Hitler - his own sketch

During his lifetime, Hitler was very secretive about his background. Only the dimmest outline of his parents emerges from the biographical chapters of Mein Kampf. He falsified his father's occupation, changing him from a customs official to a postal official. He repulsed relatives who tried to approach him.

One of the first things he did after taking over Austria was to have a survey carried out of the little farming village of Dollerscheim where his father's birth had been recorded. As soon as it could be arranged the inhabitants were evacuated and the entire village was demolished by heavy artillery. Even the graves in the cemetery where his grandmother had been buried were rendered unrecognizable.

Klara Hitler died from cancer when Adolf was nineteen. She was held in love and affection by Hitler, her Jewish doctor, Eduard Bloch, later recalled: 'I have never witnessed a closer attachment.' Hitler carried her picture with him down to the last days in the bunker. Her portrait stood in his rooms in Munich, Berlin, and at his alpine residence near Berchtesgaden, Obersalzberg. His mother may well have been the only person Adolf Hitler genuinely loved in his entire life.

Sketch for a new bridge for Linz 
by Adolf Hitler

To fulfil his dream, Hitler in 1909 moved to Vienna, the capital of Austria, where the Academy of Arts was located. To his own surprise he failed to get admission. Within a year he was living in homeless shelters and eating at charity soup-kitchens. He spent his time reading anti-Semitic tabloids and pamphlets available at the newsstands and at local coffee shops. He had declined to take regular employment and took occasional menial jobs and sold some of his paintings or advertising posters whenever he could to provide sustenance. 

Hitler didn't get much out of it - but in 1999 two paintings and a line drawing by Hitler - completed between 1911 and 1914 - were sold at auction for a total of $131,000.

By Hitler’s own accounting, he painted between one and three watercolors a day during his Vienna years. If one assumes he painted only one painting a day, and only three days a week, then the minimum number he would have painted would be six hundred, which is remarkably close to Hitler's own recollection over a thousand.

Louis Bülow  - www.folkeeje.dk -  ©2011-13  Privacy
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