Ever since that moment I have remained under the spell of the theatre. Washing down the walls in a customer’s house, slapping on the paste, affixing the undercoat of newspaper and then pasting on the wallpaper, I was all the time dreaming of roaring applause in the theatre, seeing myself as conductor in front of an orchestra. Such dreaming did not really help my work, and at times it would happen that the pieces of wallpaper were sadly out of position. But, once back in the workshop, my sick father soon made me realise what responsibilities faced me.
Thus I vacillated between dream and reality. At home nobody had any inkling of my state of mind, for rather than utter a word about my secret ambitions, I would have bitten off my tongue. Even from my mother I hid my hopes and plans, but she perhaps guessed what was occupying my thoughts. But should I have added to her many worries? Thus there was no one to whom I could unburden myself. I felt terribly lonely, like an outcast, as lonely as only a young man can be to whom is revealed, for the first time, life’s beauty and its danger.
The theatre gave me new courage. I did not miss a single opera performance. However tired I was after my work, nothing could keep me from the theatre. Naturally, with the small wages that my father paid me, I could only afford a ticket for the standing area. Therefore I used to go regularly into the so-called ‘promenade’, from where one had the best view; and, moreover, I found, no other place had better acoustics. Just above the promenade was the royal box supported by two wooden columns. These columns were very popular with the habitués of the promenade as they were the only places where one could prop oneself up with an undisturbed view of the stage. For if you leaned against the walls, these very columns were always in your field of vision. I was happy to be able to rest my weary back against the smooth pillars, after having spent a hard day on the top of a step-ladder! Of course, you had to be there early to be sure to get that place.
Often it is the trivial things which make a lasting impression on one’s memory. I can still see myself rushing into the theatre, undecided whether to choose the left or right-hand pillar. Often, however, one of the two columns, the right-hand one, was already taken; somebody was even more enthusiastic than I was.
Half-annoyed, half-surprised, I glanced at my rival. He was a remarkably pale, skinny youth, about my own age, who was following the performance with glistening eyes. I surmised that he came from a better-class home, for he was always dressed with meticulous care and was very reserved.
We took note of each other without exchanging a word. But during the interval of a performance some time later we started talking as, apparently, neither of us approved of the casting of one of the parts. We discussed it together and rejoiced in our common adverse criticism. I marvelled at the quick, sure grasp of the other. In this he was undoubtedly my superior. On the other hand, when it came to talking of purely musical matters, I felt my own superiority. I cannot give the exact date of this first meeting, but I am sure it was around All Saints’ Day, in 1904.
This went on for some time – he revealing nothing of his own affairs, nor did I think it necessary to talk about myself – but we occupied ourselves intensely with whatever performance there happened to be and sensed that we both had the same enthusiasm for the theatre.
Once, after the performance, I accompanied him home, to No. 31 Humboldtstrasse. When we took leave of each other he gave me his name: Adolf Hitler.
* * *
Chapter 2
Growth of a Friendship
From now on we saw each other at every operatic performance and also met outside the theatre, and on most evenings we would go for a stroll together along the Landstrasse.
Whilst Linz, in the last decade, has become a modern industrial city and attracted people from all parts of the Danube region, it was then only a country town. In the suburbs there were still the substantial fortress-like farmhouses, and tenement houses were springing up in the surrounding fields where cattle were still grazing. In the little taverns the people sat drinking the local wine; everywhere you could hear the broad country dialect. There was only horse-drawn traffic in the town and the carriers took care to see that Linz remained ‘in the country’. The townspeople, though largely themselves of peasant origin and often closely related to the country folk, tended to draw away from the latter the more intimately they were connected with them. Almost all the influential families of the town knew each other; the business world, the civil servants and the military determined the tone of society. Everybody who was anybody took his evening stroll along the main street of the town, which leads from the railway station to the bridge over the Danube and is called significantly Landstrasse. As Linz had no university, the young people in every walk of life were all the more eager to imitate the habits of university students. Social life on the Landstrasse could almost compete with that of Vienna’s Ringstrasse; at least the Linzers thought so.
Patience did not seem to me to be one of Adolf’s outstanding characteristics; whenever I was late for an appointment, he came at once to the workshop to fetch me, no matter whether I was repairing an old, black, horsehair sofa or an old-fashioned wing chair, or anything else. My work was to him nothing but a tiresome hindrance to our personal relationship. Impatiently he would twirl the small black cane which he always carried. I was surprised that he had so much spare time and asked innocently whether he had a job.
‘Of course not’, was his gruff reply. This answer, which I thought very peculiar, he elaborated at some length. He did not consider that any particular work, a ‘bread-and-butter job’ as he called it, was necessary for him.
Such an opinion I had never heard from anybody before. It contradicted every principle which had so far governed my life. At first I saw in this talk nothing more than youthful bragging, although Adolf’s bearing and his serious and assured manner of speaking did not strike me at all as that of a braggart. In any case, I was very surprised at his opinions but refrained from asking, for the time being at least, any further questions, because he seemed to be very sensitive about questions that did not suit him; that much I had already discovered. So it was more reasonable to talk about Lohengrin, the opera which enchanted us more than any other, than about our personal affairs.
Perhaps he was the son of rich parents, I thought, perhaps he had just come into a fortune and could afford to live without a ‘bread-and-butter’ job – in his mouth that expression sounded full of contempt. By no means did I imagine he was work-shy, for there was not even a grain of the superficial, carefree idler in him. When we passed by the Café Baumgartner he would get wildly worked up about the young men who were exhibiting themselves at marble-topped tables behind the big window panes and wasting their time in idle gossip, without apparently realising how much this indignation was contradicted by his own way of life. Perhaps some of those who were sitting ‘in the shop window’ already had a good job and a secure income.
Perhaps this Adolf is a student? This had been my first impression. The black ebony cane, topped by an elegant ivory shoe, was essentially a student’s attribute. On the other hand it seemed strange that he had chosen as his friend just a simple upholsterer, who was always afraid that people would smell the glue with which he had been working during the day. If Adolf were a student he had to be at school somewhere. Suddenly I brought the conversation round to school.
‘School?’ This was the first outburst of temper that I had experienced with him. He did not wish to hear anything about school. School was no longer his concern, he said. He hated the teachers and did not even greet them any more, and he also hated his schoolmates whom, he said, the school was only turning into idlers. No, I was not allowed to mention school. I told him how little success I had had at school myself. ‘Why no success?’ he wanted to know. He did not like it at all that I had done so badly at school in spite of all the contempt he expressed for schooling. I was confused by this contradiction. But this much I could gather from our conversation, that he must have been at school until recently, probably a grammar sch
ool or perhaps a technical school, and that this presumably had ended in disaster. Otherwise this complete rejection would hardly have been possible. For the rest, he presented me with ever-recurring contradictions and riddles. Sometimes he seemed to me almost sinister. One day when we were taking a walk on the Freinberg he suddenly stopped, produced from his pocket a little black notebook – I can still see it before me and could describe it minutely – and read me a poem he had written.
I do not remember the poem itself any longer; to be precise, I can no longer distinguish it from the other poems which Adolf read to me in later days. But I do remember distinctly how much it impressed me that my friend wrote poetry and carried his poems around with him in the same way that I carried my tools. When Adolf later showed me his drawings and designs which he had sketched – somewhat confused and confusing designs which were really beyond me – when he told me that he had much more and better work in his room and was determined to devote his whole life to art, then it dawned on me what kind of person my friend really was. He belonged to that particular species of people of which I had dreamed myself in my more expansive moments: an artist, who despised the mere bread-and-butter job and devoted himself to poetry, to drawing, painting and to going to the theatre. This impressed me enormously. I was thrilled by the grandeur which I saw here. My ideas of an artist were then still very hazy – probably as hazy as were Hitler’s. But that made it all the more alluring.
Adolf spoke but rarely of his family. He used to say that it was advisable not to mix too much with grown-ups, as these people with peculiar ideas would only divert one from one’s own plans. For instance, his guardian, a peasant in Leonding called Mayrhofer, had got it into his head that he, Adolf, should learn a craft. His brother-in-law was also of this opinion.
I could only conclude that Adolf’s relations with his family must have been rather peculiar. Apparently among all the grown-ups he accepted only one person, his mother. And yet he was only sixteen years old, nine months younger than I.
However much his ideas differed from bourgeois conceptions it did not worry me at all – on the contrary! It was this very fact, that he was out of the ordinary, that attracted me even more. To devote his life to the arts was, in my opinion, the greatest resolution that a young man could take; for secretly I too played with the idea of exchanging the dusty and noisy upholsterer’s workshop for the pure and lofty fields of art, to give my life to music. For young people it is by no means insignificant in what surroundings their friendship first begins. It seemed to me a symbol that our friendship had been born in the theatre, in the midst of brilliant scenes and to the mighty sound of great music. In a certain sense our friendship itself existed in this happy atmosphere.
Moreover my own position was not dissimilar to Adolf’s. School lay behind me and could give me nothing more. In spite of my love and devotion to my parents, grown-ups did not mean very much to me. And, above all, in spite of the many problems that beset me there was nobody in whom I could confide.
Nevertheless, it was at first a difficult friendship because our characters were utterly different. Whilst I was a quiet, somewhat dreamy youth, very sensitive and adaptable and therefore always willing to yield, so to speak a ‘musical character’, Adolf was exceedingly violent and highly strung. Quite trivial things, such as a few thoughtless words, could produce in him outbursts of temper which I thought were quite out of proportion to the significance of the matter. But, probably, I misunderstood Adolf in this respect. Perhaps the difference between us was that he took things seriously which seemed to me quite unimportant. Yes, this was one of his typical traits; everything aroused his interest and disturbed him – to nothing was he indifferent.
But in spite of all the difficulties arising out of our varying temperaments, our friendship itself was never in serious danger. Nor did we, as so many other youngsters, grow cool and indifferent with time. On the contrary! In everyday matters we took great care not to clash. It seems strange, but he who could stick so obstinately to his point of view, could also be so considerate that sometimes he made me feel quite ashamed. So, as time went on we got more and more used to each other.
Soon I came to understand that our friendship endured largely for the reason that I was a patient listener. But I was not dissatisfied with this passive role, for it made me realise how much my friend needed me. He, too, was completely alone. His father had been dead for two years. However much he loved his mother, she could not help him with his problems. I remember how he used to give me long lectures about things that did not interest me at all, as for example the excise duty levied at the Danube bridge, or a collection in the streets for a charity lottery. He just had to talk and needed someone who would listen to him. I was often startled when he would make a speech to me, accompanied by vivid gestures, for my benefit alone. He was never worried by the fact that I was the sole audience. But a young man who, like my friend, was passionately interested in everything he saw and experienced had to find an outlet for his tempestuous feelings. The tension he felt was relieved by holding forth on these things. These speeches, usually delivered somewhere in the open, under trees on the Freinberg, in the Danube woods, seemed to be like a volcano erupting. It was as though something strange, other-worldly, was bursting out of him. Such rapture I had only witnessed so far in the theatre, when an actor had to express some violent emotions, and at first, confronted by such eruptions, I could only stand gaping and passive, forgetting to applaud. But soon I realised that this was not play-acting. No, this was not acting, not exaggeration, this was really felt, and I saw that he was in deadly earnest. Again and again I was filled with astonishment at how fluently he expressed himself, how vividly he managed to convey his feelings, how easily the words flowed from his mouth when he was completely carried away by his own emotions. It was not what he said that impressed me at first, but how he said it. This to me was something new and magnificent. I had never imagined that a man could produce such an effect with mere words. All he wanted from me, however, was one thing – agreement. I soon came to realise this. Nor was it hard for me to agree with him because I had never given any thought to the many problems which he raised.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume that our friendship confined itself to this unilateral relationship only. This would have been too cheap for Adolf and too little for me. The important thing was that we were complementary to each other. In him, everything brought forth a strong reaction and forced him to take a stand, for his emotional outbursts were only a sign of his passionate interest in everything. I, on the other hand, being of a contemplative nature, accepted unreservedly all his arguments on things that interested him and yielded to them, always excepting musical matters.
Of course, I must admit that Adolf’s claims on me were boundless and took up all my spare time. As he himself did not have to keep to a regular timetable I had to be at his beck and call. He demanded everything from me, but was also prepared to do everything for me. In fact I had no alternative. My friendship with him did not leave me any time for cultivating other friends; nor did I feel the need of them. Adolf was as much to me as a dozen other ordinary friends. Only one thing might have separated us – if we had both fallen in love with the same girl; this would have been serious. As I was seventeen at the time this might well have happened. But it was precisely in this respect that fate had a special solution in store for us. Such a unique solution – I describe it later in the chapter called ‘Stefanie’ – that, rather than upsetting our friendship, served to deepen it.
I knew that he, too, had no other friend besides me. I remember in this connection a quite trivial detail. We were strolling along the Landstrasse when it happened. A young man, about our age, came around the corner, a plump, rather dandified young gentleman. He recognised Adolf as a former classmate, stopped, and grinning all over his face, called out ‘Hallo, Hitler!’ He took him familiarly by the arm and asked him quite sincerely how he was getting on. I expected Adolf to respond in the same friendl
y manner, as he always set great store by correct and courteous behaviour. But my friend went red with rage. I knew from former experience that this change of expression boded ill. ‘What the devil is that to do with you?’ he threw at him excitedly, and pushed him sharply away. Then he took my arm and went with me on his way without bothering about the young man whose flushed and baffled face I can still see before me. ‘All future civil servants,’ said Adolf, still furious, ‘and with this lot I had to sit in the same class.’ It was a long time before he calmed down.
Another experience sticks out in my memory. My venerated violin-teacher, Heinrich Dessauer, had died. Adolf went to the funeral with me, which rather surprised me as he did not know Professor Dessauer at all. When I expressed my surprise he said, ‘I can’t bear it that you should mix with other young people and talk to them.’
There was no end to the things, even trivial ones, that could upset him. But he lost his temper most of all when it was suggested that he should become a civil servant. Whenever he heard the term ‘civil servant’, even without any connection with his own career, he fell into a rage. I discovered that these outbursts of fury were, in a certain sense, still quarrels with his long-dead father, whose greatest desire it had been to turn him into a civil servant. They were, so to speak, a ‘posthumous defence’.
The Young Hitler I Knew Page 3
