Alois Hitler

This article is about Adolf Hitler's father. For Adolf Hitler's half-brother, see Alois Hitler, Jr.

Alois Hitler
Alois Hitler in 1901
Born	(1837-06-07)7 June 1837 Strones, Waldviertel, Lower Austria
Died	3 January 1903(1903-01-03) (aged 65) Gasthaus Stiefler, Linz, Upper Austria
Occupation	Customs officer
Spouse(s)	Anna Glassl (1873–1883,sep.1880) Franziska Matzelberger (1883–1884) Klara Pölzl (1885–1903)
Children	with Franziska Matzelberger Alois Hitler, Jr. Angela Hitler with Klara Pölzl Gustav Hitler Ida Hitler Otto Hitler Adolf Hitler Edmund Hitler Paula Hitler
Parent(s)	Johann Georg Hiedler and Maria Anna Schicklgruber

Alois Hitler (born Alois Schicklgruber; 7 June 1837 – 3 January 1903) was the father of Adolf Hitler.

Early life

Alois Hitler was born in the small rustic 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, 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". 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.

Early career

File:Adolf Hitler.jpeg

Hitler in the uniform of an Austrian customs official

Alois Schicklgruber made steady progress in the semi-military profession of a 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 in 1875.

While his professional duties involved strict attention to rules, his personal and private life seems to have flouted the social norms of the time. In the late 1860s, he fathered an illegitimate child with a woman named Thelka (or perhaps Thekla) whom he did not marry and whose family name is lost to history. Alois was 36 when he married for the first time. Anna Glassl 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 the summer of 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. He apparently did not disclose to the priest that Johann had been dead for almost 20 years. 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.

Social pressures seems to have played no part. Smith states that Alois Schicklgruber openly admitted having been born out of wedlock before and after the name change. He had done well by local standards and was not hampered by his name. The limiting factor was education. He eventually rose to full inspector of customs and could go no higher because he lacked the necessary school degrees.

Alois may have been influenced to change his name for the sake of legal expediency. Maser reports that in 1876, Franz Schicklgruber, the administrator of Alois' mother's estate, transferred a large sum of money (230 gulden) to him. This related to a family decision involving changing Alois' last name from Schicklgruber to Hitler / Hiedler in accordance with his mother's alleged wishes when she died in 1847. Moreover, six months after Nepomuk died, Alois made a major real estate purchase inconsistent with the salary of a customs official with a pregnant wife.

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.

Biological father

Historians have discussed three candidates: Johann Georg Hiedler, Johann Nepomuk Hüttler, and Leopold Frankenberger.

Most historians are satisfied that Alois's 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). Unexplained is why Hiedler and Maria did not declare Alois their legitimate son once they were legally married, or why Hiedler died without legitimizing his son and perpetuating his line of the family.

Historian Werner Maser suggests that Alois's 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. Nepomuk was a married farmer who had an affair and then arranged to have his single brother Hiedler marry Alois's mother Maria to provide a cover for Nepomuk's desire to assist and care for Alois without upsetting his wife. This assumes Hiedler was willing to marry Maria in this situation, and Adolf Hitler biographer Joachim Fest thinks this is too good and right to be true.

Leopold Frankenberger was a Jew. Hitler's paternal grandmother, Maria Schicklgruber, gave birth to Alois, Hitler's father, in 1837. She was 42 and unmarried at the time and apparently never revealed the father's identity. Five years later she married Johann Georg Hiedler or Hitler (spelling was a bit casual in those days). But Alois kept the surname Schicklgruber until he was 39 years old.

In 1876 a new baptismal certificate was issued declaring that Alois's stepfather J.G. Hiedler was in fact his real father. By this time both Maria and J.G. were dead. Why the name change so late in the day nobody really knows, but there is speculation that Alois did it so he could come into an inheritance. At any rate, few researchers today believe J.G. was really Alois's father.

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. 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, who had a 19-year-old son. The son, according to Frank, was Alois's father and Hitler's grandfather--which would make the man who inspired the Holocaust one-quarter Jewish.

Frank's allegations have vexed historians ever since. The distinguished Hitler scholar Werner Maser was so irritated he claimed Frank made the whole thing up. Others think Frank was telling the truth but that the research he did for Hitler was faulty. It turns out that all Jews had been expelled from Graz in the 15th century and were not allowed to return until the 1860s; what's more, so far as can be determined, Maria Schicklgruber never lived in Graz. Frank's source for the Frankenberger yarn was a distant relation of Hitler's, who supposedly had letters exchanged by the Frankenbergers and Maria Schicklgruber. (It's claimed they gave her child support.) But neither the relative nor the letters have ever surfaced, and chances are it's all a crock. Scholars such as Ian Kershaw and Brigitte Hamann dismiss the Frankenberger ancestry claim as without any substance.

Marriages

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 sick wife Anna 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 his first wife 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 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 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.

Later career

Hitler was secure in his profession and no longer an ambitious climber. Alan described Alois as a "hard, unsympathetic, and short-tempered" man. For reasons unknown to historians, Matzelberger went to Vienna to give birth to Angela Hitler. Matzelberger, still only 23, acquired a lung disorder and became too ill to function. She was moved to Ranshofen, a small village near Braunau. Matzelberger died in Ranshofen on August 10, 1884 at the age of 23.

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, not mentioning Pölzl was already pregnant. Hitler was immune to what the local people thought of him since his salary came from the finance ministry and he probably intended to keep Pölzl as his "housekeeper" if permission was refused. It came, and on 7 January 1885 a wedding was held early in the morning 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. Son Otto followed Ida in 1887, but he died shortly after birth. Later that year, diphtheria tragically 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 Matzelberger, 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.

Retirement

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. A lifetime as a civil servant had made Hitler forget what farm life was like. He found taking care of nine acres (36,000 m²) to be more work than he had thought it would be, and he didn't want it. The land went uncultivated, and the value of the property declined. Far from being his dream retirement home, the Rauscher Gut was a money-losing nightmare.

Meanwhile, the family was still growing. On 21 January 1896 Paula was born. With no workplace to escape to, Hitler was often home with his family. He had five children ranging in age from infancy to 14, and being involved with their daily life annoyed him. Smith suggests he yelled at the children almost continually and made long visits to the local tavern where he began to drink more than he used to.

It has been said he behaved like a self-important tyrant at home. 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.

Edmund (the youngest of the boys) died of measles on 2 February 1900. If there was to be a family legacy, Adolf would have to carry it. Alois wanted his son to follow him and seek a career in the civil service. However, Adolf had become so alienated from his father that he was repulsed by whatever Alois wanted. Where his father glorified the role of the civil servant, 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.

Death

Gasthaus Wiesinger in February 2009

The couch on which Alois Hitler died

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". He was 13 when his father died.

Additional sources

• Marc Vermeeren, De jeugd van Adolf Hitler 1889–1907 en zijn familie en voorouders. Soesterberg, 2007, 420 blz. Uitgeverij Aspekt. ISBN 978-90-5911-606-1
• Bullock, Alan Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. 1953 ISBN 0-06-092020-3
• Fest, Joachim C. Hitler. Verlag Ullstein, 1973 ISBN 0-15-141650-8
• Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris. W W Norton, 1999 ISBN 0-393-04671-0
• Maser, Werner Hitler: Legend, Myth and Reality. Penguin Books Ltd 1973 ISBN 0-06-012831-3
• Smith, Bradley F. Adolf Hitler: His Family, Childhood and Youth. Hoover Instituted, 1967 ISBN 0-8179-1622-9
• Waite, Robert G. L. The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. Basic Books 1977 ISBN 0-465-06743-3
• Payne, Robert The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler. Praeger Publishers 1973 LCCN 72-92891
• Langer, Walter C. The Mind of Adolf Hitler. Basic Books Inc., New York, 1972 ISBN 0-465-04620-7 ASIN: B000CRPF1K

External links

• Alois Hitler's last house in Leonding, Austria
• Ancestry of Adolf Hitler - Who was Adolf's grandfather?
• The Straight Dope: Was Hitler part Jewish?