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

54 DER FUEHRERcember 21, 1908, Klara Hitler died, and was buried in Leonding besideher husband. In Spital, Adolf took leave of his relatives. As his fatherhad done, he declared to his aunt, Theresa Schmidt, that he would notreturn to Spital or even write until he had made something of himself.This was to require thirty years. A spoiled boy who learned nothing,achieved nothing, and could do nothing, was facing the void.For four years he strove to prove to his relatives at home, to thehaughty professors of the Academy of Art, to the heartless city ofVienna, and above all to himself, that in spite of everything Heaven hadchosen him to be an artist-prince. He drew and painted — for theshopkeeper on the corner he made a poster in oil, advertising a talcumpowder; a Santa Claus selling bright-colored candles, and SaintStephen's Church over a mountain of soap. For four years he carried onthese and similar anonymous art exercises with unchanging meagersuccess. Hundreds of his art products from these days are probably stillavailable in the houses of Vienna citizens or in tradesmen's shops —their owners unaware of their treasures. Makers of wooden furniture inthose days used to attach little 'works of Art' to the backs of sofas andchairs, often a floral goddess or two little angels on a cloud. Hitler couldnot furnish this kind of thing; he was not able to draw a human form oreven a head from nature. But sometimes, instead of the flower girls orangels, there was a view of Vienna with stiff, angular lines — and thesehe could make; though not directly from nature, but painfully andfussily copying from other pictures. His products are precisestereotypes, rather geometric in effect, not always with a very happydistribution of light and shade. The human figures sometimes thrown inare a total failure. They stand like tiny stuffed sacks outside the high,solemn palaces.With such pictures he made the rounds of furniture-makers anddealers and manufacturers of picture frames, who bought his products tofill their empty frames. Some of them could remember him years later.He was always terribly unshaven, they reported, ran around in a longcoat resembling a caftan. His conduct was shy, almost crawling — inhis own account he calls himself 'earnest and still.' It struck one witnessthat he seldom looked people in the eye