Hitler
Page 5
In 1909 Hanisch was living as a city tramp in Vienna. According to his account, during the autumn of that year he had encountered Hitler in the Meidlinger hostel for the homeless in the next bed. Down at heel, hungry, and without any money, Hitler joined up with Hanisch and the two of them got through the next fortnight together. In the evenings they attempted to get beds in the various hostels; during the day, they tried to find casual work. In the process it became clear that Hitler was either too weak or too inept for most of the work on offer. Hanisch persuaded Hitler, who had evidently mentioned attending an art academy, to enter a business partnership. Hitler would paint picture postcards, which Hanisch would then sell. The project proved successful and soon the two of them had enough money for a permanent base: the men’s hostel in the Brigittenau district, in which Hitler was to stay between February 1910 and May 1913. This men’s hostel was a superior form of charitable institution and, by contemporary standards, a model of its kind. It was intended, in the first instance, for single workers on a low income, who were able to stay there for lengthy periods, being well and cheaply looked after. There were no mass dormitories, but instead individual cubicles; the sanitary facilities were adequate and there was a reading room.105
This is where Hitler sat during the day painting his postcards, which were copies of pictures of famous Viennese buildings and intended for tourists. They were produced as a cheap series, but soon Hitler quarrelled with Hanisch, who kept demanding more pictures. Hanisch reported that Hitler’s productivity suffered because he preferred to read the newspapers and have discussions with the other visitors to the reading room. According to Hanisch, Hitler’s anger was mainly directed at the Catholic Church and the Jesuits. He spoke very approvingly of the Pan-German leader, Georg von Schönerer, and of Karl Hermann Wolf, the dominant figure among the German Radicals, but also of the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger.
According to Hanisch’s memoirs, Hitler discussed the issue of anti-Semitism at length, generally criticizing anti-Semitic positions; indeed, apparently he made positive comments about the Jews. Hanisch reported that there were Jews among Hitler’s closest acquaintances at the hostel and with one of them Hitler had a close relationship. This man has been verified through the files of the registration office: Josef Neumann, born in 1878, a copper polisher, of the Mosaic religion. Neumann and another Jewish peddler (his name is also in the files) now began selling Hitler’s pictures, leading to a quarrel with Hanisch.106 Hanisch even maintains that, after receiving a substantial sum for a big order, Hitler disappeared from the hostel with Neumann and went to stay in a hotel for a week. There is in fact evidence that in June 1910 Hitler deregistered from the hostel for ten days. It is not clear what he did with Neumann during this period; he told Hanisch they had been sightseeing.107
Shortly afterwards, the quarrel with Hanisch escalated: A postcard seller accused Hanisch of stealing a picture painted by Hitler. Hitler was interviewed by the police – the report has survived – and confirmed the accusation. Hanisch, who had registered with the police under a false name, was kept in custody for seven days.108 After the break with Hanisch – Neumann left Vienna in July 1910 – Hitler now sold his pictures himself, in particular to two Jewish picture-framers, Jacob Altenberg and Samuel Morgenstern.109
While Hanisch’s report can be verified in part through official documents, other sources are much more dubious.110 Indeed, there is hardly any reliable information about Hitler’s life for the period 1910 to 1913. One thing, however, is clear from the official documents: When his Aunt Johanna died in 1911 it emerged that Hitler had received payments from her, in particular the loan in 1908 of 924 Kronen. Hitler was now compelled to admit in a declaration to the district court in Vienna-Leopoldstadt that he was not an art student without an income, but easily in a position to support himself; the orphans’ pension was thus assigned solely to his sister, Paula. This admission that he had been deceiving his sister for years, which also involved admitting that his plan to study had failed, was probably the reason why, having already broken off contact in 1908, he continued to avoid her. He only saw Paula again at the beginning of the 1920s, after he had begun his political career and could regard himself as a success. He seems to have had occasional contact with his half-sister, Angela.111
There is a further report from a fellow occupant of the men’s hostel covering 1913. It was by Karl Honisch and written in 1939 at the request of the Nazi Party archive. Honisch, born in Moravia in 1891 and a clerk by profession, was evidently anxious in 1939 to write a harmless report that would not conflict with the official Hitler story. It is clear from Honisch’s account that Hitler had basically maintained his customary way of life. He spent a large part of his time in the reading room working on his pictures. Honisch describes him as someone of ‘slight build, with hollow cheeks and a shock of dark hair flopping over his forehead, wearing a shabby suit’. He had noticed Hitler’s ‘invariably steady, extremely regular way of life’. He had been subject to mood swings: on most occasions he was friendly and relaxed, but from time to time he had been withdrawn and been something of a dreamer; sometimes he had been irascible. According to Honisch, Hitler had had a fixed plan to go to Munich to attend the Academy of Art. He took an active part in the political discussions that frequently occurred in the reading room among his regular circle of ‘intellectuals’, becoming particularly engaged when ‘the Reds’ or the ‘Jesuits’ were being attacked.112
That poses the question: What were Hitler’s political views during his time in Vienna? His assertion in Mein Kampf that, during his Vienna years, he had become a strong supporter of Schönerer and his Pan-Germans is entirely plausible. Given the strongly German Nationalist milieu in Linz in which he had grown up, he may well have already been attracted by the more radical Pan-Germans.113 In her dissertation on Hitler’s image of Austria, written in the 1960s, Eleonore Kandl systematically collated Hitler’s comments on the old Austrian empire contained in Mein Kampf, his Table Talk and other sources, carefully comparing them with relevant articles in the Vienna press during the years he spent in the capital. The result is clear: on every essential point Hitler had adopted Pan-German propaganda to an amazing extent, even using the same terminology. This involved in particular:
• the conviction that the Habsburg monarchy was in its death throes, as the political elite, with its ‘feeble’ politics bent on compromise, was not in a position to maintain the dominance of German-speakers over the multi-ethnic mishmash;114
• accusations that the Habsburg monarchy had repeatedly betrayed the interests of the German nation and had encouraged the ‘Slavisization’ of the empire;115
• references to the threat of ‘Slavisization’ and the allegedly fateful role of the Church in this process;116
• his rejection of Social Democracy as a force that was nationally unreliable;117
• the enumeration of fatal mistakes made by the monarchy and the government that had served to ‘weaken’ the German-speakers;118
• his furious tirades against parliamentary democracy;119
• his demand for a close alliance with Germany because of their common ‘blood’;120
• complaints about the ethnic mixing in the Austrian army;121
• his criticism of the ‘Jewified’ press in the Austrian capital;122
• his deep distrust of Vienna, indeed his hatred of this ‘racial Babylon’, and of ‘all this ethnic mishmash’ in the capital as the embodiment of ‘racial disgrace’.123
The extent of agreement between the two is so great that Hitler must have totally absorbed these polemics during his stay in Vienna.
However, when Hitler arrived in Vienna in 1908 the Pan-Germans had long passed the high point of their political influence. While during the 1880s and 1890s Schönerer’s political ideas had been seriously considered as a possible option for the reorganization of the Habsburg Empire, his movement was now regarded as merely a political sect. In the election of 1907 his group of twenty-one deput
ies was reduced to three, albeit very vociferous ones; he himself was not elected. His aggressive behaviour and extreme politics had turned him into a caricature, although Hitler would have observed the cult his supporters still made of him.124 He praised Schönerer’s assessment of the situation in the Habsburg monarchy in Mein Kampf, supporting Schönerer’s main demand for the Anschluss of German Austria with the German Reich, but strongly criticizing him as a politician. Schönerer had lacked clear ideas about the ‘importance of the social problem’, had allowed himself to become involved in parliamentary politics, and had carried on a completely pointless struggle against the Church.125
Hitler noted in Mein Kampf that, having originally been a keen Schönerer supporter, in the course of his stay in Vienna he had more and more come to admire its mayor, Karl Lueger, and his policies.126 While he was at odds with Lueger’s Christian Social ideology, Hitler considered him a political genius on account of his pragmatism and realism and indeed ‘the greatest German mayor of all time’. He had had ‘a rare knowledge of people’ and had developed ‘an exceptionally clever relationship with the Catholic Church’.127 Lueger, who held the office of mayor between 1907 and 1910, had, through major local government projects, not only contributed to turning this city of two million people into a viable, modern metropolis, but had also established an extremely popular autocratic regime. This regime was based not least on consistently applied anti-Semitic demagoguery, in which ‘the Jews’ were made responsible for simply anything and everything.128
Hitler’s two political models, Lueger and Schönerer, both used crude political rhetoric. It would, therefore, seem logical to describe them as his anti-Semitic mentors. However, in Mein Kampf he adopted another approach, portraying his development into a radical anti-Semite as the result of personal experiences and as his ‘most difficult transformation’, lasting more than two years and a phase of ‘bitter internal struggle’.129 Although this reappraisal had been initiated by his admiration for Lueger and his Christian Social Party, Hitler made it absolutely clear that Christian-motivated anti-Semitism of this kind was a ‘pseudo anti-Semitism’ and, as it was not based on ‘racial theory’, had not grasped the core of the problem.130 Describing how he came to rethink the issue, he wrote that his first experience was when he took offence at the appearance of orthodox Jews on the streets of Vienna: their foreignness, their strangeness led him to conclude that the Jews were a separate people. He had then looked into the question of Zionism, but had soon realized that the debates between Zionist Jews and liberal Jews were phony disagreements that only diverted attention from the real sense of solidarity that existed among Jews.
He had been disgusted by their (alleged) dirtiness – physical, but above all moral: ‘was there any form of filth or shamelessness, above all in cultural life, that did not involve at least one Jew?’131 In particular, he deplored the disastrous role played by Jews in the press, art, literature, and the theatre; he also blamed them for organizing prostitution and the white slave trade. Finally, he claimed to have got to the heart of the problem when he noticed that the whole of the Social Democratic leadership was in the hands of Jews. All these ‘insights’ produced an apocalyptic vision: ‘If the Jew with his Marxist creed’ proved victorious over the other nations of the world ‘his crown’ would be ‘the dance of death of the human race’.132
This putative ‘conversion’ to anti-Semitism as the result of his own observations, reading, and reflexion is, however, contradicted by the reports of the witnesses, quoted above, which show that Hitler was certainly not a keen anti-Semite and describe various personal relationships he had with Jews. How can this contradiction be resolved?
When dealing with the question of Hitler’s political views during his Vienna years, it is essential to ignore the hugely influential self-image Hitler cultivated in Mein Kampf. This was of someone predestined for an exceptional career, systematically working out his own ideology, and preparing for his extraordinary future role through a kind of course of personal study. Nothing could be more misleading. In fact, at the time, Hitler was a nobody struggling to survive day by day, who from time to time sounded off about politics, coping with his frustrations by believing that the Vienna that was treating him so badly was the capital of an empire that was doomed to destruction. His apathy and inability to liberate himself from his situation on the margins of society are remarkable when compared with the energy he unleashed from 1919 onwards. As we shall see, it was only in the particular post-war situation and in the context of revolution and counter-revolution in Bavaria, in other words very largely as a result of external circumstances, that Hitler was effectively catapulted into a political career.
Thus to pose the question of whether or not Hitler acquired his radical anti-Semitism in Vienna, or rather how far his Vienna years laid the foundations for his further ‘career’ as an anti-Semite is to approach the problem from the wrong angle. Anti-Semitism basically represents a distorted awareness of social reality; it provides pseudo-explanations for complex phenomena. Anti-Semitism must always be seen and interpreted within the context of the prevailing political and social ideas; its ‘arguments’ are, depending on the context, almost completely interchangeable. As a supporter of Schönerer’s ideology, Hitler considered that he was confronted with a veritable phalanx of enemies: the monarchy, the state apparatus, the nobility, parliament, the Catholic Church, Slavs, Jews, as well as the Marxist workers’ movement. All, in his view, formed a fateful coalition, whose efforts were bent on humiliating the German-speakers in the Habsburg empire. Seen in this light, his anti-Semitism referred to one enemy among a number of ‘antis’. In a city in which anti-Semitism was a fixture of everyday life and formed the basis of the popular city government, and with his anti-Semitism ‘bracketed’ by many other enemies, Hitler was in no way remarkable. What was really radical about his ideology at the time was not his anti-Semitism but his rejection of the current political order, based as it was on numerous imagined enemies.
Apart from the ever-present anti-Semitism, during his stay in the Austrian capital Hitler is likely to have come into contact with all sorts of ethnic and racist ideas via Pan-German journalism. Notions such as that of a superior Nordic race, the racial inferiority of Jews, ‘Negroes’, and Asiatics, and ideas of racial breeding and of the need to maintain racial purity to prevent degeneracy were fairly widespread in Vienna, particularly during the pre-war years. But the notion that, during his Vienna years, he had already had one or more ideological ‘mentors’ from the racist-esoteric scene cannot be proved any more than can the thesis, put forward in the first instance by Hitler himself, that he had distilled a fully-formed world view from the existing concoction of ethnic nationalist (völkisch) and anti-Semitic ideas.133
Munich
In May 1913 Hitler turned his back on Vienna. Together with a certain Rudolf Häusler, an acquaintance from the men’s hostel in Meldemannstrasse, he moved to Munich, where he basically resumed his old life-style. During the first months, he tried to live as best he could from his paintings. Apart from that, he pursued his various ‘studies’, without apparently having tried to acquire any formal education or regular work. During this period, apart from Häusler, with whom he shared lodgings for a time at Schleissheimer Strasse 43, a boarding house belonging to a widow, Anna Popp, he does not appear to have had any close acquaintances, let alone friends, and was considered by those who knew him to be very much a loner.134
Anton Joachimsthaler has collected various documents from which it is clear that Hitler wandered through the centre of Munich selling his pictures, mainly water colours of historical buildings, in bars or to shops. He evidently tried to play the sympathy card: his customers saw in this rather shabby young man an impecunious student or an unemployed artist. Some even placed orders with him.135 As far as officialdom was concerned, he called himself an artist. In later years he repeatedly claimed that he had maintained his interest in politics during his Munich years, not so much by attending meetin
gs as by intensive reading. He had allegedly concentrated in particular on ‘Marxism’ and anti-Semitism, thereby providing ‘positively granite foundations’ for his political views.136 There are good reasons for regarding this account of his ‘personal study’ as a further addition to the legend that Hitler was constructing around himself; at any rate, there is no evidence that he ever became politically engaged.137
What prompted Hitler to move to Munich? There were probably several reasons for this decision.
On reaching 24 years of age he could claim his inheritance from his father, and the sum of 700 Kronen, on which he could easily live for a year, enabled him to move. His dislike of Vienna after five ‘years of suffering’ was obvious, whereas Munich as a ‘city of culture’ offered him the opportunity of continuing his bohemian existence in new surroundings. The pre-war years in Munich, he wrote in Mein Kampf, were ‘the happiest and by far the most contented of my life’, not least because he had felt Munich to be a ‘German city’, to which he had been bound by ‘heartfelt love’.138 Because he had felt so happy on the banks of the Isar, in Mein Kampf he put back the start of his stay by a year and claimed that he had already moved to Munich in 1912.
In his Table Talk in October 1941 Hitler gave a further reason for his move: he had thought of attending an architectural academy in Germany, for which an advanced school certificate was not required, as was the case in Austria. But then, once in Munich, he had decided to do three more years of ‘practical training’ before applying to become a draughtsman at the leading construction firm of Heilmann & Littmann. Evidently, he had planned to use this position as a springboard for a future career as an architect.139