Talk:Leopold Poetsch

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The guy was a junior school history teacher of Hitler. There are two sentences about him in Mein Kampf and he is not very notable at all. He certainly didn't teach racial theory to Hitler as the previous article made out and it is unlikely he had a large influence on Hitler, as he was a junior school teacher. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.35.138.195 (talk • contribs)

I disagree. From Mein Kampf:

"Probably my whole future life was determined by the fact that I had a professor of history who understood, as few others understand, how to make this viewpoint prevail in teaching and in examining. This teacher was Dr. Leopold Poetsch, of the Realschule at Linz. He was the ideal personification of the qualities necessary to a teacher of history in the sense I have mentioned above. An elderly gentleman with a decisive manner but a kindly heart, he was a very attractive speaker and was able to inspire us with his own enthusiasm. Even to-day I cannot recall without emotion that venerable personality whose enthusiastic exposition of history so often made us entirely forget the present and allow ourselves to be transported as if by magic into the past. He penetrated through the dim mist of thousands of years and transformed the historical memory of the dead past into a living reality. When we listened to him we became afire with enthusiasm and we were sometimes moved even to tears.
It was still more fortunate that this professor was able not only to illustrate the past by examples from the present but from the past he was also able to draw a lesson for the present. He understood better than any other the everyday problems that were then agitating our minds. The national fervour which we felt in our own small way was utilized by him as an instrument of our education, inasmuch as he often appealed to our national sense of honour; for in that way he maintained order and held our attention much more easily than he could have done by any other means. It was because I had such a professor that history became my favourite subject. As a natural consequence, but without the conscious connivance of my professor, I then and there became a young rebel. But who could have studied German history under such a teacher and not become an enemy of that State whose rulers exercised such a disastrous influence on the destinies of the German nation? Finally, how could one remain the faithful subject of the House of Habsburg, whose past history and present conduct proved it to be ready ever and always to betray the interests of the German people for the sake of paltry personal interests? Did not we as youngsters fully realize that the House of Habsburg did not, and could not, have any love for us Germans?" -- Richard D. LeCour (talk/contribs) 23:55, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


I concur that Poetsch probably had a certain (unfortunate) influence on Hitler.. If the Anon poster at the top is suggesting this article be deleted for non-notability (he doesn't actually say so, but I infer it) then I disagree - Wikipedia is the perfect place for his biography. We need to keep Poetsch here. I will say his influence on Hitler is subjective and may never be accurately assessed....
::Things I'd like to see to improve the article: his date of birth, education, date of death, etc. And did he ever have Ludwig Wittgenstein (the philosopher, and classmate of Hitler) as a student? (After all, his connection to these two people is probably Poetsch's chief notability at this time - 100 yrs later)... Engr105th (talk) 17:49, 14 April 2008 (UTC)