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

HE IS BOTH TERRIBLE AND BANAL 41his forties, the man slowly conceived the idea of taking his growingfoster-daughter as a wife as soon as his first wife should die — whichwas to be expected in a reasonable time. In the Austrian law of thosedays, a separation would not have allowed remarriage, but death made itpossible and legitimate. It is conceivable that all concerned were agreedon the question and probable that Klara's parents and grandparentsexpected this solution. Many years later, Alois Schicklgruber told afriend that Johann von Nepomuk Hutler — that is, his own foster-fatherand at the same time Klara's grandfather— had wanted to mention him,Alois Schicklgruber, in his will; but had demanded that it be establishedbeyond any doubt that Alois was legally entitled to bear the name ofHutler, or Hiedler, or Hitler — as the names of brothers and sisters,fathers and sons, sometimes in fact the name of one and the sameperson, appear in the carelessly kept church registers. This change ofname and the matter of the will fall in the year when Klara Polzl becamesixteen. Whoever Alois Schicklgruber-Hitler's natural father may havebeen, it was definite that Georg Hiedler married his mother in 1842.And thus the vagrant miller's helper rises again from obscurity. Thisevent is mentioned in a few existing documents, of which the mostinteresting is a memorandum of the Diocesan Court of Sankt Poelten(Lower Austria) of March 29, 1932. As the Bishop's archives show, anold man who called himself Georg Hitler — hence no longer Hiedler —appeared before the notary in the little city of Weitra on June 6, 1876.But according to his statement, he was one and the same man to whomthe peasant maid, Maria Anna Schicklgruber, had in 1837 borne theillegitimate son, Alois, and the same who five years later had marriedthe mother, but had forgotten to recognize Alois expressly as his son. Atthe age of eighty-four, he now declared to the notary, in the presence ofthree witnesses by the name of Rameder, Breiteneder, and Pautsch, thathe was the father of the illegitimate child, Alois Schicklgruber, born onJune 7, 1837. Why he had failed to legitimize Alois when marrying hismother does not appear from the records. Under what circumstances hedid so in 1876, what sort of life Georg Hiedler-Hitler was then leading,on what terms he was with his son, and what occasioned this tardylegitimation are also absent from the records. The