Preview Hitler In 1876, 16-year-old Klara (Hitlers' Mother) was hired as a household servant by her relative Alois Hitler, who later she would marry. Adolf was an unwanted child, and the product of inbreeding. Alois was an Austrian customs official and he was able to provide his family with a comfortable lifestyle; however, he and his son Hitler did not get along. As he grew older, Adolf was subjected to frequent humiliation from his father. His wife Klara counter-balanced this by being the complete opposite, but she had no power in the household. Traditionally German women were raised to be subservient, so it was difficult for her to deal with such an aggressive and dominating husband. Alois worked as a customs official, so he wanted his son to follow the example and become a civil servant. But Adolf -who was creative and (sporadically) brilliant- hated his father and intentionally failed school. After his father's death, his mother allowed him to quit in 1905. He continued in his studies of reading, and drawing, especially fine art. In 1907, Klara supported Adolf in his decision to move to Vienna to join the cities academy of fine art, where he hoped to become a student. Though he had passed the initial exam in 1907, his drawing skills were ultimately deemed “unsatisfactory,” by the admissions committee. Shortly thereafter he discovered his mother was ill. Adolf Hitler, was very fond of his mother, and was devastated after the rapid death from her illness. Klara’s doctor, Eduard Bloch, recalled, “I have never seen anyone so consumed with grief as Adolf Hitler.” Dr. Bloch was Jewish, but in gratitude for taking care of Klara, Adolf allowed him and his family to emigrate from Austria to the United States. This was during 1940, at a time when many other Jews could not leave the country. In early 1908, after the death of his mother, 18-year-old Adolf Hitler left his provincial hometown of Linz permanently, and moved to Vienna, the glamorous capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the fall of 1908, he applied to the Academy of Fine Arts, again but was rejected a second time. Even after being rejected, he continued to try and support himself as an artist. Over much of the next year, he would move from one cheap rented room to another, even living in a homeless shelter for a time. Then in 1909, Hitler finally began earning money by selling small oil and watercolor paintings -mostly buildings and other landmarks in Vienna that he copied from postcards. By selling these paintings to tourists and frame-sellers, he made enough to move out of the homeless shelter and into a men’s home, where he painted by day and continued studying his books at night. Reinhold Hanisch Hanisch, is one of the few witnesses to Hitler's Vienna years and published several articles on Hitler, with whom he had lived in 1910. Hanisch despite his aristocratic ancestors, was anything but noble. In 1907 he had hired himself out as a casual laborer and house servant but was imprisoned in Berlin for three months for stealing. In the Vienna homeless shelter in Meidling, where he lived, he met Hitler on December, 21, 1909. The following year Hanisch lived with Hitler, whom he took under his wing, in the Meldemannstraße men’s dormitory. They developed a business Partnership. While Hitler painted postcards and pictures, Hanisch procured business transactions supplying the Jewish frame dealer Jakob Altenberg with pictures and postcards. The men were supposed to share equally from the sums received. But one day Hitler accused Hanisch 0f stealing by selling his paintings and keeping all the money. Hanisch denied this charge, but the partnership was over. Afterward, Hanisch also began painting, and became Hitler’s competitor. He often painted pictures which he sold fraudulently as Hitler originals. To cover up the fraud, he had his friend Karl Leidenroth authenticate the forgeries. On August, 4 1910 Hanisch was reported to the police by another dormitory resident, Siegfried Löffner, who was fraudulently acting as Hitler's seller. The Vienna police discovered that Hanisch was registered in Vienna under the pseudonym Fritz Walter. On August 11, 1910, a Viennese court sentenced Hanisch to seven days in prison. With Hitler was appointed as Chancellor in the spring of 1933, Hanisch became an object of interest. The Bavarian journalist (anti-Nazi) Konrad Heiden, who was writing the first authoritative biography of Hitler, turned to Hanisch, then the only known witness of Hitler's Vienna period. Hanisch readily supplied information for money, charged for numerous interviews with both national and international newspapers. In an ironic twist, Franz Feiler, since 1933 was a Viennese emissary (agent) of Hitler, on whose behalf bought both genuine and fake paintings by Hanisch when he lived in Vienna, and then brought them to Germany, after Hitler was chancellor. Franz Feiler had known Hanisch since he was a boy. His parents were landlords and rented a house to him. Feiler gave Hitler the painting he had bought from Hanisch. Hitler instantly recognized the ones that were forgeries, and instructed Feiler to file a complaint against Hanisch for fraud. Feiler did that on July, 6 1933, and Hanisch was arrested again for fraud but after spending several months in prison -continued to forge Hitler's paintings. On November, 16 1936 Hanisch has arrested again, during a search of his rented room when the police found, manuscripts about Hitler and additional fake portraits. On December 2, 1936, the Vienna regional court sentenced Hanisch to prison for fraud, but this time Hanisch died February 1937 while still in detention. Hanisch’s memoir of Hitler posthumously appeared in 1939 The New Republic. He was trying to discredit Hitler as a politician. Hanisch wrote that Hitler always had a good relationship with the Jews in the men’s home. Hitler was familiar with the different figures from both Christian and Jewish students at the universities, and determined from the rivalry that the "intelligent," Jews easily got the better of the "intellectual" Christians. In the men's hostel, Hitler had many Jewish friends. His best friend, the religious (Jew) Neumann, a trained copper polisher, gave him a coat when he had nothing to wear and lent him money. Another Jewish friend was a one-eyed locksmith's assistant, Simon Robinson, who came from the town of Lisko in Galicia. The Viennese eyewitnesses remembered unanimously that Hitler's dealings with Jews was always good. Jakob Wasserberg from Galicia, who ran a small brandy store at 20 Webgasse, close to Stumpergasse, often bought Hitler breakfast. Living as a starving artist in Vienna was horrible. But in all his sufferings Hitler never once blamed a bad experience he had there on the Jewish people. This would include being withheld admission for the Academy of Arts by a board of Jewish professors, or Hitler's getting infected with syphilis by a Jewish prostitute in Leopoldstadt. When he was homeless in 1909 -he benefited from Jewish social institutions like public soup kitchens and homeless shelters funded by Jewish donations and that included the men's hostel where he stayed in Brigittenau. Hitler sold his paintings almost exclusively to Jewish dealers: Morgenstern, Landsberger, and Altenberg. When the NSDAP (Nazi Party) archive searched for early paintings from Hitler in 1938, they still found unsold pieces in both Morgenstern's and Altenberg's stores after more than twenty-five years!!! Frame manufacturer Jakob Altenberg from Galicia could never remember any anti-Semitic statements by Hitler -ever. Hitler had close personal contact with Samuel Morgenstern, who procured private customers for the young man, like Jewish lawyer Dr. Josef Feingold, who in turn sponsored Hitler. Hanisch who died in prison writes: "The Christian dealers didn't pay any better than the Jews. They only bought more material when they had disposed of the first shipment, while the Jewish dealers continued to buy whether they had sold anything or not." Hitler often said that it was only with the Jews that one could do business, because only they were willing to take chances." More importantly, there is no evidence of any anti-Semitic attitudes or remarks by Hitler earlier than 1919. He was thirty years old. Those who knew him before that period agree that his favorite actors and comedians were Jewish and although he loved Wagner’s music best; he also enjoyed listening to Mendelssohn, Lehár, and Mahler. One of his few friends during this time was Jewish and the first girl he fell in love with was Jewish. He was also an active and enthusiastic supporter of Kurt Eisner, the Jewish leader of ‘Soviet Bavaria’. Hitler was a member of a Soldiers’ Council in Munich and attended Eisner’s funeral. Even during his days as German leader he never condemned Eisner and one of his first acts as Chancellor was to arrest the man who assassinated him. It has never been fully explained why, if Jews and Semites (Arabs) were viewed as substandard, why did his inner circle of people include Guido von List (Occultist), who moved in circles where the ancient Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah was so widely studied and appreciated. Coming Soon