Adolf Hitler

3 Pages 741 Words

Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 at Braunau-am-Inn, a small town near Linz in the province of Upper Austria, not far from the German border, in what was then Austria-Hungary.

His father Alois Hitler (1837-1903) was a minor customs official who had been born to unmarried parents. As a young man he used his mother's surname, Schickelgruber. In 1876, Alois took on his adoptive father's surname by having the church declare him the son of that man after his death, which was originally spelled Hiedler. Adolf Hitler never used the name Schickelgruber: this was a canard circulated later by his political enemies—as were insinuations that he was of Jewish descent.

Hitler's mother, Klara (née Pölzl), was Alois's third wife: She was also the young girl who took care of Alois' children while his second wife lay dying and whom he later married. Of their six offspring, only Adolf and his sister Paula survived infancy.

Hitler was an intelligent but moody boy, and he twice failed to pass the examinations to gain admission to the high school in Linz. There, he became captivated by the anti-Semitic, Pan-German lectures of Professor Leopold Poetsch, which greatly influenced the young man's views. Oddly enough, a schoolmate of Hitler's at Linz was Ludwig Wittgenstein, the famous philosopher.

Hitler was devoted to his indulgent mother and developed a hatred for his father, whom he later portrayed as a sadistic tyrant, although in fact he was probably no more than a normal, strict Austrian father.


Vienna and Munich
In January 1903 Alois Hitler died, and in December 1907 his widow Klara died of cancer. Eighteen-year-old Adolf was orphaned and he soon left home for Vienna, where he had vague hopes of becoming an artist. He was entitled to an orphan's pension, and eked this out by working as an illustrator. He had some artistic talent and often drew pictures of houses and grand buildings. He applied to the Vienna schools of art...