Family celebrations, such as Hoffmann’s son Heinrich’s confirmation in March 1931, his daughter Henriette’s wedding the following year, or Hoffmann’s remarriage in 1934, were celebrated together. Not only that, the weddings were organized by Hitler himself in his apartment on Prinzregentenplatz.35

  In Obersalzberg and Berlin as well, Hoffmann was there as Hitler’s constant companion.36 Despite never holding an official position in the government or the Party, the photographer enjoyed a position of trust—and thus power—that important Party members such as Goebbels or Bormann envied, thanks to his practically unlimited access to Hitler until 1944. Others, such as Otto Wagener, head of the political-economic department of the Nazi Party, were annoyed that Hitler would occasionally discuss “the most secret matters in the presence of his close companions.” Wagener “sometimes heard something of truly decisive importance only by complete accident from the photographer, Hoffmann.”37

  But why did Hitler choose Hoffmann in particular—someone known as a hard-drinking bon vivant, someone whose character and habits actually didn’t match his at all—as his confidant and constant companion? It is an important question because the relations between Hitler and Hoffmann are analogous to the relationship between Hitler and Eva Braun. She, too, seemed not to match her lover, either in outward appearance or in inner temperament. Hoffmann and Hitler were connected by their similar experiences in World War I, their nationalistic and anti-Semitic convictions, their petit bourgeois backgrounds, and their early ambitions to be artists. Nevertheless, what was decisive for Hoffmann’s status as “personal photographer” was his absolute loyalty and fidelity to Hitler himself, which he made clear from the beginning. Hoffmann followed to the letter any and all of the restrictions on photographing or publishing that were imposed upon him, and retouched his pictures according to instructions.38 Hitler in turn ensured that the position of his personal photojournalist remained more or less unofficial to the end, so that Hoffmann remained dependent on him and under his control at all times.

  In fact, Hoffmann was not only Hitler’s fellow Party member, friend, and photographer, but a kind of go-between—even, in a sense, his private ambassador—in ways that crossed the boundaries between propaganda work, private life, and, later, political activities in the realm of art. It was at Hoffmann’s house that Hitler could meet Eva Braun for afternoon tea or dinner, informally and out of the public eye.39 And it was Hoffmann to whom Hitler entrusted his girlfriend when she accompanied him to Party events, unbeknownst to the uninitiated, under the guise of an “official photographer of the NSDAP.” Financial transactions concerning Braun, too, such as the purchase of a house, were carried out via Hoffmann in the early years. At the same time, Hitler also entrusted him with political tasks far outside the purview of a propaganda photographer, and for which Hoffmann actually had no experience. For example, Hoffmann was allowed to select artworks for the prestigious “House of German Art” (Haus der Deutschen Kunst) exhibit in Munich in 1937, to the amazement and annoyance of several contemporaries, and was later placed in charge of the “Great German Art Exhibition” that was held yearly. Hoffmann became Hitler’s personal art adviser and art buyer, in which capacity he committed art theft on a grand scale. As further signs of the position of trust he enjoyed, he was made a member of the Committee for the Utilization of Products of Degenerate Art, as established by Goebbels in May 1938, and was granted a professorship in July of the same year.40

  During the preparations for war against Poland, and the signing of the Nonaggression Pact with the Soviet Union which Hitler pursued to that end, Hitler even promoted his friend to Special Ambassador and sent him with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop’s delegation to Moscow on the
evening of August 22, 1939. Hoffmann later boasted that he was supposed not only to photograph the event, but, more important, to report back to Hitler about Stalin and his entourage.41 The reason for this was not least that Hoffmann was indispensable to Hitler as an informer: the loyal factotum would have access to everyone in Moscow and be able to give Hitler rumors and information about the behavior of everyone there—including the Germans. “Keep your eyes and ears open” was Hoffmann’s assignment. As a result, it is hardly surprising that Ribbentrop suggested, after the fact, that Stalin had objected to Hoffmann’s “activities.”42 In fact, Hoffmann’s presence must have displeased Ribbentrop as well, and also Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador.

  It would therefore considerably understate Hoffmann’s importance to describe him merely as an “interlocutor” of Hitler’s, who enjoyed “the fool’s freedom” to say what he wanted and who, in contrast to the “Führer,” understood nothing about politics so that Hitler’s conversations with him about politics were useless.43 Hoffmann himself fostered this interpretation in his postwar memoirs by presenting himself as an apolitical person, for obvious reasons.44 During the denazification proceedings in 1947–1948, while the press labeled him one of the “greediest parasites of the Hitler plague,” and his own goal was to establish the greatest possible plausible distance between himself and the Nazi system in order to save his own life and livelihood, he cast his role in an even more modest light. In an unpublished defense attestation from 1947 he insisted that he had “avoided political topics” with Hitler, and that Hitler had come under the “bad influence” of others and was no longer receptive to “advice from familial circles.” His “task,” Hoffmann claimed, consisted primarily in fulfilling the wishes of other people around Hitler. He countered the charge of having been a leading propagandist for the NSDAP by pointing out that his name had never appeared in the official National Socialist registers and that the office of a “Reich Photographic Correspondent” did not even exist.45