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

HE IS BOTH TERRIBLE AND BANAL 71has not returned to the Home for Men, and stole from me the picture ofparliament, valued at fifty kronen, and a watercolor, valued at ninekronen. The only document of his that I ever saw was the workingbooklet in question in the name of Fritz Walter. I know Hanisch fromthe lodging-house in Meidling where I once met him.(signed) Adolf HitlerThe record bears the same signature as his numerous drawings fromthat time. Today the case does not especially interest us; but it doesconfirm that Hitler lived in the lodging-house and later in the Home forMen, and thus offers an interesting trace of his past over which he laterin his autobiography spreads a veil of generalities and high-flownunlikelihoods. One detail must be added: In a trial taking place onAugust 11, 1910, Hitler under oath partly changed his testimony; headmitted he had received money for the second picture ostensiblypurloined by Hanisch.The lawsuit and the whole affair with Hanisch made a great impressionon Hitler. Years later he told new friends in Munich that theJews in Vienna had wanted to defraud him out of the fruits of his labor.Hanisch came of a Catholic working-class family in Sudeten Germany.Hitler spent three whole years in the Home for Men in the TwentiethDistrict of Vienna, and the style of his existence remained unchanged;so much can be gleaned from the extremely meager indications of hisown version, and the sparse data provided by chance acquaintances. Forin those terrible years he seems to have had no closer friends. Accordingto what he later told friends in Munich, he seems to have spent the yearsafter his break with Hanisch in the most terrible loneliness; totallylimited to the most superficial contacts with room neighbors andbusiness friends. His family in Linz and Spital heard nothing of him; foryears they thought him dead.Was there no woman during all this time? This is a special chapter.All sorts of abnormalities have been attributed to him, from perversionto indifference. In the purely biological or medical sense, he is asnormal as anyone could wish; but here, as in all other