1895–6 Lower form, above school, Hafeld
1896–8 Volksschule, Lambach, Forms 2 and 3
At Lambach, too, Hitler received all grade As from teacher Franz Rechberger. He also sang in the boys’ choir at the monastery.
1898–1900 Volksschule, Leonding, Forms 4 and 5
Teachers Sixtl and Brauneis could think of nothing exceptional to say when asked, and could give no background information, although Sixtl remembered that in history and geography Adolf Hitler knew more than many teachers did.
1900–1 Austro-Hungarian State Realschule, Steingasse, Linz.
Form 1
Things changed for the worse once Hitler began his secondary education. In Mein Kampf he said of those years: ‘My manifest failure at school was assured from the outset. What I liked I learnt, this was in the main that which I thought would be useful for a painter. Whatever looked irrelevant or did not appeal to me I sabotaged completely. My school reports of the period varied from “praiseworthy” and “outstanding” down to “satisfactory” and “unsatisfactory”. My best subjects were geography and world history. These were my favourite subjects, in which I led the class.’
On the basis of this self-portrait one may obtain a false picture about his schooldays. Although he spoke of them reluctantly, and with irritation, nevertheless our friendship lay to a certain extent in their shadow. Thus the impression I gained at the time differs from what he represented in his book fifteen years later.
At first the eleven-year-old boy found it very difficult to merge into the unaccustomed surroundings. Each day he had to make the long journey from Leonding in the town to the Realschule in the outlying Steingasse. He told me often, when we used to wander up to the old fortress tower on a high point about halfway between Linz and the school, that the trek was the most wonderful thing about those years. It took him more than an hour to walk it and gave him a sense of freedom which he treasured.
His classmates, mostly from solid, good-class Linz families, cold-shouldered the strange boy who arrived daily ‘from amongst the peasants’, and the professors took only that measure of interest in him that the school curriculum demanded. This differed greatly from primary school with its sympathetic staff who knew each child quite intimately and spent the evenings with the fathers over a drink at the inn. In primary school, Hitler had strolled through the school year without any appreciable effort. Initially at secondary school he tried to get through by improvisation. This was necessary because he did not like having to learn those things which the professors considered important, but his usual twists and turns could not serve him here. Accordingly he withdrew into his shell and let the waters wash over him.
In class he rarely came to anybody’s notice. He had no friends, contrary to primary school, and wanted none. Occasionally one of the class snobs would let him know that ‘boys coming up from the town’ were not really suitable for the Realschule. That encouraged him to isolate himself even more from the other pupils. It is noteworthy that no single classmate from this period ever claimed to have established any kind of intimacy or friendship with him, not even long afterwards.
Headmaster Hans Commenda, who taught the first form mathematics, gave Hitler an ‘unsatisfactory’, as did the natural history master Max Engstler, feared by everyone. Thus did Realschule-schoolboy Hitler end his first year with two ‘unsatisfactory’ categories with the result that he had to re-sit the year. Adolf never told me what his father’s reaction was, but I can easily imagine it.
1901–2 Realschule, Linz, repeated Class 1
Thus he had to start all over again. His form-master was now Professor Eduard Huemer, who taught German and French, this latter being the only language which Adolf took up, or rather was forced to take up. But here at least he acclimatised somewhat, re-sat Class 1 and passed.
1902–3 Realschule Linz, Class 2
He got through this year with difficulty, and again his father was obliged to sign a school report in which mathematics was ‘unsatisfactory’: Adolf had not been taught in this subject by Professor Heinrich Drasch before, and so he could not argue that his poor grade was a rebellion against the teacher. He hated mathematics because it was too dry and required systematic application. We often discussed it. In Vienna, Hitler realised he would need mathematics if he wanted to be an architect, but he was unable to overcome his inner dislike of the subject.
1903–4 Realschule Linz, Class 3
Class 3 finished with two ‘unsatisfactory’ grades, mathematics and German, even though later he placed Professor Huemer amongst the three teachers for whom he had some regard. In this year his father died. Professor Huemer made it clear to Frau Hitler that the boy could only progress to Class 4 by transferring to an outlying Realschule. It is therefore not true to say that he was expelled from the Realschule at Linz; he was merely ‘farmed out’.
1904–5 Realschule Steyr, Class 4; autumn 1905 repeated school-leaving certificate
Hitler himself was outraged at his treatment. He was determined that his final year at Steyr would fail; he decided that he had had quite enough of school and was convinced that it no longer served his purpose. What he lacked in knowledge he would make up with self-tuition. Art had long had a place in his life; with youthful passion he was convinced that he was called to be an artist. In contrast to art, the school machine was grey and monotonous. He wanted to be free of all compulsion and forge ahead on his own. He despised his contemporaries who were unable to do the same. What the uninteresting acquaintances of the Realschule classrooms had denied him he now expected from his friend.
Whereas it had been his father’s orders that kept him at school previously, now it was his love for his mother which kept him at his studies. He was at Steyr under protest, and after reading Dante’s Divine Comedy labelled the school ‘The Place of the Damned’. At Steyr, Hitler lodged at the house of a court official, Edler von Cichini at Grünmarkt 19, but returned to Linz whenever the opportunity presented itself. The outcome was bad, and he achieved nothing more by re-sitting the school-leaving certificate between 1 and 15 September 1905, acquiring an extra ‘unsatisfactory’ in geometry to go with his customary ‘unsatisfactory’ in mathematics.
Another, more substantial struggle ran parallel with the constant skirmishing with the professors: the spiritual conflict with his mother. The fact is, as I myself observed, that Adolf tried as far as he could to spare her, she who was the whole world to him, but it became impossible once his failure was definitive and he departed from the career path which his father had anticipated for him. He was unable to convince her why he had to follow another, unsignposted, road to his future profession. What his bad reports meant for Adolf we cannot be sure but they demonstrated to his mother that he would not matriculate. What the ‘other road’ he had chosen might be he was not even certain himself, and he remained uncertain for many years after her death. Thus she took her major concerns about her son’s future with her to the grave.
In that dark autumn of 1905, things were on a knife edge for Adolf. Outwardly, the decision which he had to face was whether to re-sit Class 4 at the Steyr Realschule, or abandon formal education altogether, but in reality he had to decide between continuing, for his mother’s sake, on a path he held false and purposeless, or accept that he must strike her a hard blow and choose ‘the other way’ of which all he could say was that it led to art. All things being equal, there was no decision in the real sense because he had already elected to leave school and follow the second path. So far as his mother was concerned, I know that it tore him apart.
Adolf survived a severe crisis in those autumn months of 1905, the worst in my experience of our friendship. This found its outward expression in a serious illness. In Mein Kampf he talks of a respiratory disease. His sister Paula described it as a haemorrhage; others maintain the problem was in his stomach. I went nearly every day to visit his bedside in the Humboldtstrasse, mainly because I had to keep him informed about Stefanie. To the best of my recollection it was a
pulmonary infection, probably pneumonia. I know that long afterwards he used to cough a lot, and bring up matter from his chest, especially when the weather was damp and misty.
It was on account of this malady that his mother absolved him of the responsibility of attending school, and in that respect it was a rather timely illness. It is impossible to say whether he exaggerated the symptoms, whether it was to some degree psychosomatic or he was predisposed to suffer the condition. When at last he arose from his sick bed he had long since got things straight in his mind. His schooldays were behind him, and without the least doubt or compunction he had set his sights on a career as an artist.
There now followed two years without an apparent goal. ‘In the hollowness of the empty life’ he describes this phase with some discomfort in Mein Kampf. It is a good description. He no longer attended school; did nothing to get himself job training; lived with his mother and let her keep him. But he was not idle: this period of his life was filled with restless activity. He sketched, he painted, he wrote poetry, he read. I cannot remember a time when he had nothing to do or was bored. If it happened that he did not like a performance we went to he would leave and throw himself with great zeal into some activity or other. Admittedly it was difficult to see what system there was in it, for no objective or clear goal was apparent; he just accumulated impressions, experiences and material around himself. The purpose of it all was never explained to me. He just searched, everywhere, constantly.
In this manner, however, Adolf found a way to prove to his mother that schooling had no useful end – ‘one can learn so much more by oneself’ he explained to her. He joined the People’s Educative Society bookshop in the Bismarckstrasse, also the Museal Society so as to be able to borrow their books. And he frequented the lending library of the Steurer and L. Hasslinger book companies. From this time on I remember Adolf as always surrounded by piles of books, in particular by the numerous volumes of his favourite work Die Deutschen Heldensage – ‘The Sagas of the German Heroes’ – which he was never without. How often he asked me, as soon as I came home from the noisy upholstery machinery, to study this or that book so that he could discuss it with me. Suddenly, everything he had lacked at school – industry, interest, joy in learning – returned. As he boasted, he had overcome school with its own weapons.
At Adolf Hitler’s trial for high treason following the failed putsch attempt of 1923, Professor Huemer, his form master at Linz Realschule for three full years, appeared as a character witness. He deposed:
(As a schoolboy), Hitler was undoubtedly gifted, if in a one-sided way. He had little in the way of self-discipline, and since he insisted on swimming against the current as well as being arbitrary, egotistical and irascible, he would obviously have struggled to fit into a school framework. He was also lazy, for otherwise with his undoubted capacity he would have achieved far better results.
At the end of this adverse opinion, Professor Huemer spoke from the heart and added:
All the same, as experience teaches us, our schooldays do not provide us with much useful for life itself, and while the rising stars often disappear without trace, school grades do not mean much until one has sufficient elbow room. It seems to me that my former pupil Hitler fits into this latter category, and from the heart I wish that he soon recovers from the tension and excitement of recent events and yet still experiences the fulfillment of those ideals which he cherishes in his breast, and which would do honour to every German.
These words, written in 1924, are free of any ‘political’ praise which might have tainted them post-1933. They indicate a striking solidarity between teacher and former pupil. There is a hint in what Professor Huemer says that the ideals, as a result of which Adolf Hitler was indicted, originated in his schooling. Hitler was not a good pupil even in the German classes of Professor Huemer, as the grammatical errors to be found in the letters and postcards he sent me prove.
Another of the teachers judged positive by Hitler, on the basis of their political opinions rather than their scholarship, was natural history master Theodor Gissinger, who had replaced Professor Engstler. Gissinger was a great enthusiast for the outdoors who loved long rambles and mountain climbing. He was the most radical of the teachers in the nationalist camp. The political divisions of the time revealed themselves more acutely within the teaching staff than in public. This atmosphere, charged with political tensions, was more decisive for Hitler’s mental development than the school curriculum; so, it appears, the atmosphere rather than the teaching materials determines the worth or otherwise of the school. Professor Gissinger wrote in retrospect of his former pupil:
At Linz, Hitler made neither a good nor a bad impression on me. He was also not a leader in class. He was slim and upright, his face mostly pale and gaunt, and there was almost a consumptive look about him, his gaze enormously open, his eyes luminous.
The third and last of his teachers judged as ‘positive’ by Hitler was professor of history Dr Leopold Pötsch, the only one of almost a dozen teachers of whom he admitted admiration at the time. The words which he devoted to this man in Mein Kampf are well known:
It was perhaps decisive for my whole later life that fate gave me as my history teacher one of the very few who knew how to get across the important things in class and examinations, and to dismiss the unimportant. In my history professor Dr Leopold Pötsch at the Linz Realschule, this necessity was incorporated in the ideal manner. An aged gentleman of kindly but determined manner, he succeeded especially by his gift of radiant eloquence, leaving us not only spellbound, but also enthusiastic. Even today I remember with emotion the greying man who could make us forget the present with the fire of his presentation, charm us back through past ages and, in the mists of the centuries, give living reality to things of dry historical memory. We used to sit, often overcome, sometimes even moved to tears.
Leopold Pötsch is the only personality mentioned by name in Mein Kampf, and Hitler devotes two and a half pages to him. Such devotion is surely exaggerated, and the proof thereof is that Hitler finished his school career with only a ‘satisfactory’ in history, which was perhaps partly attributable to the changes of school. Even so, one should not underestimate the impression this professor made on a very receptive young mind, and if one says that the most valuable adjunct to the study of history is the enthusiasm which the subject breeds, then Dr Pötsch certainly fulfilled his mission in this particular case.
Pötsch came from the Austrian southern borderland and before arriving at Linz had taught at Marburg an der Drau (in present-day Yugoslavia)* and other localities on the linguistic divide. He therefore brought a lively experience to the racial battle. I believe that that unconditional love for the German-speaking peoples, which Pötsch combined with his contempt for the Habsburg state, was decisive in winning over young Hitler. Hitler remained eternally grateful to his old history teacher, and this gratefulness tended to grow in size the longer was the time since Hitler’s departure from education. On his 1938 visit to Klagenfurt, Hitler met Pötsch again, in retirement at St Andrä in Lavantthal, spending an hour with him alone. There were no witnesses to the conversation, but when Hitler left the room, he told his escort, ‘You have no idea what I owe to that old man.’*
To what extent these opinions held by Hitler with regard to his former professors can be relied upon is as open a question as that of the contradictory opinions about Hitler by his former classmates. The fact is, however, and I am a witness to it, that Adolf gave up school loathing it. Though I always took care to steer any conversation away from the subject of his schooldays, he now and again he would fire off a violent broadside. He made no attempt to remain in contact with any of the teachers, not even Professor Pötsch – on the contrary! He avoided them, and ignored them when they came face to face in the street.
* Now Maribor in Slovenia.
* Following the conclusion of the Greek/Yugoslav campaign, Hitler again visited Pötsch at Klagenfurt on 27 April 1941. See Seidler and Zeigert, Die
Führerhauptquartiere, Herbig 2000, p. 134. [Ed.]
* * *
Chapter 7
Stefanie
To tell the truth, it is not very agreeable to be the only witness – apart from Stefanie herself–who can tell of my friend’s youthful love, which lasted four years from the beginning of his sixteenth year. I fear that by giving a picture of the actual facts, I shall disappoint those who are expecting sensational disclosures. Adolf’s relations with this girl from a much-respected family were confined to those permitted by the prevailing code of morals and were absolutely normal, unless today’s conception of sexual morality is so upside-down that one considers it abnormal if two young people, as these were, have an affair and – to put it briefly – ‘nothing happens’.
I must ask to be excused from mentioning this girl’s surname as well as her later married name. Occasionally I have revealed it to persons engaged in research on Hitler’s youth, who had satisfied me as to their bona fides. Stefanie, who was one, or perhaps, two years older than Adolf, later married a high-ranking officer and lived after the Second World War as a widow in Vienna. The reader will, therefore, understand my discretion.
One evening in the spring of 1905, as we were making our usual stroll, Adolf gripped my arm and asked me excitedly what I thought of that slim, blonde girl walking along the Landstrasse arm-in-arm with her mother. ‘You must know, I’m in love with her,’ he added resolutely.
The Young Hitler I Knew Page 7
