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Double portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria.
Production by German arms manufacturers had been running at maximum capacity for a long time. The heads of German heavy industry, Krupp and Thyssen, thereby saw their hopes fulfilled of finally profiting from their expensive investments in advanced weapons of mass destruction. But the young men in field grey uniforms did not have the slightest inkling of this as they marched through the Brandenburg Gate in a column without end. Nor did the women and children who lined the streets and gave those marching by buttonholes and cheered them on. Such scenes were taking place throughout the German Reich and in Austria. Whereby the soldiers looked serious and full of confidence into the crowds standing around them, filled with their own self-importance and the diffuse expectation of whatever it was they were unacquainted with, but which was promised to be something that would forge them into a man just like a steel bath. They climbed aboard goods wagons inscribed with the slogan “For breakfast in Paris” and headed off into an uncertain future.
August 1914 in Berlin: a troop transport with gaily waving soldiers shortly before departing for the front.
They had obeyed the summons of their Kaiser, which had been published in the extra editions of all major newspapers on 7 August 1914. In gigantic letters there stood: “To the German People!” His words were also transmitted as a radio address:
“And now the sword must decide. In the midst of peace the enemy attacks us. And so to arms! Any wavering or hesitation would be treason against the Fatherland! It is about the existence or non-existence of our Reich, which our fathers founded afresh, about the existence or non-existence of German might and German existence. We will defend ourselves until the last breath of man and steed.”22
The Germans and the French, the sworn and hereditary enemies, now stood facing each other, filled with an uncertain hatred and a glowing furore, which discharged itself in a long held back explosion. They stormed and stabbed each other with their bayonets and during the whole time did not have an idea why and how everything had started...
German soldiers and mule with gas masks during the 1st World War on the Western Front.
But there was also bitter fighting on other fronts as well. The alliance partners Germany and Austria were surrounded on all sides in the end.
City of the movement
Hitler too must have heard the Kaiser’s addresses in Munich. The 25-year old had been there since 1913. His time in Vienna, glorified by him and which he had described as years of apprenticeship and suffering, were at first not as marked by material need as he himself and, for a long time, the writers of history had depicted. He had an inheritance from his mother and had been loaned not inconsiderable sums by his aunt “Hanni”, Johanna Pölzl. He was also in receipt of a monthly orphan’s pension from his father’s side. He lived on this quite comfortably for the first one and a half years.
Once back in Vienna after the death of his mother, he wanted to work hard and in a focused manner in order to realise his dream of “becoming an architect”. In autumn 1908, he once again faced the admission procedure at the Vienna Academy of Arts. The professors knew him from the examination the previous year and this went against him: this time he failed the examination in the subject of composition. He was not even allowed to submit the studies he had prepared under the guidance of the sculptor, Panholzer, who lived in Vienna. One year later even his inheritance was used up. His accommodation became more and more miserable due to his material situation until he finally ended up in a home for the homeless in Meidling, a district on Vienna’s south-western periphery. In February 1910 he changed male hostels once again, moving to one where he was accommodated in a cell-like room. In the communal rooms, however, there was also a reading room, in which Hitler took up residence with his painting and drawing things. At this point in time the unappreciated artist’s existence was the cliché that he manipulated for the outside world. In his last Viennese residence he met a man by the name of Reinhold Hanisch and became friends with him. The latter led a somewhat questionable existence and had already served time in prison and used false documents. The division of labour between the two however functioned perfectly, probably because they were such complete opposites. Next to the shy and awkward Hitler, whose provincial origins were all too obvious still, Hanisch came across as a really smooth customer. Whilst Hitler produced quite respectable copies from postcards and old engravings, his companion offered to make the sales and sold them. It was mainly Jewish businessmen, who liked the little pictures. The watercolours of well-known historical monuments were in the most demand.
Auersperg Palace in Vienna, watercolour by Adolf Hitler, after 1907.
Later Hitler also went on to design advertising posters for, amongst other things, cosmetics and ladies underwear23. A start to a career that seems almost stereotypical.
When did Adolf Hitler become the person he later was? Turning into a radical anti-Semite? Into a fanatical seeker of Lebensraum in the East for his German people? A human being and his career are not the sum of their parts. One cannot calculate the origin back from the end point. Just as little as one can foresee how an individual will develop and what course his life will take. Many outstanding personalities both in the positive and negative sense were quite unremarkable in childhood and neither bore the stigmata of being the chosen one nor signs of evil.
What finally prompted Hitler to leave Vienna, the city to which not much more than a few acquaintances from the men’s hostel connected him, was his fear of the military authorities. He had namely not reported within the deadline set to do his national service. And, as a result, first of all nothing happened for three years. But he did not trust this quiet and in spring 1913 he absconded to Munich in neighbouring Bavaria and thus set foot in the country, which he was always to maintain was his: Germany. He fraudulently told his future landlord, the master tailor Joseph Popp, that he was an academic architectural painter. Initially, he maintained the lifestyle in Munich he had already been accustomed to in Vienna: he painted watercolours and oil paintings in his room, using postcards as a reference. He never painted the original in real life. He was now able to sell his work through an art dealer; this signified a certain step-up in society. His uneventful life as a hermit was however rudely interrupted by a summons from the Munich police. The Austrian authorities had succeeded in finding out Hitler’s place of abode. Thereupon they requested their Bavarian colleagues for help. It was a star performance Hitler, undoubtedly gifted in this department, could be proud of when he managed to convince the police officer that he was a sick and poor fellow. At the subsequent call-up on 5 February 1914 in Salzburg, this performance was confirmed by the result: exempted from military service due to a weak constitution.
After the assassination of the Austrian crown prince, on 2 August 1914 Hitler found himself in the crowd waiting on the Munich Odeonsplatz and heard the Kaiser’s proclamation. The young painter, who had not wanted to fight for the Habsburg state, was now prepared to die for the German Reich: “Those hours seemed to me like a redemption from the annoying feelings of youth. I am not ashamed to say that, overwhelmed by a fervent enthusiasm, I sank to my knees and thanked heaven from an overflowing heart for giving me the luck of living at this time.”24 He shared this pathetic ardour by the way with many people, above all writers and artists: Thomas Mann, Ludwig Thoma, Franz Marc, Gerhard Hauptmann and many more.
Hitler (circle and cutout) in the war-crazed crowd in front of the Feldherrnhalle in Munich. Photograph dated 2 August 1914.
Adolf Hitler reported as a volunteer. The Bavarians overlooked the fact that he was actually an Austrian citizen in the general hubbub. After his basic military training,