Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  His results in the Realschule were indeed modest. He had to repeat his first year and in 1923 his class teacher, Huemer, reminisced that Hitler was ‘definitely talented’ (albeit ‘one-sidedly’), but not particularly hard-working, and in addition, unbalanced, ‘contrary, high-handed, self-opinionated, and irascible’.20 In 1904, evidently as a result of another poor report, Adolf switched to the Realschule in Steyr, approximately forty kilometres away, where he stayed in lodgings. Hitler loathed the place, an attitude he retained for the rest of his life.21 In 1905 he once again failed to pass his exams and, thereupon, left school for good.22 An illness, which Hitler subsequently, and no doubt with much exaggeration, described as a ‘serious lung complaint’, seems to have made it easier to get his mother to accept that his school career had finally come to an end.23

  Linz

  It was in Linz that Hitler received his first political impressions. They can be roughly reconstructed from the few statements he himself made in Mein Kampf and from the limited reminiscences of contemporaries. These must be set in the context of the political currents determining the political history of the city during the first decade of the twentieth century. From all this it is clear that Hitler’s early political views were geared to the political–social milieu within which his family was situated.

  At the start of the century, Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, was marked by artisan traditions, expanding industry, and a lively cultural scene. Between 1900 and 1907 the population increased from almost 59,000 to nearly 68,000.24 Politically, as in the rest of Austria, three political camps had emerged: the Christian Socials, the German Nationalists, and the Social Democrats.25 Against the background of the political mobilization of the masses, all three were competing with one another to take over from the previously dominant Liberals. In Linz, during the course of the 1890s, the German Nationalists had succeeded in winning this competition. Large sections of the population who were not tied to the Catholic Church had exchanged their liberal political ideals for nationalist ones. This was also true of Alois Hitler, whom Hitler’s guardian, Mayrhofer, had described as ‘Liberal’ [i.e. anti-clerical], ‘German Nationalist’, and ‘Pan-German’, but also as ‘loyal to the Emperor’.26

  Within the Austro-Hungarian empire the German Nationalists [Deutschfreiheitliche] demanded the leadership role for the German Austrians within this multi-ethnic state and emphasized their links with the Germans in Bismarck’s Reich. The majority were loyal to the Habsburg monarchy, but distinguished themselves from the Liberals and the Christian Socials in German Austria through their commitment to their ‘German’ identity. Their stance also had an anticlerical slant, for many German Nationalists suspected the Catholic Church of trying to strengthen the Slav elements within the empire. The Slavs (in Upper Austria and Linz this meant mainly the Czechs) were seen as the real threat, as their growing self-confidence and demand for equal treatment threatened the Germans’ leadership role. This was being played out, in particular, through the so-called ‘language dispute’, which came to a head in the years after 1897. These political views found expression through the German People’s Party [Deutsche Volkspartei], the dominant political force in Linz and Upper Austria.27 Its main newspaper was the Linzer Tagespost, already referred to, a daily subscribed to by Hitler’s father and which Hitler himself stated he had ‘read from his earliest youth’. It was not of course by chance that the paper printed an obituary of his father.28

  From the 1890s onwards, the German Nationalists in Linz not only succeeded in winning votes in elections but also in establishing a well-integrated German Nationalist milieu. The gymnastics clubs, very much in the tradition of the ‘Father of Gymnastics’, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn,* saw themselves as ‘centres for fostering German national consciousness and patriotic-mindedness’29 and were sympathetic to the German Nationalists.30 The same was true of the General German Language Society [Allgemeiner Deutscher Sprachverein], which opposed the ‘foreign infiltration’ of the German language, and of the German School Association [Deutscher Schulverein], and the Association for the Defence of the Eastern Marches [Schutzverein Ostmark]. The latter, like other ‘defence associations’ with local branches in Linz, advocated strengthening the German element in the border provinces of Austria that were allegedly being threatened by alien ‘ethnic groups’. Year after year, and with increasing enthusiasm, big festivals were staged, for example at the summer solstice, or to celebrate some jubilee, at which ‘German’ or, as the various announcements put it, ‘Germanic’ or ‘ethnic German’ [völkisch] customs and consciousness were cultivated and invoked.31 Thus, in reporting the ‘Yule Festival’ of the Jahn Gymnastics Club, the Linzer Tagespost considered it an ‘exceptionally gratifying sign of the times’ that ‘ethnic German festivals, which are calculated to rekindle national feelings and sensibilities, are being attended, in particular by the upper classes of our city, with such enthusiasm and in such numbers’.32 Moreover, the German Nationalist associations were subsidized by the local council and, during the years after 1900, Linz often hosted supra-regional festivals of German Nationalist associations.33

  The struggle against the allegedly increasing influence of the Czechs in Upper Austria, against ‘Slavisization’, was a standard topic in Linz. It was a classic case of a problem that was created by being discussed, a ‘minority problem without a minority’.34 In 1900 there were hardly more than 3,500 Czech speakers in Upper Austria. By 1910 that number had reduced to 2,000, a little more than 0.2 per cent of the population. Around half of this minority lived in Linz.35 Nevertheless, from 1898 onwards, the German Nationalists used their presence in the Landtag [regional parliament] to keep pressing for German to be made the sole official language and language of instruction in Upper Austria. This provided a welcome opportunity to campaign in parliament and in the public sphere against the alleged threat of foreign influence. In 1909 this demand, which, given the small number of Czechs in Upper Austria, was a piece of pure demagogy, was finally met, as it was in the monarchy’s other German ‘crown lands’, by the passage of a provincial law.36 The Linzer Tagespost reported regularly on German–Czech disputes, most of which occurred in Bohemia or Vienna. However, alleged manifestations of Czech nationalism in Upper Austria were kept under suspicious review and dubbed Czech ‘presumption’ or ‘cheek’.37 When, in 1903, a celebration was going to be held in a church to mark fifty years of services in the Czech language, the Linz city council passed a unanimous resolution condemning this ‘Czech nationalist demonstration’, urging local businesses in future only to employ ‘German assistants and apprentices’. The regional parliament also discussed the matter at length.38 In 1904, a concert by the Czech violinist, Jan Kubelik, was prevented by riots; the world-famous musician had to flee the city down side streets. This was in response to demonstrations by Czech nationalists in Budweis and Prague and was reported with satisfaction by the Tagespost.39

  The Pan-Germans should also be included in the German Nationalist camp, viewed in a broader sense. They too believed in intimate national solidarity between the Austrian Germans and the Germans ‘in the Reich’. However, in contrast to the majority of the German Nationalists, who aimed at acquiring dominance within the Habsburg empire, the Pan-German supporters of Georg von Schönerer wished to follow the opposite path. They wanted to dissolve the empire, with the unambiguously Slav parts being given their independence and the German parts uniting with the Reich. In addition, they were committed to a racial form of anti-Semitism and a marked anti-clericalism. After the turn of the century this developed into the ‘Away from Rome’ movement, a mass conversion to Protestantism, which was seen as the Germans’ national religion.40 However, in Linz the Pan-Germans were only a marginal group. Indeed, during the first decade of the new century, the years when Hitler was exposed to his first political impressions, the leaders of the German Nationalists distanced themselves from the Pan-Germans, forming an alliance with the Liberals, whom they could largely dominate. It was only after this conste
llation had suffered a heavy defeat in the Reichstag [imperial parliament] elections of 1911 that the Pan-Germans were integrated more closely into the German Nationalist camp.

  The new political constellation after the turn of the century prompted the German Nationalists to refrain from the use of anti-Semitic slogans in the public sphere in order not to damage their relationship with the Liberals. They did, however, introduce the so-called Aryan clause, excluding Jews from membership, into the constitutions of all the associations of which, by 1900, they had acquired leadership from the Liberals.41 Nevertheless, they did not want to make too much of their hostility to the Jews; the ‘threat from the Czechs’ was a much more successful slogan.42 It appears, therefore, entirely plausible when Hitler writes in Mein Kampf that his father was far from being anti-Semitic, not least because of his ‘cosmopolitan views, which, despite his pronounced nationalist sentiments, not only remained intact but also rubbed off on me’. During his school days – there were a number of Jewish boys in the Linz Realschule – he himself had seen no reason to challenge this attitude. It was only when he was around fourteen or fifteen (he writes) that he, partly through political conversations, had come across the word ‘Jew’, which had engendered ‘a slight distaste’, ‘an unpleasant feeling’.43 In fact, there is no evidence that anti-Semitism played a dominant role in the Realschule in Linz that Hitler attended between 1900 and 1904.44

  Against the background of the ‘nationalities dispute’, with which the city was so preoccupied and in which the German Nationalists were so heavily engaged, the confrontation with the ‘Slavs’ played a much more important role in the life of the school. But in Hitler’s school, as elsewhere, this conflict was largely fought against an imaginary opponent. For, contrary to Hitler’s later statements that, growing up during the ‘struggle on the frontier for German language, culture, and mentality’, he had taken part in fights with Czech schoolmates,45 in fact there were hardly any Czech-speaking pupils in the school; in 1903 there were precisely two. However, although Hitler’s encounters with Czech schoolmates were a fantasy, they indicate that his life-long contempt for Czechs was rooted in the anti-Czech climate of his favourite city of Linz.

  The Realschule in Linz was undoubtedly a hotbed of German Nationalism. Two of Hitler’s teachers were active representatives of this movement: Leopold Poetsch, who taught him geography between 1901 and 1904 and history from 1900 to 1904, and Edward Huemer, Hitler’s German and French teacher during this period. Poetsch was a local councillor for the German People’s Party, and active in the Südmark Defence Association. He undertook an extensive programme of lectures dealing above all with the importance of the Teutons, a very positive assessment of Prussia, the cultural superiority of Germans, and the need for closer ties between the two empires. These were all favourite topics from which conclusions can be drawn about the content of his teaching. Like his colleague, Huemer, however, Poetsch was loyal to the Austrian state and its monarchy.46 Hitler praised Poetsch warmly in Mein Kampf as someone who had been very successful in appealing to his pupils’ ‘sense of national honour’. In a letter from 1929 he called him a ‘teacher, to whom I owe a huge amount, indeed the person who to some extent prepared the foundations for the path that I have subsequently followed’.47 However, significantly, as an Austrian civil servant, Poetsch did not want to be held accountable by his prominent pupil for the latter’s radical views and, therefore, in future, distanced himself from him,48 whereas Huemer became an enthusiastic Hitler supporter.49

  In fact, Hitler then conceded in Mein Kampf that, while his becoming a ‘young revolutionary’ and an embittered opponent of the Austrian monarchy had been influenced by Poetsch’s teaching, this had probably not been his teacher’s intention, at least not to that extent.50 This statement, like other remarks in Mein Kampf, is quite revealing about the political situation at the Realschule in Linz. Hitler wrote that, in line with the dominant trend in the school, in a very short time he had become a fanatical German Nationalist. Collections for the ‘Südmark and the Schulverein’ had been held in the school; they had worn cornflowers, the symbol of the Pan-Germans and the German Nationalists. In addition, he and his schoolmates had made no bones about their ‘Greater German’ views: by displaying the colours black-red-gold, using the ‘Heil greeting’, and by singing ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’ to the tune of the Kaiser Hymn. These were all actions the school authorities disapproved of.51 Moreover, the extreme German Nationalist atmosphere of the Realschule in Linz evidently provided fertile soil for more radical examples of ‘Greater German’ ideology. The pupils apparently enjoyed provoking their teachers with slogans that were frowned on by the imperial authorities, with the excuse that they were only carrying the nationalism that was being preached to them to its logical conclusion.52 However, such demonstrations of loyalty to the ‘Greater German’ cause were not expressions of radical opposition. Rather, they should be seen as expressions of the conventional German Nationalist views that dominated those sections of the middle and lower-middle classes who were not religiously inclined at the beginning of the twentieth century.

  In 1905, after leaving school, Hitler returned from Steyr, which he hated, to Linz, where his mother had moved in June of that year.53 From now onwards, his mother, his younger sister Paula, and his aunt Johanna, who was living with them, spent their lives looking after him in their two-room flat. Reviewing this period, Hitler described it in Mein Kampf as ‘the happiest days of my life’.54 During this time, Hitler does not appear to have had any concrete plans for his further education. He had vague dreams of becoming a great artist and so he spent most of his time drawing, painting, and reading; he briefly took piano lessons,55 and in the evenings went to the opera or to concerts.

  In 1905, he met August Kubizek at the opera. Kubizek, nine months older than Hitler, worked in his father’s upholstery business, shared Hitler’s enthusiasm for opera, and was himself a talented pianist. This friend of his youth has provided extensive memoirs of the next two years that Hitler spent in Linz and of the following period when they were together in Vienna. However, the reliability of these memoirs is highly dubious. Kubizek, who remained for the rest of his life an admirer of Hitler, produced an initial version of his memoirs during the Second World War at the behest of the Nazi Party Chancellery, and then expanded them considerably in 1953 incorporating, among other things, excerpts from Mein Kampf.

  Part II of the original manuscript concerning their period together in Vienna has survived.56 The fragment shows very clearly how Kubizek doctored the book version of his memoirs, which appeared in the 1950s and is the most important source for Hitler’s youth. Whereas in the original text Kubizek tried to portray Hitler’s eccentricity, of which he left the reader in no doubt, as clear proof of his genius, in the book version he dealt with it as a purely private matter and from the perspective of a curious but distant observer. In particular, he significantly revised the passages concerning Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Whereas in the original manuscript hatred of the Jews was treated as something quite normal, in the book it appears as if it was a strange obsession of Hitler’s. As a former intimate of Hitler, Kubizek had been interned by the Americans and, as a former civil servant, at the beginning of the 1950s he was anxious to rehabilitate himself. He therefore tried to avoid being identified in any way with Hitler. According to the rather innocent message of the book, it was possible to be friendly with Hitler on a purely private basis without sharing his peculiar inclinations or views, let alone recognizing them as harbingers of a later catastrophe. The book, however, shows quite clearly that such a private friendship with Hitler was an illusion, an illusion that Kubizek was still holding on to forty years later.

  It is remarkable that, in describing the personal qualities of his young friend in his book, Kubizek sticks to the line already taken in the original manuscript.57 He describes the young Hitler as slight and pale, always very simply but correctly dressed; he was well-behaved and, above all, very artic
ulate.58 It is clear from Kubizek’s account that Hitler dominated this relationship. He decided what the friends were going to do, in the process high-handedly controlling Kubizek’s very limited free time. When the two were together, Hitler liked making long-winded speeches about music, art, architecture, or politics and Kubizek, who considered himself ‘basically a quiet and contemplative person’, impressed by so much knowledge and eloquence, had simply to listen. According to Kubizek, Hitler had no other friends and did not allow Kubizek to make friends with anybody else.59

  Kubizek records that, during the four years of this ‘friendship’, Hitler showed no interest in members of the opposite sex – with one, admittedly very strange, exception. Kubizek mentions a girl named Stefanie, the daughter of a comfortably off widow of a civil servant, with whom Hitler was infatuated, without even once summoning up the courage to speak to her. Hitler told Kubizek that he was deeply in love with Stefanie and he spent much of his time making plans for his future life with his ideal woman. In his fantasies Hitler dreamed that he would become a successful artist, marry his beloved, and live with her in a marvellous villa, which he had already designed down to the last detail.60 Kubizek counted himself lucky to have been told of Hitler’s love for Stefanie, for ‘nothing binds a friendship so closely as a shared secret’.61 When Hitler fell ill for a lengthy period and later, when he was living in Vienna, Kubizek was obliged to go in place of his friend and stand at a particular spot in the town in order to watch out for Stefanie and then report on his observations.62

  Apart from Stefanie, according to Kubizek Hitler was moved by another passion that they shared – the music of Richard Wagner. The friends went to numerous performances of the master at the Linz Landestheater, and their enthusiasm helped them to overlook the inadequacies of provincial productions.63 Wagner’s mythical opera world appealed to Hitler’s enthusiasm for the German heroic sagas. In this connection Kubizek mentions Gustav Schwab’s popular edition of the sagas of the classical world as Hitler’s favourite book; his friend had been completely absorbed in it.64 This was at the root of Wagner’s ‘appeal’ for him. Kubizek believed that through Hitler’s intensive study of Wagner’s work and biography it was as if he were trying to incorporate him as ‘part of his own being’.65