Johanna Pölzl born Hitler[1] (19 January 1830 − 8 February 1906), was the maternal grandmother of Adolf Hitler.
Johanna was born and lived her entire life in the village of Spital (part of Weitra) in the Waldviertel of Lower Austria. On 5 September 1848, Johanna married Johann Baptist Pölzl (1825-1901), a farmer and son of Johann Pölzl and Juliana (Walli) Pölzl. The couple would eventually have 5 sons and 6 daughters. Of their 11 children, only 2 sons and 3 daughters survived into adulthood. Their seventh child and third daughter, Klara, was born on their farm in Spital on 12 August 1860.
On 17 September 1888, Johanna's elderly parents, Johann Nepomuk Hitler and Eva Maria (Decker) Hitler, died. Her daughter Klara would eventually become the 3rd wife of Alois Hiedler [changed c.1876 from Schicklgruber] (later known as Alois Hitler, after at the age of forty, deciding on his stepfathers name, Hiedler, and the spelling was later changed by a clerk to Hitler). Alois was the illegitimate son of Maria Schicklgruber, who had married Johanna's paternal uncle, Johann Georg Hiedler, on 10 May 1842. Alois would claim in later life that Johann Georg Hiedler was not his stepfather, but in fact his biological father and was officially declared his legitimate son in 1876, but this claim was met with great debate among historians as to Alois Hitler's actual paternity.
Together, Klara and Alois had 6 children. The fourth of those six children, was Adolf Hitler (born 20 April 1889, at 6.30pm). Only one other of Klara's children, the youngest one named Paula, survived into adulthood. Klara's husband, Alois, also had two other children, Alois Junior and Angela, from his second marriage, Franziska Matzelsberger.
Marc Vermeeren. "De jeugd van Adolf Hitler 1889-1907 en zijn familie en voorouders". Soesterberg, 2007, 420 blz. Uitgeverij Aspekt. ISBN = 90-5911-606-2.