Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

THE UNHAPPIEST OF ALL MEN 387pity of his victims. He not only expected his women friends to toleratecompetitors; he also claimed the right to have several families at once.His sister and nieces had to look on while he made himself at home inthe family of Richard Wagner's son, Siegfried Wagner, in Bayreuth —after Siegfried's death, to be sure (1930). Here he spent most of his time,and rumors went about that he intended to marry Frau WinifredWagner, Siegfried's widow; he regarded and treated the children of thefamily almost as his own. And this was by no means the only case ofinconstancy of which Geli could complain. When she protested, heruncle lost all the devoted chivalry with which he treated the ladies in hisgood hours; he fumed and cursed like a truck-driver and locked thebeloved child up in the house. She made other friendships, for examplewith Emil Maurice, the man to whom Hitler had dictated the beginningof Mein Kampf; by profession a clock-maker, by nature an armedbohemian of the lowest order. In the end, she made up her mind to endher whole life with Hitler, and go to Vienna.Hitler resisted violently. During this quarrel Geli in her despair seemsto have told outsiders about her relations with her uncle and about thedangerous letter. Hitler was beside himself; he felt he had been betrayedas a man. Geli was determined to leave for Vienna where a friend wasawaiting her. Her uncle forbade her. One day he went to Hamburg; ashe was setting out, she asked his permission for the last time to leaveMunich. She called down to him from a window in the house on thePrinz Regenten Strasse, 'Then you won't let me go to Vienna?' AndHitler, from his car, called up, 'No!' According to the testimony ofneighbors, she was not especially dejected. In a tone of indifference sheannounced that next day she was going to Berchtesgaden to see hermother, who was living in the mountain house on the Obersalzberg. Shewent about the apartment with a little box bearing a dead canary,bedded in cotton; she sang to herself and wept a little and said shemeant to bury poor dead 'Hansi' near the house on the Obersalzberg. Shebegan a letter to a friend in Linz — an everyday letter without specialcontent. That was her last known act. Next morning she was found shotto death. It was September 18, 1931. Geli Raubal was twenty-threeyears of age.