Had the Reich chancellor always slept in so late, he wishes to know. Hitler it seems never goes to bed before midnight and sleeps until well into the morning, while his entourage, who presumably have been required to stay up just as late, are obliged to be up bright and early the next day. The adjutant, brother of the more familiar Martin Bormann, goes on to complain about Hitler’s outbursts of temper, which nobody could calm, and about his peculiar diet, vegetarian based on flour and plenty of fruit juices. Has he always been like that? Kubizek replies that indeed he has, except that he used to eat meat.
When he returns the next day the excitement and activity is unabated, the whole city has taken to the streets, he writes. He fights his way through the crowd and is led into the hotel foyer by some officials. He holds no illusions, expects nothing more than a brief handshake and a few warm words, and is nervous as to the form of address to use, fearing that any breach of protocol will send Hitler into a rage. But he is given an hour. Hitler appears in the corridor, recognizes him immediately, and cries out with joy, “It’s you, Gustl!” and when he grasps Kubizek’s hand with both of his and looks into his eyes, he is quite clearly as moved by the occasion as Kubizek himself. Hitler leads him to the elevator, which takes them up to his suite on the second floor.
The personal adjutant opened the door; we entered and the adjutant left. Again, Hitler took my hand, gave me a long look and said, “You haven’t changed, Kubizek. I would have recognized you anywhere. The only thing different is that you’ve got older.” Then he led me to a table and offered me a chair. He assured me how much pleasure it gave him to see me again after so many years. My good wishes had pleased him especially, for I knew better than anybody else how difficult his path had been. The present time was unfavorable for a long talk, but he hoped that there would be an opportunity in the future. He would contact me. To write to him directly was not advisable, for all his mail was dealt with by his aides.
“I no longer have a private life and cannot do what I like as others can.” With these words he rose and went to the window, which overlooked the Danube. The old bridge with its steel bars, which had so annoyed him in his youth, remained in use. As I expected, he mentioned it at once. “That ugly footbridge!” he cried. “It’s still there. But not for much longer, I assure you, Kubizek.” With that he turned and smiled. “All the same, I would love to take a stroll with you over the old bridge. But I can’t, for wherever I go, everybody follows me. But believe me, Kubizek, for Linz I have many plans.” Nobody knew that better than I. As expected, he drew forth from his memory all the plans which had occupied him in his youth just as though not thirty, but no more than three, years had passed since then.
After describing his plans for Linz in detail, Hitler questions Kubizek about his life, what he has become. The reply, Stadtamtsleiter, displeases him: “So, you are a civil servant, a clerk. That doesn’t suit you. What did you make of your musical talents?” Kubizek tells him the war had thrown him off course and that in order not to starve he had to change horses. Hitler nods gravely. “Yes, the lost war.” He looks at him, and adds, “You won’t be ending your career as a municipal clerk, Kubizek.” He asks him about the orchestra he runs, and enthuses, instructing him to make out a report detailing anything they might be short of and he will make sure they get what they need. He asks if he has any children. Kubizek tells him yes, three sons.
“Three sons!” he cried emotionally. He repeated the words several times and with an earnest expression. “You have three sons, Kubizek. I have no family. I am alone. But I would like to help with your sons.” He made me tell him everything about them. He was delighted that all three were talented musically and two of them were skilled sketch artists.
“I will sponsor the education of your three sons, Kubizek,” he told me. “I don’t like it when young, gifted people are forced to go along the same track that we did. You know how it was for us in Vienna. After that, for me, came the worst times of all, after our paths had separated. That young talent goes under because of need must not be allowed to happen. If I can help personally, I will, even if it’s for your children, Kubizek!”
I have to mention here that the Reich chancellor actually did have his office foot the bill for the musical education of my three sons at the Linz Bruckner-Conservatoire and on his orders the sketches of my son Rudolf were assessed by a professor at the Munich Academy.
Later they meet again, Hitler inviting him to the Wagner festival in Bayreuth in 1939 and 1940. The question is how reliable are the descriptions of these meetings and the picture of Hitler they provide? No one else was there, we have no other account to go by than Kubizek’s own. One thing though is certain, the portrayal of Hitler is by no means opportunistic. Had Kubizek’s book come out while the Nazis were still in power, in 1938 or 1942, for instance, the picture would have been different, there would have been grounds for suspicion, since any suggestion of anything negative or ambivalent in the portrait it paints of Hitler would have been impossible or at least highly precarious. But the book was published in 1953, and at that time the opposite held: the opportune thing to do then would have been to demonize Hitler, emphasize his negative aspects, whereas writing about his kindness, for instance, might be seen as an expression of Nazi sympathies, something not many people would wish to admit to after the war.
Kubizek was contacted by the Nazi Party in 1938 and asked to put his recollections of Hitler’s youth on paper for the NSDAP archive. He joined the party in 1942, was to all intents and purposes ordered to write his memoirs by Martin Bormann, and in 1943 was given a better-paid position in order to complete the task. When the war ended, however, he had managed to write only some one hundred and fifty pages. He was arrested by the Americans because of his connections with Hitler and was interned for sixteen months under repeated interrogation. His manuscript and memorabilia remained hidden in his house, forming the basis of the book he eventually published in 1953, but the differences between the manuscript and the published work are nevertheless notable, Hamann writes. All passages expressing admiration for the Führer had been deleted, those describing their lives together in Linz and Vienna were retained. Some of the stories, such as Hitler’s infatuation with Stefanie, have been expanded and reworked, many dates are incorrect, and in some places his memory fails him – for instance at one point he writes that their landlady in Vienna was Polish, whereas in actual fact she was Czech, and that they lodged at number 29 rather than number 31 – but otherwise everything that can be checked is correct. An exception is a number of episodes purporting to reveal Hitler’s anti-Semitism, yet there would seem to be no evidence to support the suggestion that Hitler was an anti-Semite in his youth; on the contrary, his acquaintances in Vienna included several Jews and he expressed interest in Jewish culture. Mahler, whom he admired, was Jewish. The anti-Semitic episodes in Kubizek’s book do not exist in the original manuscript, but were added in its later version. Hamann writes:
Here Kubizek is clearly trying to promote himself. The Americans had questioned him exhaustively about his anti-Semitism, and now he is forced to maintain his line of defense. Thus he claims that Hitler had joined the Anti-Semitic League, filling out an appliction for him, Kubizek, as well, without his permission: “This was the high point of the kind of political violation which I had gradually got used to with him. I was all the more surprised since otherwise Adolf eagerly avoided joining any associations or organizations.”
However, before 1918 there was no Anti-Semitic League in Austro-Hungary. The Austrian anti-Semites were so at odds with one another, politically as well as ethnically, that an organization similar to the German Anti-Semitic League of 1884 never came about. Kubizek could have only joined the Austrian Anti-Semitic League, which was founded in 1919 – and voluntarily at that, without Hitler’s help. This issue is important because of all those early eyewitnesses who can be taken seriously, Kubizek is the only one to portray young Hitler as an anti-Semite, and precisely in this respect he is not trust
worthy.
Another noticeable aspect that separates the two versions is that the first, completed during the Nazi period, is comparatively poorly written, while the second, published eight years after the war was over, is comparatively well written. Kershaw explains this by suggesting the second was ghostwritten, whereas Hamann points to “a skilled editor.” Both however agree that the memoirs are the most important source of insight into Hitler’s early years. And if it seems contrived that the circle should so neatly be closed with Hitler’s return to Linz and his declaration that he will redesign the city according to the plans of his youth, it is nonetheless an incontrovertible fact that Hitler, in his final time in the bunker, with the world aflame above him and the Russians already well inside Berlin, only days before he shot himself, could sit for hours and ponder over a model of Linz built on his instructions by his architect Hermann Giesler and shown to all his visitors no matter the time of day or night. A bell tower one hundred and fifty meters tall with a mausoleum containing his parents’ graves at its foot, a gigantic hotel for up to two thousand guests at a time, a music school called the Adolf Hitler School of Music, an opera house that was to be the biggest in the world, seating thirty-five thousand, were the most prominent buildings, according to Bengt Liljegren. Moreover, a technical university was planned, and a huge hundred-thousand capacity arena, housing areas for workers and artists, homes for SS and SA invalids, a railway station connecting to an underground transit system, access to the autobahn, and heavy industry, steelworks and chemical factories besides. The focal point of this new cityscape, in addition to the mausoleum with its bell tower, was to be a giant art museum. So determined was Hitler that his extensive art collection be donated to Linz that he explicitly mentions it in the will he draws up prior to his suicide, Liljegren writes. And throughout Hitler’s entire period in power Linz was favored over Vienna. Hamann cites Goebbels’s diary entry of May 17, 1941: “Linz costs us a lot of money. But it means so much to the Führer.” This in contrast to Vienna, which during Hitler’s years of government is given no priority whatsoever. Goebbels’s diaries again, March 21, 1943: “The Führer doesn’t have any particularly great plans for Vienna. On the contrary, Vienna has too much, and it might rather lose something than gain anything.”
* * *
Hitler made it clear to Kubizek almost from the very outset of their friendship that he would live in Vienna. Linz was too small and provincial. To begin with he made a short trip there in May 1907 and enthused at what he saw. Back in Linz after this four-week sojourn in the capital, however, he is impossible to reach, withdrawn and silent, he wanders alone in the daytime and night in the city’s environs, presumably in crisis at the prospect of uprooting, though it seems certain that it is his decision to make the move to Vienna that brings him back to normal again a couple of weeks later.
The idea that he, a young man of eighteen, should continue to be kept by his mother had become unbearable to him. It was a painful dilemma which, as I could see for myself, made him almost physically ill. On the one hand, he loved his mother above everything: she was the only person on earth to whom he felt really close, and she reciprocated his feeling to some extent, although she was deeply disturbed by her son’s unusual nature, however proud she was at times of him. “He is different from us,” she used to say.
On the other hand, she felt it to be her duty to carry out the wishes of her late husband, and to prevail on Adolf to embark on a safe career. But what was “safe,” in view of the peculiar character of her son? He had failed at school and ignored all his mother’s wishes and suggestions. A painter – that was what he had said he wanted to become. This could not seem very satisfactory to his mother for, simple soul that she was, anything connected with art and artists appeared to her frivolous and insecure.
Hitler’s brother-in-law, Raubal, wants him to start working like any other young person, and tries to win Hitler’s mother over. He finds Hitler spoiled, a manipulator who twists his mother around his little finger and needs to shape up and get a job, learn something decent. “This Pharisee is ruining my home for me,” Hitler says of him. Raubal appeals to Frau Klara’s reason, stepping into the role of her deceased husband. It is by no means difficult to imagine his arguments: Hitler sleeps late, earns no money, wanders around with his head in the clouds all day, she can’t go on paying his way, he’ll never learn to look after himself and his family otherwise, it’s for his own good, surely you can see? Hitler’s guardian, Mayrhofer, wants him to become a baker and has arranged an apprenticeship on his behalf. The other tenants in the building have their opinions too, Kubizek writes; none is in Hitler’s favor. His mother despairs. For Hitler’s own part, staying is out of the question, he has made up his mind, there is no alternative to Vienna and an artist’s career there.
He had come to hate the petit-bourgeois world in which he had to live. He could hardly bear to return to that narrow world after lonely hours spent in the open. He was always in a ferment of rage, hard and intractable.
The feeling of everyone being against him is not new in Hitler’s life. But he and his mother are close – despite the pressures of others she can refuse him nothing. She is also ill. In January of that year the family physician, Dr. Bloch, discovers a lump in her breast. She undergoes surgery, and since the family has no health insurance, the bill, somehow settled by Hitler himself, then aged seventeen, must have been a considerable strain on their finances. She was in the hospital for a month; Hitler visited daily. After her release her frail condition meant she was no longer able to cope with the stairs and the family was forced to move. Their new apartment was on the ground floor of a building in the suburbs, owned by the woman who a few months later would write Hitler’s letter of recommendation to Roller. Undeterred by the resistance of those closest to him, Hitler uproots to Vienna that same summer in order to become an artist.
Kubizek writes that Hitler came to see him the evening before his departure, asking him to see him off at the station, not wanting his mother to come.
I knew how painful it would have been for Adolf to take leave of his mother in front of other people. He disliked nothing more than showing his feelings in public. I promised him to come and help him with his luggage.
Next day I took time off and went to the Blütgengasse to collect my friend. Adolf had prepared everything. I took his suitcase, which was rather heavy with books he did not want to leave behind, and hurried away to avoid being present at the farewells. Yet I could not avoid them entirely. His mother was crying and little Paula, whom Adolf had never bothered with much, was sobbing in a heartrending manner. When Adolf caught up with me on the stairs and helped me with the suitcase, I saw that his eyes too were wet.
Hitler leaves for Vienna to seek admission to the Academy of Fine Arts; confident of his own talents he considers it a formality that he will be given a place. But he is turned down. In view of all the pressures at home, all those who held that his artist dreams were folly and who wished only that he would pull himself together and get himself a proper job, the rejection must have been crushing, and in fact he told no one. Neither Kubizek nor his own mother heard from him in those first weeks, not a word was sent, and a worried Kubizek went to see Frau Klara to find out if her son had been in touch. She offers him a chair and unburdens herself.
“If only he had studied properly at the Realschule he would almost be ready to matriculate. But he won’t listen to anybody.” And she added, “He’s as pigheaded as his father. Why this crazy journey to Vienna? Instead of holding on to his little legacy, it’s just being frittered away. And after that? Nothing will come of his painting. And story writing doesn’t earn anything either. And I can’t help him – I’ve got Paula to look after. You know yourself what a sickly child she is but, just the same, she must get a decent education. Adolf doesn’t give it a thought, he goes his way, just as if he were alone in the world. I shall not live to see him making an independent position for himself…”
Frau Klara seem
ed more careworn than ever. Her face was deeply lined. Her eyes were lifeless, her voice sounded tired and resigned. I had the impression that, now that Adolf was no longer there, she had let herself go, and she looked older and more ailing than ever. She certainly had concealed her condition from her son to make the parting easier for him.
Frau Hitler’s condition deteriorates while her son is in Vienna: according to Hamann she visited the doctor once again on July 3, and again on September 2. Kubizek is busy; if not working in his father’s workshop, he spends all his time practicing, so with Hitler’s absence he does not return to visit Frau Klara until later that autumn. When he does he is shocked by what he sees. She is lying in bed, thin and pale, her face worn. Immediately she begins to talk of her son’s letters, he seems to be doing well in Vienna. Kubizek asks if she has told Adolf how unwell she is. She has not, she does not wish to burden him, but if her condition fails to improve she will have to send for him. The doctor has advised her to go to the hospital and be admitted. Before leaving, Kubizek makes her promise to write to her son. When he gets home again he tells his parents. His mother immediately offers to help Frau Hitler, but his father thinks it bad manners to impose without being asked.
On October 22 in his office, Hamann writes, the doctor, Eduard Bloch, informs the family – Klara, Adolf, and his younger sister, Paula – that Frau Klara’s illness is incurable. The next day Hitler appears at the upholstery workshop. Kubizek describes him as looking terrible. His face is so pale as to be almost transparent. His eyes are dull, his voice hoarse. Without a greeting, without word of what he has been up to in Vienna, and with no question about Stefanie, all he utters is, “Incurable, the doctor says.”
My Struggle, Book 6 Page 62