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

38 DER FUEHRERmiller's apprentice' — an artisan with obvious bohemian leanings,wandering from one small, poor village to another. In 1824 he marriedfor the first time; five months after the marriage a son was born, butmother and child died (all this according to the church registers).Thirteen years later, in 1837, the church registers find the wanderingmiller in the village of Dollersheim. In the neighboring village ofStrones, Anna Marie Schicklgruber, a peasant's daughter, bore a son bythe name of Alois on June 7, 1837. Five years later, in 1842, thiswoman, now 47 years old, married the still vagrant Johann GeorgHiedler, now a man of fifty, who had again changed his residence andwas living in the village of Durenthal as a miller's helper. The laconicentries in the church registers are all that we know of these grandparentsof Adolf Hitler — supposing both sides to be his real grandparents.Whether the two lived together as man and wife and kept a household,we do not know; we are rather inclined to suppose the contrary. Afterthe death of his wife (1847), the vagrant miller vanishes for three wholedecades. For many years Alois, the son, did not legally bear the name ofJohann Georg Hiedler, but his mother's maiden name of Schicklgruber.Alois Schicklgruber grew up in the village of Spital in the house of abrother of Georg Hiedler's. The name of this brother is written asHutler; and in accordance with the local custom conferring even thestrangest names from the holy calendar in full, this uncle and fosterfatherof Alois was called: Johann von Nepomuk Hutler. Johann vonNepomuk is the national saint of the Czech people; this indicates apossible Czech strain in Adolf Hitler's forebears, who actually did residein a German-Czech border section. In this Johann von Nepomuk Hutlerwe observe a trait which sharply distinguishes him from his brother:while Johann Georg seems to have lived without discipline and donepretty much as he pleased, never settling down or assuming any firmties, Johann von Nepomuk, after leaving his native Walterschlag,married a peasant girl fifteen years older than himself in the village ofSpital and remained a peasant in Spital till the end of his life.It was here that Alois Schicklgruber spent his childhood. He learnedthe shoemaker's trade from a relative by the name of Leder-