| Alois Hitler | |
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Alois Hitler in 1901 |
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| Born | 7 June 1837 Strones, Waldviertel, Lower Austria |
| Died | 3 January 1903 (aged 65) Gasthaus Wiesinger, Linz, Upper Austria |
| Occupation | Customs officer |
| Spouse |
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| Children | with Franziska Matzelsberger: with Klara Pölzl: |
| Parents | |
Alois Hitler (born Alois Schicklgruber; 7 June 1837 – 3 January 1903) was an Austrian civil servant who was the father of Adolf Hitler.[1]
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Alois Schicklgruber was born in the village of Strones in the Waldviertel, a hilly forested area in northwest Lower Austria just north of Vienna, to a 42-year-old unmarried peasant, Maria Anna Schicklgruber,[2] whose family had lived in the area for generations. After he was baptized at the nearby village of Döllersheim, the space for his father's name on the baptismal certificate was left blank and the priest wrote "illegitimate".[3] Alois was cared for by his mother in a house she shared at Strones with her elderly father, Johannes Schicklgruber.
Sometime later, Johann Georg Hiedler moved in with the Schicklgrubers and married Maria when Alois was five. By the age of 10, Alois had been sent to live with Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, who owned a farm in the nearby village of Spital. Alois attended elementary school and took lessons in shoe-making from a local cobbler, Steven Anthony Nelson. When he was 13, he left the farm in Spital and went to Vienna as an apprentice cobbler, working there for about five years. In response to a recruitment drive by the Austrian government offering employment in the civil service to people from rural areas, Alois joined the frontier guards (customs service) of the Austrian Finance Ministry in 1855 at the age of 18.
Alois Schicklgruber made steady progress in the semi-military profession of customs official. The work involved frequent re-assignments and he served in a variety of places across Austria. By 1860, after five years of service, he reached the rank of Finanzwach Oberaufseher (a non-commissioned officer). By 1864, after special training and examinations, he had advanced further and was serving in Linz, Austria. He later became an inspector of customs posted at Braunau am Inn in 1875. He eventually rose to full inspector of customs and could go no higher because he lacked the necessary school degrees.
Alois was 36 when he married for the first time. Anna Glasl-Hörer was a wealthy, 50-year-old daughter of a customs official. She was sick when Alois married her and was either an invalid or became one shortly afterwards.
As a rising young junior customs official, he used his birth name of Schicklgruber, but in mid-1876, 39 years old and well established in his career, he asked permission to use his stepfather's family name. He appeared before the parish priest in Döllersheim and asserted that his father was Johann Georg Hiedler, who had married his mother and now wished to legitimize him. Three relatives appeared with him as witnesses, one of whom was Johann Nepomuk, Hiedler's son-in-law. The priest agreed to amend the records, the civil authorities automatically processed the church's decision, and Alois Schicklgruber had a new name. The official change, registered at the government office in Mistelbach in 1877 transformed him into "Alois Hitler". It is not known who decided on the spelling of Hitler instead of Hiedler.
Smith states that Alois Schicklgruber openly admitted having been born out of wedlock before and after the name change.[4] Alois may have been influenced to change his name for the sake of legal expediency. Historian Werner Maser claims that in 1876, Franz Schicklgruber, the administrator of Alois' mother's estate, transferred a large sum of money (230 gulden) to him.[5]
Supposedly, Johann Georg Hiedler relented on his deathbed and left an inheritance to his illegitimate son (Alois) together with his name.[6]
Some Schicklgrubers remain in Waldviertel. One of this extended clan, Aloisia Veit, who was mentally ill, died in 1940 at the age of 49, in an Austrian Nazi gas chamber.[7]
Historians have discussed three candidates as Alois' biological father: Johann Georg Hiedler, Johann Nepomuk Hüttler, and a Jew named Leopold Frankenberger.[8]
Most historians are satisfied that Alois' father was Johann Georg Hiedler, who during his own lifetime was the stepfather and posthumously legally declared the birth father of Alois. According to historian Frank McDonough, the most plausible theory is that Johann Georg Hiedler was the real father of Alois. An explanation for Alois being sent to live on his uncle's farm as a child is that Hiedler and Maria were simply too poor to raise him, or could not raise him as well as his uncle, or perhaps Maria's health was in decline (she died when he was 10).
Werner Maser suggests that Alois' father was Johann Nepomuk, Georg's brother and Hitler's step-uncle, who raised Alois through adolescence and later willed him a considerable portion of his life savings, but never admitted publicly to be his real father. According to Maser, Nepomuk was a married farmer who had an affair and then arranged to have his single brother Hiedler marry Alois' mother Maria to provide a cover for Nepomuk's desire to assist and care for Alois without upsetting his wife.[5] This assumes Hiedler was willing to marry Maria in this situation, and Adolf Hitler biographer Joachim Fest thinks this is too contrived and unlikely to be true.
After the war Hitler's former lawyer, Hans Frank, claimed that Adolf told him in 1930 that one of his relatives was trying to blackmail him by threatening to reveal his alleged Jewish ancestry.[9] Hitler asked Frank to find out the facts. Frank says he determined that at the time Maria Schicklgruber gave birth to Alois she was working as a household cook in the town of Graz, her employers were a Jewish family named Frankenberger, and that her child might have been conceived out of wedlock with the family's 19-year-old son.[10]
Given that all Jews had been expelled from the province of Styria (which includes Graz) in the 15th century and were not allowed to return until the 1860s, there is no evidence of a Frankenberger family living in Graz at that time. Scholars such as Ian Kershaw and Brigitte Hamann dismiss the Frankenberger hypothesis (which had only Frank's speculation to support it) as baseless.[11][12][13][14] Frank's story contains several inaccuracies and contradictions, such as he said "The fact that Adolf Hitler was not Jewish blood in his veins, had, from what has been his whole manner so blatant that it needs no further word"[15], also the statement Frank had said that Maria Schicklgruber came from "Leonding near Linz", when in fact she came from the hamlet of Strones, near the village of Döllersheim.[16] Rosenbaum suggests that Frank, who though he had turned against Nazism after 1945 remained an anti-Semitic fanatic, made the claim that Hitler had Jewish ancestry as way of proving that Hitler was a Jew and not an Aryan.[17]
Not long after marrying his first wife, Anna, Alois Hitler began an affair with 19-year-old Franziska "Fanni" Matzelsberger, one of the young female servants employed at the Pommer Inn, house #219, in the city of Braunau am Inn, where he was renting the top floor as a lodging. Smith states that Alois had numerous affairs in the 1870s, resulting in his wife initiating legal action; on 7 November 1880 Alois and Anna separated by mutual agreement. Matzelsberger became the 43-year-old Hitler's girlfriend, but the two could not marry since under Roman Catholic canon law, divorce is not permitted.
In 1876, three years after Hitler married Anna, he had hired Klara Pölzl as a household servant. She was the 16-year-old granddaughter of Hitler's step-uncle (and possible father or biological uncle) Nepomuk. If Nepomuk was Hitler's father, Klara was Hitler's half-niece. If his father was Johann Georg, she was his first cousin once removed. Matzelsberger demanded that the "servant girl" Klara find another job, and Hitler sent Pölzl away.
On 13 January 1882, Matzelsberger gave birth to Hitler's illegitimate son, also named Alois, but since they were not married, the child's last name was Matzelsberger, making him "Alois Matzelsberger." Hitler kept Matzelsberger as his wife while his lawful wife (Anna) grew sicker and died on 6 April 1883. The next month, on 22 May at a ceremony in Braunau with fellow custom officials as witnesses, Hitler, 45, married Matzelsberger, 21. He then legitimized his son as Alois Hitler, Jr.[18]
Hitler was secure in his profession and no longer an ambitious climber. Alan described Alois as a "hard, unsympathetic, and short-tempered" man. Matzelsberger went to Vienna to give birth to Angela Hitler. Matzelsberger, still only 23, acquired a lung disorder and became too ill to function. She was moved to Ranshofen, a small village near Braunau. During the last months of Matzelsberger's life, Klara Pölzl returned to Alois' home to look after the invalid and the two children (Alois Jr and Angela).[20] Matzelsberger died in Ranshofen on August 10, 1884 at the age of 23. After the death of his second wife, Pölzl remained in his home as housekeeper.[21]
Pölzl was soon pregnant by Hitler. Smith writes that if Hitler had been free to do as he wished, he would have married Pölzl immediately but because of the affidavit concerning his paternity, Hitler was now legally Pölzl's first cousin once removed, too close to marry. He submitted an appeal to the church for a humanitarian waiver.[22] Permission came, and on 7 January 1885 a wedding was held at Hitler's rented rooms on the top floor of the Pommer Inn. A meal was served for the few guests and witnesses. Hitler then went to work for the rest of the day. Even Klara found the wedding to be a short ceremony. Throughout the marriage, she continued to call him uncle.
On 17 May 1885, five months after the wedding, the new Frau Klara Hitler gave birth to her first child, Gustav. A year later, on 25 September 1886, she gave birth to a daughter, Ida. Her son Otto followed Ida in 1887, but he died shortly after birth. Later that year, diphtheria struck the Hitler household, resulting in the deaths of both Gustav and Ida. Klara had been Hitler's wife for three years, and all her children were dead, but Hitler still had the children from his relationship with Matzelsberger, Alois Jr., and Angela.
On April 20, 1889, she gave birth to another son, future Nazi dictator Adolf. He was a sickly child, and his mother fretted over him. Alois was 51 when he was born. Hitler had little interest in child rearing and left it all to his wife. When not at work he was either in a tavern or busy with his hobby, keeping bees. In 1892, Hitler was transferred from Braunau to Passau. He was 55, Klara 32, Alois Jr. 10, Angela 9 and Adolf was three years old. In 1894, Hitler was re-assigned to Linz. Klara had just given birth to Edmund, so it was decided she and the children would stay in Passau for the time being. Paula, Adolf's younger sister, was the last child of Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl.
In February 1895 Hitler purchased a house on a nine acre (36,000 m²) plot in Hafeld near Lambach, approximately 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Linz. The farm was called the Rauscher Gut. He moved his family to the farm and retired on 25 June 1895 at the age of 58 after 40 years in the customs service. He found farming difficult; he lost money, and the value of the property declined.
On 21 January 1896 Paula was born. Hitler was often home with his family. He had five children ranging in age from infancy to 14; Smith suggests he yelled at the children almost continually and made long visits to the local tavern.
Robert G. L. Waite noted, "Even one of his closest friends admitted that Alois was 'awfully rough' with his wife [Klara] and 'hardly ever spoke a word to her at home'." If Hitler was in a bad mood, he picked on the older children or Klara herself, in front of them. After Hitler and his oldest son Alois Jr. had a climactic and violent argument, Alois Jr. left home, and the elder Alois swore he would never give the boy a penny of inheritance beyond what the law required. According to reports, Alois Hitler liked to lord it over his neighbors.[23]
Edmund (the youngest of the boys) died of measles on 2 February 1900. Alois wanted his son Adolf to seek a career in the civil service. However, Adolf had become so alienated from his father that he was repulsed by whatever Alois wanted. Adolf sneered at the thought of a lifetime spent enforcing petty rules. Alois tried to browbeat his son into obedience while Adolf did his best to be the opposite of whatever his father wanted.
On the morning of January 3, 1903, Hitler went to the Gasthaus Wiesinger (No.1 Michaelsbergstrasse, Leonding) as usual to drink his morning glass of wine.
He was offered the newspaper and promptly collapsed. He was taken to an adjoining room and a doctor was summoned, but Alois Hitler died at the inn, probably from a pleural hemorrhage. The large leather couch on which he died can still be seen today in the inn.
Adolf Hitler says in Mein Kampf that he died of a "stroke of apoplexy".[24] He was 13 when his father died.
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