Hitler in Linz and Leonding
While many WW2 enthusiasts know that Adolf Hitler was born to Alois Hitler (1837-1903) and Klara Polzl (1860-1907) in a small Austrian town called Braunau am Inn in 1899, not that many are aware that the Hitler family changed several places of residence. A young Adolf spent only three of his childhood years in Braunau until his father, a civil custom servant, got a promotion to the rank of ‘Zollamtoberoffizial’ (Senior Custom Office Office) and the family moved to a larger town of Passau in the Kingdom of Bavaria on the German side of the river Inn, in August 1892. At that time, two of Alois’ children from the previous marriage: Alos Jr. (born 1882), and Angela (born 1883) lived with them. In just two years, in late March 1894, Alois Hitler was transferred to Linz, while leaving his third wife and kids (Klara gave birth to Edmund on March 24, 1894) in Passau for months until on February 4, 1895, finally buying a home with a nine-acre plot (38 000 m2 according to document) of land in a village called Hafeld next to a tiny town called Lambach, about thirty miles from Linz, once again in Upper Austria, and moving the family in April 1895. Alois retired voluntarily on June 25 of the same year at the age of fifty-eight after four decades of service and now lived at the top of local society getting a pension of 2600 Kronnen a year, a sum equal to a school headmaster. In 1896 Alois Junior, who had suffered from his father’s dominance and beatings, left the home for an apprenticeship and in January Klara gave birth to Paula. Two years after moving, in June or July 1897 Hitler Senior, who appeared to lack talent in farming, sold their house in Hafeld, and for one and half a year the family lived in Lambach, including six months living in front of the local Benedictine monastery. In November 1898 Alois finally bought a house in Leonding, a suburb of the city of Linz.
HITLER’S HOUSE IN LEONDING
Alois Hitler purchased this house in November 1898 for 7700 Krones and moved his family to Leonding, a village suburb of Linz with 3000 inhabitants, in February 1899. A couple of small rooms with a low ceiling, a tiny kitchen, and a pear garden with a graveyard on the opposite side of the narrow village road. The Hitler family had lived here from February 1899 until June 21, 1905, in strained circumstances. Just a year after moving in, Klara’s child and Adolf’s brother Edmund (born in 1894) died in February 1900.
Hitler’s house in Leonding was in private use as an accommodation for decades and in 2002 a local funeral service office took a building for permanent use. The building on Michaelsbegstrasse 16 in its modern state has two entrances, one main and one added. The second one (on the left side) was added years after Hitler’s family had lived here. One of the early paintings of Adolf Hitler depicts their home in Leonding with only one entrance on the side of the road and a cemetery.
HITLER’S SCHOOL IN LEONDING
After moving to Leonding in February 1899, a nine-year-old Adolf started to attend a local primary school after being admitted to the fourth grade, one of two in a village. This was his third school in life (after Fischlam and Lambach) due to family migration. Decades after, a future Fuhrer of the Third Reich recalls his childhood in this school in Leonding, his wild behavior, and his independent opinion of the surroundings. About this time Adolf was fascinated by the history of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 and by adventure books of Karl May. He finished the fourth grade and transferred to the fifth in May 1900.
This building on Michaelsbegstrasse 29 is still there and has changed a little in the last century. The same entrance now leads us not to school, but to a ’Heimatmuseum’ museum.
A RESTAURANT, WHERE ALOIS HITLER DIED
In his mature years, Adolf Hitler characterized his father as a man, who had influenced him the most in his early years and depicted his death as a painful personal tragedy. Alois Hitler was a tough hard-line man, who was extremely demanding of his children and especially of his only son Adolf (a six-year Edmund passed in 1900). The father did not give money to his son to buy books, despite the fact that Adolf was passionate about reading. Then a boy started to ignore education and his father used to punish a young successor. Years after, ‘’Mein Kampf’’ would reveal and explain that young Adolf did not want to become an Austrian civil servant, a rural bureaucrat like his father had been.
Hans Frank, a lawyer of Adolf Hitler and future gauleiter of Poland, in an interview after the war, recalled the alleged words of his chief. Hitler once said that the greatest shame of his life was to drag his drunk father Alois from the local beer pub to home. Alois Hitler, in fact, was a narrow-minded cruel old man on retirement, who had spent his time in bars of Leonding and Linz. Those table talks were characterized by Pan-German and nationalist topics. In the early hours of January 3, 1903, Alois Hitler was sitting and drinking wine on his favorite leather sofa in his favorite restaurant called Gasthaus Stiefler (modern: Gasthof Wiesinger). He suddenly felt worse and died in the same spot because of a pulmonary hemorrhage (he choked on his blood in the lungs). Alois Hitler was 65 years old and a memoir in a local newspaper described him as a progressive-friendly man. He presumably was seeing a local farmer when felt unwell and went to the restaurant to have a glass of something. back in December 1901, Alois experienced several weeks in bed due to cold and in August 1902 suffered his first minor lung hemorrhage, which was not regarded as dangerous at that time and Alois felt relatively well up to his death. He was buried in the local cemetery on January 5, 1903, 30 meters away from his own house.
Gasthof Wiesinger is still a restaurant and its interior changed poorly since 1903 and the death of Alois Hitler. I made my way inside the café to find the sofa and found it on the right side of the entrance in 2017. In fact, the disposition of this sofa is being changed periodically within the premises of the restaurant. It has been obviously renovated a few times, but it still contains a part of history, and the owners even gave it to the museum a few years ago.
THE GRAVES OF ALOIS AND CLARA HITLER IN LEONDING
Alois Hitler was buried in a local cemetery in Leonding after his death in 1903. Talking about Clara Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s mother, her state of health has been dramatically changing within her last years of life, with some spots of hope, but usually for the worse. On October 22, 1907, Adolf, who had previously returned from Vienna to Linz to take care of his mother, attended Doctor Eduard Bloch and found out that the state of health of Clara Hitler was badly inevitable. She soon started to spend all her time in bed. Starting from November 6th, 1907 doctor Bloch attended their house every day to visit the patient and used to give her morphine. Clara Hitler passed at 2 a.m. on December 21, 1907. She was only 47 years old. Adolf made a painting of his mother within her last hours and spent a night at his mother’s bed, waiting for Doctor Bloch, who certificated the death.
A coffin with Clara Hitler was kept in the apartment in Linz (9 Blütengasse) till the day of the funeral on December 23, 1907. Cold foggy weather and two carriages (Adolf and his sister with her husband) escorted a catafalque to the cemetery of Leonding. Clara Hitler was buried near her husband, 30 meters from their former home on Michaelsbegstrasse. A six-year-old Edmund Hitler was buried nearby seven years before. On the next day, December 24, 1907, the family of Hitler visited Bloch’s office in Linz and paid off 300 Krones for treatment: the total bill was 359, 59 of which had been aid before. The sum was large for the period (especially considering 370 spent for the funeral) but included Doctor Bloch’s seventy-seven sessions with Kalara in his office and at her home, including forty-seven medical treatments. Some time after a young Adolf Hitler made a gift to a Jewish doctor Bloch. He gave him a few of his own paintings with a great sense of gratitude. Later, young Adolf sent his drawings to Doctor Bloch and one was from his period in Vienna.
After the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, Adolf Hitler, as a chancellor and fuhrer visited Leonding on March 12. History preserved a rare photo of Hitler, who lays flowers on the graves of his parents. These gravestones of Alois and Clara Hitler survived the War and the next 60 years. In 2012 local authorities moved the gravestones in an attempt to reduce the interest in this place among the modern admirers of the Nazis and extremists. The cemetery is of small size, so it was not difficult to find the actual site of the graves that are still under the ground. The spot is located near the stone wall, facing Michaelsbegstrasse and former Hitler’s home. The only clear spot on the ground attracts even more attention.
REALSCHULE: HISTLER’S STUDY IN LINZ
After five years of elementary school, within changing addresses of Hitler’s family, On September 17, 1900, Alois Hitler entrusted his only son to the Realschule in Linz, a city of 60,000 citizens at the time (58 778 according to the 1900 census). In contrast to much more basic elementary education in previous schools, the Realschule was a secondary educational institution aimed at training young boys for future technical or commercial careers. A young boy used to spend an hour every day covering a 5 km distance to his new education facility, which made the transition from primary to secondary education more difficult. After failing to adapt to a provincial school, Adolf Hitler paid less and less attention to his studies and he was left for another year with two low grades and with multiple-order marks. Within a period of 1902-1903, Adolf was the only child in his class, who was excluded from paying annual fees, due to the supposed dire financial condition of the family, which was half true. Most teachers in Realschule in Linz supported the nationalist sentiments and the absolute amount of pupils were at that time German-speaking. Despite his underachievement, Adolf Hitler finally got access to a big school library. In September 1904 due to his sustained bad study performances (not because of family poverty), young Adolf left the Realschule in Linz and his mother assigned him to a secondary school in Steyr, which finally gave him basic education at the age of sixteen.
The building of a former Realschule is now painted in peach color and is located within a district with compact planning, just like in the 1900s, when young Hitler attended it. Nowadays, the building on Steingasse 6 has nothing in common with education and contains a Hotel with a pretty lobby, seen through the glass entrance.
CUSTOM OFFICE IN LINZ (HAUPTZOLLAMT)
One of the passages of ‘Mein Kampf’ tells the story of a visit to the Main Customs Office in Linz, initiated by Alois Hitler for his only son to make a basis for a bureaucratic future. In this building on Zollamstrasse, a thirteen-year-old Adolf just intensified a point of view that it was not for him a be a provincial bureaucrat at the table, a kind of bookworm like his father had been before him. During the post-Anschluss visit to Austria, the German fuhrer visited the building one more time, more than thirty years after his first audience with his father.
DOCTOR BLOCH’S OFFICE IN LINZ
Doctor Eduard Bloch was a Jew and was born in 1872. After military service and an assignment to Linz, in 1899 Doctor Bloch settled down here. Two years later in 1901, he managed to initiate his own doctor’s practice on Landstrasse 12 on the first floor of a marvelous building in Baroque style. He had lived here with his family, a wife, and since 1903 with a daughter. Doctor Bloch got respect and could visit his patient even in the middle of the night in case of necessity.
In March 1938, when Germany performed an Anschluss of Austria, Eduard Bloch was 66 years old. On the 1st of October, he was prohibited from continuing a doctor’s practice and the cabinet had to be closed. While his daughter and her husband immigrated to the USA soon after, an old doctor had a hope to get in contact with his former patient. Doctor Bloch had written a few letters and for the goodwill of faith for him, they reached Adolf Hitler. As an act of exceptional attitude, Hitler directed the Gestapo a command to protect Doctor Bloch, his family, and even his belongings in Linz, which were lately salt with good value. Bloch’s family managed to get things done until the very emigration to the USA in 1940. His Austrian diploma was useless in the United States and an old man died “unnecessarily” in emigration in 1945. In his later memoir, doctor Bloch characterized Adolf Hitler as an extremely polite and educated young man, who had loved his mother with all his heart, as she had idolized her only son.
THE OLD CATHEDRAL IN LINZ AND ADOLF HITLER
In the early years of the XX century, this Cathedral known as Alter Dom or Ignatiuskirche, was the main Christian church in Linz. At the age of 15, Adolf Hitler experienced a ceremony of Confirmation here and was “anointed with Christ” as a Catholic on Sunday (actually Whit Sunday) May 22, 1904. He had also made a drawing of the Alter Dom, which remained until now.
LANDESTHEATER THEATER AND AUGUST KUBIZEK
Adolf Hitler had become an admirer of theatre, while constantly living in Linz, on Gumboldstrasse 31 with his mother and sister. The local Landestheater at that time had a diverse list of productions, including Mozart, Schiller, Strauss, and Wagner. Standing room tickets were at a low fee and young Adolf Hitler was able to perform periodic visits. Landestheter’s performances paid significant attention to the oeuvre of Richard Wagner and the Lohengrin opera gained popularity. Hitler was a passionate admirer of Wagner and this very performance in particular. After some of the performances in Landestheater, a sixteen-year-old young man marched within his room, singing, full of emotions and ideas. Hitler even made some sketches of his view of the design for the building of the Landestheater. In 1938 the special commission, which accumulated the biography of Hitler for the NSDAP archives, ascertained the fact that most of the actors at that period in Landestheter were Jews.
Landestheater is a remarkable place in history, as in November 1905 a young Adolf Hitler met his future friend August Kubizek here, within a standing parquet during some of the performances. They found themselves to be of one age (Kubizek was nine months older) and had much in common with each other. Even Kubizek’s father “approved” a new friend of his son, who was mannerly and gentlemanlike. Between October 1906 and January 1907, Hitler attended the music lessons of a local teacher Josef Prevatski. On October 13, 1906, two friends went to Landestheater to watch ‘Die lustige Witwe’ (A Happy Widow), an operetta by Franz Lehar, which became one of Adolf’s favorites. In November 1906 they watched Richard Wagner’s “Rienzi”. Written between July 1838 and November 1840 and first performed at the Saxon State Opera in Dresden on October 20, 1842, it brought the composer his first success and recognition.
Landestheater is still here and still holds opera performances as it was more than a century ago when it witnessed Adolf Hitler and August Kubizek within its crush room. This lobby gives you the atmosphere of an old theatre.
SCHMIDTORECK DISTRICT
New friends Adolf Hitler and August Kubizek were frequent admirers of opera in Landestheater and usually spent their time after the performances, walking alongside the streets of Linz for hours or even all night until sunrise. Young men were passionately discussing stage productions and representations. In this respect, the topography of the sites Hitler and Kubizek visited includes the whole center of the city. Therewith, biographers of Hitler and Kubizek himself generally emphasize the Schmidtoreck district. It was and is a crossroad of streets in the heart of Linz. The site was a usual place for Hitler and Kubizek to get acquainted before the theatrical performances in Landestheater. Sometimes they were silently keeping an eye on Stephanie, a one-way love of young Adolf.
Stephanie Isak (her full name was Stefanie Maria Beata Isak) was one and a half years senior to Hitler (born in December 1887). After finishing school in 1904, she spent two years in Munich and Geneva and came back to Linz (her family lived in Urfahr) as late as November 1906, got engaged in 1908, and married in 1910 in Vienna on October 24, 1910, at the time when Hitler was living in Vienna in the Men’s Hostel. Her husband was a professional officer Maximilian Rabatsch (1872-1942), who later met the end of the First World War in the rank of a colonel. Stephanie became a window on July 14, 1942, but outlived her husband for three decades before passing away peacefully on December 22, 1975, at the age of eighty-eight. She was buried in Vienna two weeks later. The story of Hitler’s affection toward a girl from Linz became public in 1953 with the publication of the memories of August Kubizek, and three years later more information emerged in the book called Hitler’s Jugend (Hitler’s Youth) by an Austrian lawyer Franz Jetzinger. It is important to note, that even after becoming a solo ruler in Germany, Hitler never openly tried to contact Stephanie Rabatsch, at least such efforts remained unknown. Today the Schmidtoreck is still a busy intersection of Landestrasse and Schmidtorstrasse, only a brick throw from Doctor Bloch’s office.