| Adolf
Hitler's Early Biography, 1889-1907 (back to
top)
- 1837: Adolf's father Alois is born to an unmarried
42-year-old woman, Maria Schicklgruber.
- 1842: Maria Schicklgruber marries Georg Hiedler,
who does not adopt her 5-year-old son Alois.
- In 1876 (see below), 19 years after Georg's death in 1857, Alois
himself and Georg's younger brother Nepomuk will swear that Georg
was Alois's biological father. We don't know why Alois's presumptive
father Georg didn't recognize paternity during his lifetime. Perhaps
Nepomuk was actually Alois's father, but then he could have accepted
paternity himself. In any case:
- 1840s: Alois grows up in Nepomuk Hiedler's household.
Nepomuk has daughters Johanna, 7 years older than Alois, and Walburga.
(Johanna will later be Adolf's aunt "Hanitante.")
- 1847: Adolf's grandmother Maria Schicklgruber
dies at age 52.
[is this when Alois moves to Nepomuk's household?]
- 1857: Georg Hiedler dies at age 65.
- 1860: Nepomuk Hiedler's daughter Johanna's first
daughter, Klara, is born--future mother of Adolf. In 1884, at age
24, Klara Pölzl will marry her uncle (or cousin), Alois, who
grew up with Klara's mother as his older sister.
- 1873: Hitler's future father, 36-year-old Alois
Schickelgruber, marries 50-year-old Anna Glassl.
- 1876: Alois, now 39, gets a father, a new last
name, and a future inheritance from his nominal uncle: Nepomuk and
two witnesses have the parish priest write Nepomuk's brother Georg
Hiedler's name in Alois's birth register entry as his biological father.
Henceforth Alois takes the last name Hitler (an alternate spelling).
That same year 16-year-old Klara Pölzl, Alois's second cousin
(or niece, if Nepomuk was actually Alois's father), began to work
in the household of aging Anna and younger Alois Hitler. In the late
1870s Anna was ill, and Alois was conducting an affair with a maid
at the Gasthaus where the Hitlers lived. The maid, Franziska "Fanni"
Matzelberger, was a year younger than Alois's personal maid Klara.
- 1880, Sept: Anna, aware of Alois's affair, obtained
a legal separation. Alois now lived openly with Fanni, who immediately
released Klara (a potential rival for Alois's affections) from the
household. Fanni bore Alois a son, Alois jr., in 1882.
- 1883: Anna Hitler dies; 6 weeks later Alois (46)
and Fanni (22) marry. Their second child, Angela, is born that year.
(In 1908 this half-sister of the yet-to-be-born Adolf will bear a
daughter, Angela jr ["Geli"], who will become Adolf's heartthrob
in Munich in the late 1920s.)
- 1884: Fanni falls ill with tuberculosis and dies
in August at age 23. Klara Pölzl takes care of the children.
She becomes pregnant shortly after Fanni's death (Gustav is born in
May 1885).
- 1885, Jan.: the future Adolf Hitler's 47-year-old
father Alois marries for the third time. His bride is 24 years old
and either his uncle's or his father's granddaughter (depending on
which of the brothers Georg or Nepomuk was Alois's biological father),
thus either Alois's second cousin or niece.
- 1885, May: Alois and Klara's first child, Gustav, is born.
- 1886, Sept: their second child, Ida, is born.
- 1887: their third child, Otto, is born (in the
fall?) and dies shortly thereafter; in December 2 1/2-year-old Gustav
dies of diptheria.
- 1888, Jan.: 15-month-old Ida dies of diptheria;
in July 28-year-old Klara conceives again.
- 1889, April: Alois and Klara's fourth child, Adolf,
is born.
- 1892: the Hitler family moves from Braunau to the
German-Austrian border town of Passau
- 1894, Apr.: Adolf Hitler's father moves to Linz;
a 4th child, Edmund, is born (in 1900 he dies of measles at age 6)
- 1895, Apr.: father Alois retires and the Hitler
family moves to Fischlham, near Lambach, near Linz. Adolf starts school
in Fischlham on May 1. Alois junior, Adolf's 13-year-old half brother
by his father's 2nd wife Fanni, leaves the household.
- 1896: Alois and Klara's fifth child, Paula, is
born. In the 1930s she takes the name Paula Wolf and moves to Germany,
where she lives near Munich. She never marries or has children, and
dies in 1960, aged 64.
- 1897: Alois sells the Fischlham farm and moves
the family temporarily to Lambach. Adolf took singing lessons at the
local monastery.
- 1898, Nov.: the Hitler family moves to Leonding,
a village just outside of Linz.
- 1900: 11-year-old Adolf's 6-year-old brother Edmund
dies of measles. In September Adolf begins the more scientifically-oriented
Realschule type of secondary school, not the academic-track
Gymnasium. His grades until he drops out in 1905 are consistently
mediocre to poor. Adolf relationship to his father, who wants the
boy to become a civil servant, deteriorates.
- 1903: father Alois Hitler dies at age 66.
Klara Hitler's younger sister Johanna Pölzl ("Hanitante")
lives with the Hitler family.
- 1905: Adolf drops out of the Realschule
(high school) without a diploma. He lives comfortably in his own room
in an apartment in the Humboldtstrasse in Linz, with his mother, aunt
and sister to take care of the household. He reads, draws, paints,
attends opera and theater, takes piano lessons for 4 months at the
end of 1906. In the fall of 1905 Adolf meets August "Gustl"
Kubizek by chance at a Wagner opera in Linz. They become fast friends.
- 1907, Jan.: Adolf's mother is operated on for breast
cancer. In early Sept. Adolf, with a 924 crown loan (about the annual
earnings of a teacher) from his aunt Johanna, goes to Vienna to take
the entrance examination at the Academy of Fine Arts. (The loan was
not repaid before Joanna died in 1911.) Adolf's drawings place him
among the 113 (of 146) admitted to the drawing exam itself, but his
examiners (none of them Jewish) think what he draws there might qualify
him as an architect, but not as a painter. He is not among the 28
aspiring artists admitted that year. Adolf returns to Linz, where
in December his 47-year-old mother dies of breast cancer. He is disconsolate,
having had a very close relationship to her.
Adolf and Paula both receive a 25 crown/month orphan's pension, as
well as about 1000 crowns each inheritance from their mother. (Only
when they turn 24 will they receive their father's civil service pension.)
Eleven-year-old Paula goes to live with their 24-year-old, just-pregnant
half sister Angela and her husband.
- 1908, February: Adolf returns to Vienna, where
he lives in the room near the Westbahnhof that he had rented the previous
fall. Having persuaded Kubizek's parents to let their son pursue music
studies in Vienna, Adolf writes urgent postcards to Gustl, begging
him to come to Vienna soon.
- ...
- 1918, October 15: Hitler was admitted to a field
hospital after being temporarily blinded by a poison gas attack. See
John Singer
Sargent's 1918 painting "Gassed" for an illustration
of what soldiers did in the aftermath of such attacks.
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