The Young Hitler I Knew

by August Kubizek

  To be sure, Adolf, influenced by the Ringstrasse architecture, was also interested in great projects during his time in Vienna – concert halls, theatres, museums, palaces, exhibitions – but gradually his style of planning changed. In the first place these monumental buildings were, in a certain sense, so perfect that even he, with his unbridled will to build, could find no room for change or improvement. Linz had been quite different in this respect. With the exception of the massive pile of the old castle, he had been completely dissatisfied with every building he had seen in Linz. Small wonder, therefore, that he planned a new and more dignified successor to the old City Hall of Linz which was rather narrow and, squeezed in amongst the houses of the main square, was not very imposing, and that in the end, during our strolls through the town, he rebuilt the whole city. Vienna was different, not only because it was difficult for him to conceive as a unit the enormous dimensions of the city, but also because with growing political understanding, he became increasingly aware of the necessity for healthy and suitable housing for the masses of the population. In Linz it had never been a matter of great concern to him how these people, who would be affected by his great building projects, would react to them. In Vienna, however, he began to build for people. What he explained to me in long, nocturnal discussions, what he drew and planned, was no longer building for building’s sake, as it had been in Linz, but conscientious planning which took into account the needs and requirements of the occupiers. In Linz, it was still purely architectural building: in Vienna, social building. That is how one could describe his progress. This was also due to the merely external factor that Adolf had been fairly comfortable in Linz, especially in the pleasant apartment in Urfahr. Now, in contrast, in the gloomy sunless back room off the Stumpergasse in Vienna, he felt every morning when he awoke, looking at the bare walls and depressing view, that building was not, as he had thought hitherto, mostly a matter of show and prestige, but rather a problem of public health, of how to remove the masses from their miserable hovels.

  ‘Near the palaces of the Ringstrasse lingered thousands of unemployed, and below this via triumphalis of old Austria dwelt in the twilight and mud of the canals the homeless.’ With these words in Mein Kampf Hitler announced that change in his attitude which led him from the respectful admiration of great imperial architecture to a contemplation of social misery. ‘I still shudder even today when I think of those pitiful shanties, crowded pensions and massed living quarters, of this dark picture of despair, filth and anger.’

  Adolf had told me that during the past winter when he was still alone in Vienna, he had often been to warmed public rooms in order to save on fuel, of which his inadequate stove consumed large quantities without giving much heat. There, one could sit in a warmed room without payment, and there were plenty of newspapers available. I suppose that Adolf, in his conversations with the people who frequented these places, gained his first depressing insight into the scandalous housing conditions of the metropolis.

  In our hunt for lodgings which, so to speak, heralded my entry into Vienna, I had had a foretaste of the misery, distress and filth that awaited us. Through dark, foul-smelling backyards, up and down stairs, through sordid and filthy hallways, past doors behind which adults and children huddled together in a small and sunless room, the human beings decayed and miserable as their surroundings – this impression has remained unforgettably with me, just as the reverse side of the medal, that in the one house which might have come up to our sanitary and aesthetic standards, we met that acme of viciousness which, in the person of the seductive ‘Frau Potiphar’, seemed to us more repulsive than the wretchedness of the poor people. There followed those nocturnal hours in which Adolf, striding up and down between door and piano, explained to me in powerful words the causes of these squalid housing conditions.

  He started with the house in which we ourselves were living. On an area which was essentially enough for an ordinary garden, there were tightly packed three buildings, each in the others’ way and robbing each other of light, air and elbow room.

  And why? Because the man who bought the ground wanted to make as large a profit as possible. Therefore he had to build as compactly as possible and as high as possible, because the more of these box-like compartments he could pile one on top of the other, the more income he received. The tenant in his turn has to get from his apartment as much value as he can, and therefore sub-lets some of the rooms, usually the best ones: take, for example, our good Frau Zakreys. And the sub-tenants crowd together in order to have a room available for a lodger. So each one wants to make a profit out of the other, and the result is that all except the landlord do not have enough living space. The basement flats are also a scandal, getting neither light, sun nor air. If this is unbearable for grown-ups, for children it is deadly.

  Adolf’s lecture ended in a furious attack on the real estate speculators and the exploiting landlords. One term which I heard for the first time on that occasion still rings in my ears: these ‘professional landlords’ who make a living from the awful housing condition of the masses. The poor tenant usually never meets his landlord, as the latter does not live in these tenements he owns – God forbid! – but somewhere in the suburbs, in Hietzing or Grinzing, in a luxurious villa where he enjoys an abundance of that of which he deprives others.

  Another day Adolf made his observations from the tenant’s angle. What were such a poor devil’s minimum needs for a decent home? Light – the houses must be detached. There must be gardens, playing grounds for the children. Air – the sky must be visible: something green, a modest piece of nature. But look at our back building, he said. The sun shines only on the roof. The air – of that we would rather not speak. The water – there is one single tap outside on the landing, to which eight families have to come with their pails and jugs. The whole floor has one highly insanitary lavatory in common, and it is almost necessary to take one’s turn in a queue. And on top of all that, the bugs!

  When, during the weeks that followed – I had learned in the meantime that he had been rejected by the Academy – I asked Adolf occasionally where he was during the day, he answered: ‘I am working on the solution of the housing problem in Vienna, and I am doing certain research for this purpose: I therefore have to go around a lot.’

  During that period he would often pore over his plans and drawings throughout the night, but he never spoke about it, nor did I ask him any more questions. But suddenly, I think it was towards the end of March, he said: ‘I shall be away for three days.’

  He returned on the fourth day, dead tired. Goodness knows where he had been, where he had slept and how hungry he had been. From his scanty reports I gathered that he had approached Vienna from some outlying point, perhaps from Stockerau or the Marchfeld, to gain an idea of the land available for the purpose of relieving the city’s congestion. He worked all night again, and then, at long last, showed me the project. In the first place, some simple ground plans, workers’ flats with the minimum requirements: kitchen, living room, separate bedrooms for parents and children, water laid on in the kitchen and lavatory and, at that time an unheard of innovation, a bath. Then Adolf showed me his plans for various types of houses, neatly sketched in Indian ink. I remember them so clearly because for weeks these sketches were hanging on our walls, and Adolf returned to the subject repeatedly. In our airless and sunless sub-tenants’ existence, I realised more sharply the contrast between our own surroundings and Adolf’s attractive light and airy houses. For, as my glance wandered away from these pretty sketches, it fell on the crumbling, badly distempered wall which still showed traces of our nightly bug hunt. This vivid contrast has printed indelibly on my memory the vast and grandiose plans of my friend.

  ‘The tenements will be demolished.’ With this pithy pronouncement, Adolf began his work. I should have been surprised had it been otherwise as, in everything he planned, he went all out and detested half measures and compromise – life itself would bring these. But his task was to solve t
he problem radically – that is to say, from the roots. Private speculation in land would be forbidden. Areas along both banks of the Danube would be added to the open spaces resulting from the demolition of the working-class districts, and wide roads would be laid across the whole. The vast building area would be provided with a network of railway lines. Instead of big railway stations, there would be suitably scattered over the whole territory and connected with the town centre, a series of small local stations which would cater for specified districts and offer favourable speedy communication between home and place of work. The motor car at that time had not been envisaged as an important means of transport. The streets of Vienna were still dominated by the horse-drawn fiacre. The bicycle was only slowly becoming a cheap and practical means of travel. Only the railways were, in those days, able to provide transport for the masses.

  Adolf’s design was by no means concerned with the one-family or owner-occupier type of house as is being built today, nor was he interested in ‘settlement’. His idea was still based on the old type of tenement house, carved up into fractions. Thus came into being as his smallest unit the four-family house, a two-storeyed, well-proportioned structure, containing two flats on the ground floor and two on the first floor. This basic unit was the prevailing type. Where conditions required, from four to eight of these units were to be combined to form housing blocks for eight to sixteen families, but these blocks too remained ‘near the ground’, that is to say, they still consisted of two storeys only, and were surrounded by gardens, playing grounds and groups of trees. The sixteen-family house was the limit.

  Having designed the types of house necessary to relieve the congestion in the town, my friend could now turn his attention to the problem itself. On a big map of the town, which was too large for the table and had to be spread out on the piano, Adolf laid out the network of railways and roads. Industrial centres were marked, residential districts suitably located. I was always in his way when he was engaged on this vast planning job. There was not a square foot of space in the room not used for this task. If Adolf had not pursued his course with such grim determination, I would have regarded the whole thing as an interesting but idle pastime. Actually I was so depressed by our own bad housing that I became almost as fanatical as my friend, and that is no doubt the reason why so many details have remained in my memory.

  In his way, Adolf thought of everything. I still remember that he was preoccupied with the problem of whether inns would be necessary or not in this new Vienna. Adolf was as radically opposed to alcohol as he was to nicotine. If one neither smoked nor drank, why should one go to an inn? In any case, he found for this new Vienna a solution which was as radical as it was bold: a new popular drink. On one occasion in Linz I had to redecorate some rooms in the office building of the firm Franck, who manufactured a coffee substitute. Adolf came to see me there. The firm provided the workers with an excellent iced beverage which cost only one heller a glass. Adolf liked this drink so much that he mentioned it again and again. If one could provide every household, he said, with this cheap and wholesome beverage, or with similar non-alcoholic drinks, one could do without the inns. When I remonstrated that the Viennese, from my knowledge of them, would be most unlikely to give up their wine, he replied brusquely, ‘You won’t be asked!’ as much as to say, in other words, ‘Nor will the Viennese either.’

  Adolf was particularly critical of those countries, and Austria was one of them, which had established a tobacco monopoly. In this way, he argued, the state ruined the health of its own subjects. Therefore all tobacco factories must be closed and the import of tobacco, cigars and cigarettes forbidden, but he did not find a substitute for tobacco as a companion to his ‘people’s drink’.

  Altogether, the nearer Adolf came in his imagination to the realisation of his projects, the more Utopian the whole business became. As long as it was only a matter of the basic principles of his planning, everything was quite reasonable, but when he thought out the details of its execution, Adolf juggled with ideas which seemed to me completely nebulous. Having to pay ten of my father’s hard-earned crowns for a half-share in a bug-ridden room, I had the fullest sympathy with the idea that in his new Vienna there should be no landlords and tenants. The ground was to be owned by the state, and the houses were not to be private property but administered by a sort of housing co-operative. One would pay no rent, but instead a contribution to the building costs of the house, or a kind of housing tax. So far I could follow him, but when I asked him timidly, ‘Yes, but in this way you cannot finance such an expensive building project. Who is going to pay for it?’ I provoked his most violent opposition. Furiously, Adolf flung replies at me of which I understood little. Besides, I can hardly remember details of these explanations which consisted almost entirely of abstract conceptions. But what remains in my memory are certain regularly recurring expressions which, the less they actually meant, the more they impressed me.

  The principal problems of the whole project were to be solved, as Adolf put it, ‘in the storm of the revolution’. It was the first time that, in our wretched dwelling, this ponderous phrase was uttered. I do not know if Adolf picked it up from his copious reading. At any rate, at the moment when his flight of ideas would come to a standstill, the bold words ‘storm of the revolution’ would crop up regularly and give a new fillip to his thoughts, though he never paused to explain it. It could mean, I found out, either everything or nothing. For Adolf it was everything, but for me nothing until he, with his hypnotic eloquence had convinced me too that it needed a tremendous revolutionary storm to break out over the tired old earth to bring about all that which had long since been ready in his thoughts and plans, just as a mild rain in late summer brings the mushrooms springing up everywhere.

  Another ever-recurring expression was the ‘German ideal state’, which together with the conception of ‘the Reich’ was the dominating factor in his thinking, This ‘ideal state’ was in its basic principles both national and social, social above all in respect of the poverty of the masses of the working class. More and more thoroughly, Adolf worked on the idea of a state which would give its due to the social requirements of our times, but the idea remained vague and was largely determined by his reading. Thus he chose the term ‘ideal state’ – most likely he had read it in one of his many books – and left it to the future to develop its details, for the time being only sketched in general outline, but of course with ‘the Reich’ as its final aim.

  Also in connection with his bold building projects, Adolf first adopted a third expression which had already become a familiar formula in that period: ‘social reform’. This expression too embraced much that was still swirling around in his brain in a very unformed state. But the eager study of political literature and visits to the parliament, to which he dragged me, gradually lent the expression ‘social reform’ a concrete meaning.

  One day when the storm of the revolution broke and the ideal state was born, the long overdue social reform would become reality. This would be the moment to tear down the tenements of the ‘professional landlords’ and to begin with the building of his model houses in the beautiful meadows behind the Nussdorf.

  I have dwelt so long on these plans of my friend because I regard them as typical of the development of his character and his ideas during his sojourn in Vienna. To be sure, I realised from the beginning that my friend would not remain indifferent to the misery of the masses of the metropolis, for I knew that he did not close his eyes to anything and that it was quite contrary to his nature to ignore any important phenomenon. I would never have believed that these experiences in the suburbs of Vienna would have stirred up his whole personality so enormously, for I had always thought of my friend as basically an artist, and would have understood if he had grown indignant at the sight of the masses who appeared to be hopelessly perishing in their misery, yet remained aloof from all this, so as not to be dragged down into the abyss by the city’s inexorable fate. I reckoned with his susceptibility
, his aestheticism, his constant fear of physical contact with strangers – he shook hands only rarely and then only with a few people – and I thought this would be sufficient to keep him at a distance from the masses. This was only true of personal contacts, but with his whole overflowing heart he stood then in the ranks of the under-privileged. It was not sympathy in the ordinary sense which he felt for the disinherited. That would not have been sufficient. He not only suffered with them, he lived for them and devoted all his thoughts to the salvation of those people from distress and poverty. No doubt, this ardent desire for a total reorganisation of life was his personal response to his own fate, which had led him, step by step, into misery. Only by his noble and grandiose work, which was intended ‘for everybody’ and appealed ‘to all’ did he find again his inner equilibrium. The weeks of dark visions and grave depressions were past; he was again full of hope and courage.

  For the time being, however, good old Maria Zakreys was the only person who occupied herself with these plans. To be exact, she really did not occupy herself with them, for she had given it up as a bad job to try to bring order into this mess of plans, drawings and sketches. She was satisfied as long as the two students from Linz paid their rent regularly.