The Young Hitler I Knew - The Memoirs of Hitler's Childhood Friend (Original Uncensored Edition)

277 Pages·2014·2.97 MB·English

by  August Kubizek

THE YOUNG HITLER
I KNEW
THE YOUNG HITLER
I KNEW
The Memoirs of Hitler’s
Childhood Friend

August Kubizek

Introduction by
Ian Kershaw

Translated by
Geoffrey Brooks

_F_R_O_N__TL_I_N_E_ B__O_O_K_S_
A Greenhill Book
The Young Hitler I Knew
A Greenhill Book
This edition published in 2011 by Frontline Books,
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Limited,
47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS
www.frontline-books.com
and
Published and distributed in the United States of America and Canada
by Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018
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Copyright © August Kubizek, 1953
Translation © Lionel Leventhal Limited, 2006
Introduction © Ian Kershaw, 2006
United Kingdom edition © Pen & Sword Books Limited, 2011
North American edition © Arcade Publishing, 2011
The right of August Kubizek to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
Frontline edition ISBN 978-1-84832-607-1
Arcade edition ISBN 978-1-61145-058-3
PUBLISHING HISTORY
First published in 1953 by Leopold Stocker Verlag as Adolf Hitler Mein
Jugendfreund.
An abridged English language version entitled Young Hitler was published in
1954 by Allan
Wingate Publishers Ltd. Greenhill Books released a hardback edition with a new
introduction by
Ian Kershaw in 2006.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or
introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,
mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of
the publisher. Any
person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal
prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP data record for this title is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kubizek, August.
[Adolf Hitler, mein Jugendfreund. English]
The young Hitler I knew: the definitive inside look at the artist who became a
monster/by August Kubizek; introduction by Ian Kershaw.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-61145-058-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Hitler, Adolf, 1889–1945--
Childhood and youth. 2. Hitler, Adolf, 1889–1945—Friends and
associates. 3. Kubizek, August. 4. Friendship—Case studies. 5. Art students--
Austria--
Biography. 6. Heads of state--Germany--Biography. I. Title.
DD247.H5K813 2011
943.086092--dc22
[B]
2011004538
Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Limited
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction by Ian Kershaw
Original Publisher’s Foreword
Author’s Introduction – My Decision and Justification
Chapter 1 First Meeting
Chapter 2 Growth of a Friendship
Chapter 3 Portrait of the Young Hitler
Chapter 4 Portrait of His Mother
Chapter 5 Portrait of His Father
Chapter 6 Adolf’s Schooldays
Chapter 7 Stefanie
Chapter 8 Enthusiasm for Richard Wagner
Chapter 9 Hitler the Young Volksdeutscher
Chapter 10 Adolf Rebuilds Linz
Chapter 11 ‘In That Hour It Began …’
Chapter 12 Adolf Leaves for Vienna
Chapter 13 His Mother’s Death
Chapter 14 ‘Come with Me, Gustl!’
Chapter 15 No. 29 Stumpergasse
Chapter 16 Adolf Rebuilds Vienna
Chapter 17 Solitary Reading and Study
Chapter 18 Nights at the Opera
Chapter 19 Adolf Writes an Opera
Chapter 20 The Mobile Reichs-Orchestra
Chapter 21 Unmilitary Interlude
Chapter 22 Adolf’s Attitude to Sex
Chapter 23 Political Awakening
Chapter 24 The Lost Friendship
Chapter 25 My Subsequent Life and Reunion with My Friend
Index
Illustrations
Adolf Hitler’s birth certificate
Klara Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s mother
Alois Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s father
Adolf Hitler and the fourth form at the Leonding primary school
Adolf Hitler and the first form at the Linz Realschule
Adolf Hitler as a baby
Adolf Hitler aged sixteen
Alois Hitler in uniform
Leopold Pötsch, one of Hitler’s teachers
No. 9 Blütengasse, Linz, Hitler’s home for a time
August Kubizek
Sketch by Hitler of his idea for a Linz concert hall
Signatures by Alois and Adolf Hitler
Stefanie, Hitler’s first love
Wedding photograph of Angela and Leo Raubal
Notice of Klara Hitler’s death, signd by her son
Hitler’s design for a villa he wanted to build for Kubizek
Hitler’s application for an orphans’ pension for himself and his sister
Postcards from Hitler to Kubizek from Vienna
Water colour by Hitler of Pöstlingberg castle
Hitler’s letter to Kubizek of August 1933
Introduction
For a vital phase during the early years of his life, his late teenage years in Linz
and Vienna, when we otherwise have tantalisingly little to go on, Hitler had a
personal – and exclusive – friend, who later composed a striking account of the
four years of their close companionship. This friend was August Kubizek. His
account is unique in that it stands alone in offering insights into Hitler’s
character and mentality for the four years between 1904 and 1908. It is unique,
too, in that it is the only description from any period of Hitler’s life provided by
an undoubted personal friend – even if that friendship was both relatively brief
and almost certainly one-sided.* For, like everyone else who came into contact
with Hitler, Kubizek would soon learn that friends, like others, would be
dropped as soon as they had served their purpose.
For every study of Hitler’s early years, including the first parts of my own
biography, Kubizek’s story has proved an indispensable source. His recollections
of his time together with Hitler, first published in 1953, are now in their sixth
edition. An English translation, with an introduction by H. R. Trevor-Roper, later
Lord Dacre, was published in 1954 and later reprinted, and has had to serve for
those without access to the German original until the present. Yet this earlier
English-language version was neither a complete nor an altogether satisfactory
translation of Kubizek’s German text. Numerous passages, in fact some entire
chapters, were omitted. This new translation remedies these deficiencies and
omissions. For the first time, it makes the entire text of Kubizek’s recollections
of his friendship with Hitler available to an English readership. This is greatly to
be welcomed.
August Kubizek was born in Linz in 1888. After leaving school he served as
an apprentice in his father’s small upholstery workshop. But he was musically
talented, and this offered him an exit-route from the upholstery trade. While the
Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna was rejecting his friend Hitler, Kubizek was
gaining entry to the Vienna Conservatoire to study music. He subsequently
obtained a position as second conductor in the municipal theatre at Marburg on
the Drau, and was just married when war broke out in 1914. He served in the
Austrian Army for the duration of the war, suffering a serious lung infection in
1915 from which he never fully recovered. After the war he became town clerk
of Eferding, near Linz, where his duties included organising the small
community’s musical events. And there he remained, a quiet, retiring family
man, helping to bring up his three sons, and conscientiously involved in the local
cultural life.
In the meantime, his erstwhile friend had become famous. Kubizek sent a note
of congratulation when Hitler became Reich Chancellor in January 1933, and
later received a personal reply. Hitler even suggested that Kubizek might pay
him a visit one day. Nothing came of this for five years. But shortly after the
Anschluss, Kubizek made his way to Hitler’s hotel in Linz, and was allowed in
to see his former friend for the first time since their ways had parted in 1908.
Hitler greeted him warmly – though now used the formal ‘Sie’ mode of address
not the more intimate ‘Du’ (which he had still used in his note to Kubizek five
years earlier). Invitations followed to the Bayreuth Festival in 1939 and again in
1940, when, with Hitler at the height of his power, he and Kubizek met for the
last time.
Kubizek had by then gained recognition among leading Nazis as a ‘friend of
the Führer’ as a young man, and was known to have memorabilia from that time.
He had already in 1938 been approached and agreed to write his recollections for
the Party archive. His insights were said to be ‘staggering’, revealing ‘the
inconceivable greatness of the Führer in his youth’.* By 1942, after Kubizek had
joined the Nazi Party and become a local functionary (mainly in charge of
propaganda and cultural matters in Eferding), he had received a direct
commission from the Party leadership to write about his early friendship with the
‘Führer’. Kubizek had certainly made a start by 1943, and was given a better-
paid position by the Party to help him to complete his task. But he made slow
progress. When the Third Reich fell, he was interned for sixteen months by the
Americans. But he had hidden his draft ‘memoirs’ and memorabilia in a cavity
of a wall in his house in Eferding. These became the basis of the book, Adolf
Hitler – Mein Jugendfreund, published in 1953, and an immediate sensation.
Kubizek died three years later, now widely known as a first-hand witness to
Hitler’s early, formative years.
But how valuable is Kubizek’s book as a source for Hitler’s life in Linz and