The Young Hitler I Knew

by August Kubizek

  When I think of the quiet home in which Adolf grew up and recall the political pressures on him, the image that always presents itself is of the whirling tornado, at the centre of which is a place of absolute windlessness and calm, all the more profound the more violent the raging whirlwind. In considering the political genesis of so unusual a person as Adolf Hitler, the external influences have to be kept separate from the inner predisposition, for in my opinion the latter has much greater significance.

  At that time, many young people had the same teachers as Adolf, lived through the same political events, were enthusiastic or outraged at what they saw and yet finished up simply as able salesmen, engineer or factory directors without political significance.

  The atmosphere at Linz Realschule was decidedly Volksdeutsch. Secretly, Hitler’s classmates were opposed to all established institutions, patriotic discourses, dynastic holidays and proclamations; they were against school religious services and and taking part in Corpus Christi processions. Adolf Hitler portrayed this atmosphere, which was more important for him than actual education, in Mein Kampf:

  Collections were made for Südmark and Schulverein,* the cause was emphasised by cornflowers† and the black-red-gold colours, ‘Heil!’ was the greeting and Deutschland über Alles was sung instead of the Austrian anthem, despite warnings and punishments.

  The struggle for the preservation of the German racial group in the Danube state moved young hearts, and understandably so, for this Germanness in Austria was now lived amongst the Slavs, Magyars and Italians of Austro-Hungary. Linz was basically a German city far from the reintegrated borderlands but in neighbouring Bohemia there was constant unrest; in Prague one disturbance followed another such that a state of emergency had had to be declared. There was outrage in Linz that the Austro-Hungarian police force had admitted that it could not guarantee to protect German houses against the Czech mob should the eventuality arise.

  Budweis was then still a Volksdeutsch town, its administration and a majority of deputies being of German origin. Adolf’s classmates who originated from Prague, Budweis or Prachatitz jumped up and down with rage when jokingly referred to as ‘Bohemians’, for they wanted to be Volksdeutsche just like the others were. Gradually, unrest came to Linz, which amongst its population had a few hundred peaceably employed Czechs. These people had never caused trouble, but now a Czech of the Capuchin Order by the name of Jurasek had founded a Sokolverein – Czech cultural organisation – and besides holding religious services in the Martinskirche in Czech was collecting to build a Czech school. This caused consternation in Linz, and many people saw in the activities of the fanatical Capuchins the thin edge of the wedge of a Czech cultural invasion. The whole thing was blown out of proportion, of course, but all the same, these Czech activities gave the sleepy Linzers the feeling of being under some kind of threat, and they all joined in the cultural battle raging around them.

  Whoever knows the soul of youth will understand that it is precisely they who are happiest to hear the call for conflict. In a hundred different forms they take it on … They are a true reflection of the greater struggle in miniature, but often of higher and more sincere conviction.

  This is an accurate observation by Hitler to the extent that one can rely on how he depicts his personal political development in Mein Kampf. The Volksdeutsch teachers at his Realschule stood at the forefront of the defensive struggle. Dr Leopold Pötsch, the history teacher, was an active politician. On the municipal council he led the Volksdeutsch group. He hated the Habsburg multi-national empire which is held up to us today – what a turnaround – as the model of a multi-national state, and spoke for youth.

  ‘In the upshot, who could remain true to the Kaiser of a dynasty which, past and present, subordinated the interests of its German peoples to its own advantage?’ Hitler asked, and with that the son, won over to the pan-German programme, abandoned finally and irrevocably the path mapped out for him by his father. When Adolf lost his train of thought in long, excited monologues – I was scarcely able to follow most of them – I noticed how one particular term recurred: ‘the Reich’. It would always crop up at the end of a long discourse, and if his political contemplations brought him to a dead end, and he could see no way out, he would declare: ‘The Reich will resolve this question.’ When I enquired who would foot the bill for all the gigantic structures he had designed on his drawing board, the answer was ‘the Reich’, and the tab for even those things which lacked general interest would be picked up by ‘the Reich’. The inadequate fixtures and fittings of the provincial concert hall would become the responsibility of a Reich Stage Designer (and after 1933 there actually was a man with the title of Reichsbühnenbildner). I remembered that Adolf Hitler coined this term in Linz as a seventeen-year-old. Even the societies for the blind or the protection of animals were to be institutions of ‘the Reich’.

  In Austria, the word Reich usually meant the national territory of Germany, and the people of that state were known as Reichsdeutsche. (A person of German stock living elsewhere was a Volksdeutscher.) When my friend used the word Reich, however, he meant more than just the German state. Though avoiding a more exact definition of his own, it was clear that ‘the Reich’ contained everything which motivated him politically, and so it was very big indeed.

  With the same passion that he loved the German people and ‘the Reich’, he rejected everything foreign. He had no leaning to know other countries. That urge, so typical of young back-packers even then, found no place in his personality. Even the artist’s typical attraction to Italy seemed absent. When he projected his plans and ideas for a country, that country was always ‘the Reich’.

  In this stormy ‘national’ struggle, which was clearly aimed against the Austrian monarchy, the unusual facets of his character came to the fore, in particular the iron will. The ‘national’ ideology was fixed in the ‘unchangeable’ region of his mind. No failure or setback would ever shift him on it, and he remained to his death what he had always been from at least sixteen years of age: a ‘German Nationalist’.

  That healthy unconcern which distinguishes young people was completely alien to him. I never saw him ‘just flick through’ reading matter; everything had to be looked at thoroughly and then examined as though it was to be included amongst the great political aims he had. Traditional political viewpoints meant nothing to him; the world had to be reorganised from the bottom upwards, in all its components.

  It would be quite wrong to conclude from this picture that the young Hitler burst upon the political scene, war flags at the masthead. Those important solutions which he found and which needed a public airing he would expound in the evenings to an audience of one, an insignificant and simple person. The relationship of young Hitler to politics is similar to his relationship towards love, if I may make a comparison which some may find lacks taste. The more politics occupied him mentally, the more he held himself aloof from any practical political activities. He joined no party nor political organisation, did not attend political meetings and limited his opinions to myself. What I saw in Linz was a ‘first glance’ at politics, nothing more, just as though he already suspected what politics would eventually come to mean for him.

  Politics for him meanwhile were just a mental exercise. In this reserve I saw his impatience restrained by his ability to wait. Politics remained for him for years something to be observed, criticised, examined, collected.

  It is an interesting fact that the young Hitler in those years was very anti-military. This contradicts a passage in Mein Kampf:

  Searching through my father’s library I came across various books with a military content, amongst them a people’s edition about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1. It consisted of two volumes of an illustrated newspaper of the time and became my favourite reading matter. Before long the great heroic struggle had become the greatest inner experience for me. From then on I got more and more enthusiastic for everything connected with war and the soldier’s life.

>   I am guessing that this ‘memory’ was thought to be a useful one to have at the time Mein Kampf was written at Landsberg prison in 1924, for during the period when I knew Adolf Hitler he was not the least interested in anything that was in any way ‘connected with war’. The lieutenants who escorted Stefanie were a thorn in his side, but his aversion went much deeper. The very mention of military conscription would set him off. No, never would he allow himself to be a soldier by compulsion; if he were to be a soldier, it would be of his own volition, and definitely not in the Austrian Army.

  Before closing this chapter on the political development of Adolf Hitler, I would like to review two matters which appear to me more relevant than anything else in the realm of his politics: young Hitler’s attitude to Jewry and the Church.

  Respecting the Jewish question during his years at Linz, he wrote:

  It is difficult for me today, if not impossible, to say when the word ‘Jew’ first gave me occasion to think about the subject specially. In my father’s house, I do not remember ever having heard the word mentioned during my father’s lifetime. I believe that the old gentleman would have seen a cultural retardedness in special emphasis placed on this word. He had a more or less bourgeois world view which he maintained in the face of the rudest national feelings, and this had rubbed off on me. Neither at school was I under any impetus to change this accepted picture. At Realschule I did get to know a Jewish boy; we did not trust him and he was kept by all of us at a distance, but only because of his taciturn manner which was due to various experiences when he had been baited. I had no more contact with him than any of the others, however. Not until my fourteenth or fifteenth year did I note the word ‘Jew’ cropping up more frequently, partly in connection with political talk. I felt a slight aversion and could not divest myself of an unpleasant feeling which always crept up on me when religious trouble-makers discussed things in front of me. But otherwise, the question was of no interest to me. Linz had very few Jews …

  This all sounds very plausible but does not really coincide with my own recollections. The image of his father as a liberal does not seem correct. The debating table at the inn to which the latter habitually repaired had embraced the ideas of Schönerer.* Therefore, Hitler’s father would definitely have been anti-Jewish. As regards his schooldays, Hitler fails to mention that the Realschule had teachers who made no secret, even in front of their pupils, of their hatred for the Jews. At Realschule, Hitler must have known something of the political aspects of the Jewish question, and in fact I do not think it could have happened any other way, for when I got to know him he was already openly anti-Jewish. I remember clearly how once, while we were strolling down Bethlehemstrasse and came to the small synagogue there, he said to me, ‘That doesn’t belong in Linz.’

  I recall that he was already a dyed-in-the-wool anti-semite when he came to Vienna,* but he did not make much of it early on even though his experiences in Vienna on the subject must have made him think in a more radical manner than before. In my opinion, what Hitler is saying in a roundabout way is that even at Linz, where the Jewish populace was small, the question was not an irrelevance, but he began to give serious thought to the question in Vienna only after he saw how large the Jewish population was there.

  Rather different are things in the Church sphere. Mein Kampf is silent on the subject except for a brief observation about his childhood experience at Lambach:

  Since I had singing lessons in my spare time at the Lambach choristry, I had the best opportunity to fall under the spell of the sumptuous celebrations of Church festivals. What was more natural than that I should see in the same light the lord abbot as once my father had seen the village priest – the highest ideal to be striven for in life. At least at the time, that was the case.

  Hitler’s forebears were certainly Church people as is usual amongst the peasantry. His family were divided in this respect: the mother pious, devoted to the Church, the father liberal, a lukewarm Christian. Certainly matters pertaining to the Church were closer to him than the Jewish question, for as a state official he could not afford to be seen as anti-clerical in a monarchy where throne and altar were mutually supporting.

  So long as little Adolf was close to his mother, her influence ensured that he was committed to all the great and wondrous things that the Church represented. The small, pale choirboy was a pious believer. The little that Hitler says about that period speaks louder than words could. He was familiar with the magnificent building; he felt attracted to the Church and his mother would certainly have gone out of her way to encourage this. The more he leaned towards his father in subsequent years of his childhood, the more did his father’s free-thinking attitude gain the upper hand. The Realschule at Linz, where Franz Schwarz taught religion, was no bastion of the Church, for none of the pupils took the teacher seriously.

  My own recollections can be set down in a few sentences. For the entire period that I knew Adolf Hitler, I do not think he ever attended mass. He knew that I went every Sunday with my parents. He did not try to dissuade me, but said occasionally that he could not understand it of me. His mother was a Church-going woman but he would not let her force him to go. It was no more than an observation, however, delivered with a certain indulgence which was rare for him. I do not recall that, when he met me at the Carmelite church after mass on Sundays, Adolf ever spoke depracatingly of church attendance or had an attitude about it. To my surprise it was never a subject of debate for him either. All the same, one day he came to me in great excitement and showed me a book about the Church witch-hunts, on another occasion one about the Inquisition, but despite his outrage over the events described in these books he avoided making a political statement on the matter. Perhaps he thought I was not the right public for him.

  On Sundays his mother always went to mass with little Paula. Adolf never accompanied her that far even when she begged him. Pious believer that she was, she appeared to have come to terms with the fact that her son wanted to follow another path; perhaps his father had said something to her. All in all I think that the Church was not an irrelevance for Hitler, but that it had nothing to offer him. He was a nationalist, devoted to the German people for whom he lived and beside whom no other people existed.

  * The term Südmark – ‘southern territory’ – represents the idea of Austria as a province of Germany: Schulverein means the incorporation of schools into the Deutscher Schuherein. [Ed.]

  † The cornflower is the national flower of Germany. [Ed.]

  * Georg Ritter von Schönerer (1842–1918): anti-Habsburg, anti-clerical and anti-Jewish, he advocated Austria being annexed into Greater Germany under Prussian leadership. He was a member of the Austrian Reichsrat 1873–88 and 1897–1907. His extremism led him increasingly into a position of isolation. [Ed.]

  * In Monologe, op. cit., on 17 December 1941 Hitler stated in a conversation: ‘I came to Vienna as a disciple of Schönerer, and was therefore an opponent of the Christian Socialists.’ [Ed.]

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  Adolf Rebuilds Linz

  While I was undecided whether to list my friend amongst the great musicians or the great poets of the future, he sprang on me the announcement that he intended to become a painter. I immediately remembered that I had seen him sketching, both at home and on our excursions. As our friendship progressed, I saw many samples of his work. In my job as an upholsterer, I had occasionally to do some sketches, which I always found difficult, so the more was I astonished by my friend’s facility. He always carried with him various types of paper. The start had always been the worst part for me – for him, it was the other way round. He would take his pencil and, throwing a few bold strokes on the paper, would express his meaning – where words failed him, the pencil would do the job. There was something attractive about these first, rough lines – it thrilled me to see a recognisable design gradually emerge from their confusion. But he was not so keen on finishing the rough draft.

  The first time I wen
t to visit him at home, his room was littered with sketches, drawings, blueprints. Here was ‘the new theatre’, there the mountain hotel on the Lichtenberg – it was like an architect’s office. Watching him at work at the drawing board – he was more careful then and more precise in details than he used to be in moments of happy improvisation – I was convinced that he must, long since, have acquired all the technical and specialised skill necessary for his work. I simply could not believe that it was possible to set down such difficult things on the spur of the moment, and that everything I saw was improvised.

  The number of these works is sufficient to allow one to form a judgment of Adolf Hitler’s talents. There is, in the first place, a water-colour – rather, water-colour is not the right word, as it is a simple pencil drawing coloured with tempera. But just the rapid catching of an atmosphere, of a certain mood, which is so typical of a water-colour and which, with its delicate touch, imparts to it freshness and liveliness – this was missing completely in Adolf’s work. Just here, where he might have worked with fast intuitive strokes, he has daubed with painstaking precision.

  Adolf(us) Hitler’s birth and baptism certificate. The entries relating to the mother, Klara Hitler, show that her own mother had the maiden name Hitler. Klara was therefore a close relative of her husband.

  Klara Hitler, née Pölzl, Adolf Hitler’s mother.

  Alois Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s father.