Hitler by Ian Kershaw Read Free Book Online

the blue.’He sought an explanation, and was told by the Rector of the Academy that there was no doubt about his unsuitability for the school of painting, but that his talents plainly lay in architecture. Hitler left the interview, as he put it, ‘for the first time in my young life at odds with myself’. After a few days pondering his fate, he concluded, so he wrote, that the Rector’s judgement was right, and ‘that I should some day become an architect’ – not that he then or later did anything to remedy the educational deficiencies which provided a major obstacle to studying for a career in architecture. In reality, Adolf probably did not bounce back anything like so quickly as his own story suggests, and the fact that he reapplied the following year for admission to the painting school casts some doubt on the version of a lightning recognition that his future was as an architect. At any rate, the rejection by the Academy was such a body blow to his pride that he kept it a secret. He avoided telling either his friend Gustl, or his mother, of his failure.
    Meanwhile, Klara Hitler lay dying. The sharp deterioration in her condition brought Adolf back from Vienna to be told by Dr Bloch, towards the end of October, that his mother’s condition was hopeless. Deeply affected by the news, Adolf was more than dutiful. Both his sister, Paula, and Dr Bloch later testified to his devoted and ‘indefatigable’ care for his dying mother. But despite Dr Bloch’s close medical attention, Klara’s health worsened rapidly during the autumn. On 21 December 1907, aged forty-seven, she passed away quietly. Though he had witnessed many deathbed scenes, recalled Dr Bloch, ‘I have never seen anyone so prostrate with grief as Adolf Hitler.’ His mother’s death was ‘a dreadful blow’, Hitler wrote in
Mein Kampf
, ‘particularly for me’. He felt alone and bereft at her passing. He had lost the one person for whom he had ever felt close affection and warmth.
    ‘Poverty and hard reality,’ Hitler later claimed, ‘now compelled me to take a quick decision. What little my father had left had been largely exhausted by my mother’s grave illness; the orphan’s pension to which I was entitled was not enough for me even to live on, and so I was faced with the problem of somehow making my own living.’ When, he continued, after her death he returned to Vienna for the third time, now to stay for some years, his old defiance and determination had come back to him, and his goal was now clear: ‘I wanted to become an architect and obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to, but only to be broken.’ He claimed he set out to overcome the obstacles, inspired bythe example of his father’s rise through his own efforts from poverty to the position of a government official.
    In reality, his mother’s careful housekeeping – aided by not insignificant contributions from her sister Johanna – had left more than sufficient to pay for the considerable medical costs, as well as a relatively expensive funeral. Nor was Adolf left nearly penniless. There was no question of immediately having to earn his own living. Certainly, the monthly orphans’ pension of 25 Kronen which he and his younger sister Paula – now brought up by their half-sister Angela and her husband Leo Raubal – received could scarcely provide for his upkeep in inflation-ridden Austria. And apart from interest, Adolf and Paula could not touch the inheritance from their father until their twenty-fourth year. But what his mother had left – perhaps in the region of 2,000 Kronen once the funeral expenses had been covered – was divided between the two orphaned minors. Adolf’s share, together with his orphan’s pension, was enough to provide for his upkeep in Vienna for a year without work. And on top of that, he still had the residue of his aunt’s generous loan. He scarcely had the financial security which has sometimes been attributed to him. But, all in all, his