One day when I interrupted the bold flow of his ideas for the national monument and asked him soberly how he proposed to finance this project, his first reply was a brusque, ‘Oh, to hell with the money!’ But apparently my query had disturbed him. And he did what other people do who want to get rich quickly – he bought a lottery ticket. And yet there was a difference between the way Adolf bought a lottery ticket and the way other people did. For other people only hope, or rather dream, of getting first prize, but Adolf was sure he had won from the moment of buying the ticket and had only forgotten to collect the money. His only possible worry was how to spend this not inconsiderable sum to the best advantage.
It was typical of him that he often mingled his most fantastic ideas with the coolest calculations, and the same thing happened with the purchase of the lottery ticket. Whilst he was already, in his imagination, spending his winnings, he carefully studied the lottery conditions and worked out our chance with the greatest precision. Adolf invited me to go shares with him in this venture. He was quite systematic about it. The price of the ticket was ten crowns, of which I had to find five. He stipulated, however, that these five crowns should not be given to me by my parents, but I had to earn them myself. At that time I earned some pocket-money and also got occasional tips from the customers. Adolf insisted on knowing exactly where these five crowns came from, and when he was satisfied that my contribution was really my own, we went together to the office of the state lottery to buy the ticket. It took him a long time to make up his mind, and I still do not know what considerations prompted his choice. As he was absolutely sceptical about occultism and more than rational in these matters, his behaviour remained a mystery to me. But in the end he found his winner. ‘Here it is!’ he said, and put the ticket carefully away in the little black notebook in which he wrote his poems.
The time that elapsed before the draw was for me the happiest period of our friendship. Love and enthusiasm, great thoughts, lofty ideas, all that we had already. The only thing that was lacking was money. Now we had that, too. What more could we want?
Although the first prize represented a lot of money, my friend was by no means tempted to spend it thoughtlessly – on the contrary. He went about it in the most calculating and economical way. It would have been senseless to invest the whole sum in one of the projects, say the rebuilding of the museum, for this would only have been a small part within the framework of the great town-planning scheme. It was more reasonable to use the money for our own benefit, to help us to a standing in public life which would enable us to progress further towards our ultimate aims.
It would have been too expensive to build a villa for ourselves; it would have swallowed up so much of our fortune that we would have moved into this splendour quite penniless. Adolf suggested a compromise: we should rent a flat, he said, and adapt it to our purpose. After long and careful examination of the various possibilities, we selected the second floor of 2 Kirchengasse in Urfahr, for this house was in a quite exceptional position. Near the bank of the Danube, it had a view over the pleasant, green fields which culminated in the Pöstlingberg. We crept into the house secretly, looked at the view from the staircase window, and Adolf made a sketch of the ground plan.
Then we moved in, so to speak. The larger wing of the flat should be for my friend, the smaller one was reserved for me. Adolf arranged the rooms so that his study was as far removed as possible from mine, so that he, at his drawing board, would not be disturbed by my practising.
My friend also saw to the furnishing of the rooms, drawing each single piece of furniture to scale on the ground plan. The furniture was of most beautiful and superior quality, made by the town’s leading craftsmen, by no means cheap, mass-produced stuff. Even the decorations for the walls of every single room were designed by Adolf. I was only allowed to have a say about the curtains and draperies, and I had to show him how I suggested dealing with the rooms he had given me. He was certainly pleased with the self-assured manner in which I cooperated with the arrangement of the flat. We had no doubt that the first prize was ours. Adolf’s own faith had bewitched me into believing as he did. I, too, expected to move into 2 Kirchengasse very soon.
Although simplicity was the keynote of our home, it was nevertheless imbued with a refined, personal taste. Adolf proposed to make our home the centre of a circle of art lovers. I would provide the musical entertainment. He would recite something, or read aloud, or expound his latest work. We would make regular trips to Vienna to attend lectures and concerts, and go to the theatre. (I realised then that Vienna played an important part in my friend’s world of ideas. Strange that he had opted for the Kirchengasse in Urfahr.)
Winning the first prize would not alter our mode of life. We would remain simple people, wearing clothes of good quality, but certainly not ostentatious. With regard to our dress, Adolf had a delicious idea which delighted me immeasurably. We should both dress in exactly the same way, he suggested, so that people would take us for brothers. I believe that, for me, this idea alone made it worthwhile to win the lottery. It shows how our mere theatre acquaintanceship had ripened into a deep, close-knit friendship.
Of course, I would have to leave my parents’ home and give up my trade. My musical studies would leave no time for such things for, as our studies progressed, our understanding for artistic experiences would increase and engross us completely.
Adolf thought of everything which was necessary, even the running of the household, as the day of the draw was approaching. A refined lady should preside over our home and run it. It had to be an elderly lady, to rule out any expectations or intentions which might interfere with our artistic vocation. We also agreed on the staff that this big household would need. Thus, everything was prepared. This image remained with me for a long time to come: an elderly lady, with greying hair but incredibly distinguished, standing in the brilliantly lit hall, welcoming on behalf of her two young, gifted gentlemen of seventeen and eighteen years respectively, the guests who formed their circle of select, lofty-minded friends.
During the summer months we were to travel. The first and foremost destination was Bayreuth, where we were to enjoy the perfect performances of the great master’s music dramas. After Bayreuth, we were to visit famous cities, magnificent cathedrals, palaces and castles, but also industrial centres, shipyards and ports. ‘It shall be the whole of Germany,’ said Adolf. This was one of his favourite sayings.
The day of the draw arrived. Adolf came rushing wildly round to the workshop with the list of results. I have rarely heard him rage so madly as then. First he fumed over the state lottery, this officially organised exploitation of human credulity, this open fraud at the expense of docile citizens. Then his fury turned against the state itself, this patchwork of ten or twelve, or God knows how many nations, this monster built up by Habsburg marriages. Could one expect other than that two impoverished devils should be cheated out of their last couple of crowns?
Never did it occur to Adolf to reproach himself for having taken it for granted that the first prize belonged to him by right, and this in spite of the fact that he had brooded for hours over the conditions of the lottery, and calculated exactly how small our chances were in view of the number of tickets in existence and the number of prizes offered. I could find no explanation for this contradiction in his character, but there it was. For the first time he had been deserted by his willpower, which always seemed to move matters that concerned him in the desired direction. This he could not bear, for it was worse than the loss of the money and having to give up the flat and the lady housekeeper receiving our guests with distinguished nonchalance.
It seemed to Adolf more reasonable to rely upon himself and build his own future, rather than trust government institutions like lotteries. This would spare him from such setbacks. Thus, after a short period of utter depression, he returned to his earlier projects.
One of his favourite plans was the replacement of the bridge which linked Linz and Urfahr. We used to cro
ss the bridge daily, and Adolf was particularly fond of this walk. When the floods of May 1868 destroyed five supports of the old wooden bridge, it was decided to build an iron bridge, which was completed in 1872. This rather ugly bridge was far too narrow for the traffic, although in those days there were no motor cars, and it was always overcrowded to a frightening degree.
Adolf liked to listen to the cursing drivers who, with wild oaths and much cracking of their whips, would try to make way for themselves. Although generally he showed little interest in the thing at hand and preferred to take the long view for his projects, he suggested here a provisional solution to remedy the existing state of affairs. Without altering the bridge itself, to either side should be added a footpath, two metres wide, which would carry the pedestrian traffic and thus relieve the roadway.
Naturally, nobody in Linz listened to the suggestions of this young dreamer, who could not even produce decent school reports. All the more enthusiastically did Adolf now occupy himself with the complete rebuilding of the bridge. The ugly iron structure must be demolished. The new bridge must be so proportioned as to give the visitor who approached the Danube from the main square the impression of seeing not a bridge, but a broad, impressive street. Mighty statues would underline the artistic aspect of the whole.
It is greatly to be regretted that, so far as I know, none of the numerous sketches which Hitler then made for the new bridge has been preserved, for it would be very interesting to compare these sketches with the plans which, thirty years later, Adolf Hitler prepared for this bridge and ordered to be executed. We owe it to his impatience to see the new Linz built that, in spite of the outbreak of war in 1939, that structure, the central project of his Linz town plan, was completed.
* * *
Chapter 11
‘In That Hour It Began …’
It was the most impressive hour I ever lived through with my friend. So unforgettable is it that even the most trivial things – the clothes Adolf wore that evening, the weather – are still present in my mind as though the experience were exempt from the passing of time. Far from the bright lights of the city, on the solitary heights of the Freinberg mountain, I saw the whole wonder of the firmament as if it were newly created, and the breath of the eternal stirred me as never before. When I look back, the thing which has remained with me the most stark and clear in my friendship with Adolf Hitler is neither his speeches nor his political ideas, but that single hour on the Freinberg. It was then that his future life was decided. Of course, out of respect for his mother he would maintain the pretence of a planned artistic career, for even aiming to be a painter was a more concrete goal than saying ‘I am going to be a politician.’ The decision to become a politician was seized in that hour on the heights above the city of Linz. Perhaps the word ‘decision’ is not quite accurate, for it was not a voluntary act but rather a visionary recognition of the road that had to be followed and which lay beyond his own will.
Adolf stood outside my house in his black overcoat, his dark hat pulled down over his face. It was a cold, unpleasant November evening. He waved to me impatiently. I was just cleaning myself up from the workshop and getting ready to go to the theatre. Rienzi was being performed that night. We had never seen this Wagner opera and looked forward to it with great excitement. In order to secure our place by the pillars in the promenade we had to be early. Adolf whistled to hurry me up.
He had told me something about this opera. Richard Wagner began it at Dresden in 1838 and worked on it during a stay by the Baltic. It was interesting that he should compose a work about Rome in the Middle Ages when he was learning about the north. He completed Rienzi in Paris and, when first performed in Dresden two years later, it made his name as a composer of opera even though it lacked the uniqueness of his later works.
After Rienzi, Wagner concentrated his attentions on the north and found in the gods of Germanic mythology his special realm. Rienzi, although set in the year 1347, was saturated with the spirit and rhythm of the revolution which swept across German soil ten years later.
Now we were in the theatre, burning with enthusiasm, and living breathlessly through Rienzi’s rise to be tribune of the people of Rome, and his subsequent downfall. When at last it was over, it was past midnight. My friend, his hands thrust into his coat pockets, silent and withdrawn, strode through the streets and towards the outskirts. Usually after an artistic experience that had moved him he would start talking straight away, sharply criticising the performance, but after Rienzi he remained quiet a long while. This surprised me, and I asked him what he thought of it. He threw me a strange, almost hostile glance. ‘Shut up!’ he said brusquely.
The cold damp mist lay oppressively over the narrow streets. Our solitary steps resounded on the pavement. Adolf took the road that led up to the Freinberg. Without speaking a word, he strode forward. He looked almost sinister, and paler than ever. His turned-up collar increased this impression.
I wanted to ask him, ‘Where are you going?’, but his pallid face looked so forbidding that I suppressed the question. As if propelled by an invisible force, Adolf climbed up to the summit of the Freinberg, and only now did I realise that we were no longer in solitude and darkness, for the stars shone brilliantly above us.
Adolf stood in front of me and now he gripped both my hands and held them tight. He had never made such a gesture before. I felt from the grasp of his hands how deeply moved he was. His eyes were feverish with excitement. The words did not come smoothly from his mouth as they usually did, but rather erupted, hoarse and raucous. From his voice I could tell even more how much this experience had shaken him.
Gradually his speech loosened and the words flowed more freely. Never before and never again have I heard Adolf Hitler speak as he did in that hour, as we stood there alone under the stars, as though we were the only creatures in the world.
I cannot repeat every word that my friend uttered. I was struck by something strange, which I had never noticed before, even when he had talked to me in moments of the greatest excitement. It was as if a second ego spoke from within him, and moved him as much as it did me. It was not at all a case of a speaker being carried away by his own words. On the contrary, I rather felt as though he himself listened with astonishment and emotion to what burst forth from him with elementary force. I will not attempt to interpret this phenomenon, but it was a state of complete ecstasy and rapture, in which he transferred the character of Rienzi, without even mentioning him as a model or example with visionary power, to the plane of his own ambitions. But it was more than a cheap adaptation; the impact of the opera was rather a sheer external impulse which compelled him to speak. Like flood waters breaking their dykes, his words burst forth from him. He conjured up in grandiose, inspiring pictures his own future and that of his people.
Hitherto I had been convinced that my friend wanted to become an artist, a painter or perhaps an architect. This was now no longer the case. Now he aspired to something higher, which I could not yet fully grasp. It rather surprised me, as I thought that the vocation of the artist was for him the highest, most desirable goal. But now he was talking of a mandate which, one day, he would receive from the people, to lead them out of servitude to the heights of freedom.
It was a young man whose name then meant nothing who spoke to me in that strange hour. He spoke of a special mission which one day would be entrusted to him and I, his only listener, could hardly understand what he meant. Many years had to pass before I realised the significance of this enraptured hour for my friend.
His words were followed by silence. We descended into the town. The clock struck three. We parted in front of my house. Adolf shook hands with me, and I was astonished to see that he did not go in the direction of his home, but turned again towards the mountains. ‘Where are you going now?’ I asked him surprised. He replied briefly, ‘I want to be alone.’
In the following weeks and months he never again mentioned this hour on the Freinberg. At first it struck me as odd and I co
uld find no explanation for his strange behaviour, for I could not believe that he had forgotten it altogether. Indeed he never did forget it, as I discovered thirty-three years later. But he kept silent about it because he wanted to keep that hour entirely to himself. That I could understand, and I respected his silence. After all, it was his hour, not mine. I had played only the modest role of a sympathetic friend.
In 1939, shortly before war broke out, when for the first time I visited Bayreuth as the guest of the Reich Chancellor, I thought I would please my host by reminding him of that nocturnal hour on the Freinberg, and so I told Adolf Hitler what I remembered of it, assuming that the enormous multitude of impressions and events which had filled these past decades would have pushed into the background the experience of a seventeen-year-old youth. But after a few words, I sensed that he recalled that hour vividly and had retained all its details in his memory. He was visibly pleased that my account confirmed his own recollections. I was also present when Adolf Hitler retold this sequel to the performance of Rienzi in Linz to Frau Wagner, at whose home we were both guests. Thus my own memory was doubly confirmed. The words with which Hitler concluded his story to Frau Wagner are also unforgettable for me. He said solemnly, ‘In that hour it began.’
The Young Hitler I Knew Page 13
