Hitler by Ian Kershaw Read Free Book Online Page A

financial position was, during this time, substantially better than that of most genuine students in Vienna.
    Moreover, Adolf was in less of a hurry to leave Linz than he implies in
Mein Kampf
. Though his sister almost forty years later stated that he moved to Vienna within a few days of their mother’s death, Adolf was still recorded as in Urfahr in mid-January and mid-February 1908. Unless, as seems unlikely, he made brief visits to Vienna between these dates, it looks as if he stayed in Urfahr for at least seven weeks after the death of his mother. The family household account-book indicates that the break with Linz was not made before May.
    When he did return to Vienna, in February 1908, it was not to pursue with all vigour the necessary course of action to become an architect, but to slide back into the life of indolence, idleness, and self-indulgence which he had followed before his mother’s death. He even now persuaded Kubizek’s parents to let August leave his work in the family upholstery business to join him in Vienna in order to study music.
    His failure to enter the Academy and his mother’s death, both occurring within less than four months in late 1907, amounted to a crushing double-blow for the young Hitler. He had been abruptly jolted from his dream of an effortless path to the fame of a great artist; and the soleperson upon whom he depended emotionally had been lost to him at almost the same time. His artistic fantasy remained. Any alternative – such as settling down to a steady job in Linz – was plainly an abhorrent thought. A neighbour in Urfahr, the widow of the local postmaster, later recalled: ‘When the postmaster asked him one day what he wanted to do for a living and whether he wouldn’t like to join the post office, he replied that it was his intention to become a great artist. When he was reminded that he lacked the necessary funding and personal connections, he replied tersely: “Makart and Rubens worked themselves up from poor backgrounds.” ’ How he might emulate them was entirely unclear. His only hope rested upon retaking the entrance examination for the Academy the following year. He must have known his chances were not high. But he did nothing to enhance them. Meanwhile, he had to get by in Vienna.
    Despite the drastic alteration in his prospects and circumstances, Adolf’s lifestyle – the drifting existence in an egoistic fantasy-world – remained unchanged. But the move from the cosy provincialism of Linz to the political and social melting-pot of Vienna nevertheless marked a crucial transition. The experiences in the Austrian capital were to leave an indelible mark on the young Hitler and to shape decisively the formation of his prejudices and phobias.

2
Drop-out
    I
    The city where Hitler was to live for the next five years was an extraordinary place. More than any other European metropolis, Vienna epitomized tensions – social, cultural, political – that signalled the turn of an era, the death of the nineteenth-century world. They were to mould the young Hitler.
    Anticipating that he would be studying at the Academy of Fine Arts, he had in late September or the beginning of October 1907 rented a small room on the second floor of a house in Stumpergasse 31, near the Westbahnhof in Vienna, owned by a Czech woman, Frau Zakreys. This is where he returned, some time between 14 and 17 February 1908, to pick up where he had left off before his mother’s death.
    He was not long alone. We can recall that he had persuaded August Kubizek’s parents to let their son join him in Vienna to carry out his studies to become a musician. Kubizek’s father had been most reluctant to let his son go off with someone he regarded as no more than a failure at school and who thought himself above learning a proper trade. But Adolf had prevailed. On 18 February, he sent a postcard to his friend, urging him to come as quickly as possible. ‘Dear Friend,’ he wrote, ‘am anxiously