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

60 DER FUEHRERto try and invent something; they liked to read and try to improve theireducation. How many of: the great engineers and industrialists hadstarted out as workers! Hitler: 'Well, those are the exceptions, mastermen . . .'In the age which had invented the 'religion of labor,' the young artistprincewouldn't let himself be fooled. That was a sugary swindle for themasses who didn't want to and had no right to improve their lot; but ayoung artist waits in princely idleness for the dream-gift of inspiration,and 'can't work like a coolie after all.' This is his answer to his partner,Hanisch, when he comes running impatiently for new merchandise andfinds the artist with his nose deep in the newspaper. Newspaper readingwas his favorite occupation; there he sits in the gloomy reading-room ofthe Home for Men, bending over the page, gripping two othernewspapers fast under his arms; and if for a change he really does startto work on a drawing, someone only has to leave a fresh newspaper onthe table beside him — he snatches at it and his work flies under thetable. Artist, cries Hanisch, you an artist? A hunger artist, at most, adauber, and a lazybones in the bargain. And he didn't even know how totake care of his few pennies, Hanisch reproached him; if he earned afew kronen, he didn't do a stroke of work for days, but sat around acheap cafe reading newspapers, eating four or five cream puffs one afteranother. Yet he spent next to no money on alcohol, none at all ontobacco; even his critical friend had to ad-mit that.The young man with the affected lungs had never smoked and hadalmost never taken drink. His father had drunk and his son's abstinencemay be regarded as an unconscious protest against his father, just as hisprotest against work was a conscious protest. Yet all external influences,accidents, educational methods do not bring out of a man what was notin him to begin with; when Hitler father and son fought, the personalitytype lying at the base of the whole family was fighting with itself; theself-dissatisfaction, expressed in abrupt restlessness, which we suspectin Georg Hiedler, clearly recognize in Alois Schicklgruber, and canliterally touch in Adolf Hitler, is the real source of the quarrel. They allbroke out of the traditional life. Georg Hiedler led the life of a gypsy;Alois