August Kubizek
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August (Gustl) Kubizek (3 August 1888 Linz – 1956) was a close friend of Adolf Hitler when both were in their late teens. He later wrote about their friendship.
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[edit] Early life
Kubizek and Hitler were high school friends in Linz, Austria and became roommates in Vienna while both sought admission into college. Kubizek was soon accepted at the Vienna Conservatory where he studied music. However, Hitler was twice denied entrance into Vienna's art academy, abruptly broke off the friendship and soon drifted into homelessness. Kubizek completed his studies in 1914 and was hired as conductor of the orchestra in Marburg on the Drau, Austria (called Maribor in Slovenia after 1918) but this job and his musical career were cut short by the beginning of World War One.
From late 1914 until 1918 Kubizek served as a reservist in Regiment 2 of the Austro-Hungarian Infantry. After the war ended in November 1918 Kubizek accepted a position as an official in the municipal council of Eferding, Upper Austria and music became his hobby.
[edit] Later contact with Hitler
In 1933, six months after he became Chancellor of Germany Hitler wrote to his old friend "Gustl" to say, "I should be very glad... to revive once more with you those memories of the best years of my life."[1] They met on a few occasions and attended a Bayreuth festival together. Hitler later offered Kubizek the conductorship of an orchestra but otherwise their contact dwindled again.
In 1938 Kubizek was hired by the Nazi party to write two short propaganda booklets called Reminiscences about his youth with Hitler. In one episode Kubizek said Hitler had a great love for a girl named "Stefanie" and wrote her many love poems but never sent them. Hitler biographer John Toland noted that when Stefanie learned she had been an early object of Hitler's affection, she was stunned.
Kubizek saw Hitler for the last time on July 23, 1940, although as late as 1944 Hitler sent Kubizek's elderly mother a food basket for her birthday.
[edit] Memoir
In 1953 Kubizek used the 1938 booklets as the basis for his memoir Adolf Hitler, mein Jugendfreund (in English The Young Hitler I Knew). In the epilogue Kubizek wrote, "Even though I, a fundamentally unpolitical individual, had always kept aloof from the political events of the period which ended forever in 1945, nevertheless no power on earth could compel me to deny my friendship with Adolf Hitler."
[edit] References
- ^ William L. Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (p. 14) The letter is dated August 4
- Adolf Hitler, mein Jugendfreund - August Kubizek (1953) & (2002) ISBN 3-7020-0971-X, English translation: Young Hitler, the Story of Our Friendship (1955) & (1976)
- The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - William L. Shirer (1960) Simon & Schuster, Inc. ISBN 0-671-72869-5 (1990 30th Anniversary edition)
