August Kubizek

August Kubizek (August 3rd 1888 with Linz (Austria) - October 23rd 1956). He was a friend and the joint tenant of Adolf Hitler with Linz and Vienna between 1904 and 1908. Called " Gustl".

Friendship with Linz (autumn 1904 - autumn 1907)

The parents of August Kubizek are Austrians of Czech origin. After elementary studies he works as apprentice-tapestry maker in the company of his father. Moreover, its true passion is the music. During All Saints' day of the year 1904, it makes the recontre of a boy of its age to the opera of Linz: Adolf Hitler. They are all the two music lovers and attracted in particular the large German-speaking type-setters sails about it at the end of the XIX° century: Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler or Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. At the same Hitler time, which still follows a teaching, sees itself returned Realschule of Linz where it is bored. Its professor of history, Léopold Pötsch, is an enthusiastic pangermanist. Moreover between two young people, it is Hitler which directs the political and artistic discussions. He lives with his mother Klara Pölzl in Urfahr in the suburbs whereas August even lives in his/her parents with Linz. The two teenagers stroll regularly in the streets of the city, until the day when Hitler falls in love with a young middle-class woman, named Stéphanie, met on Landstrasse, whereas she walked with her mother. One with the mention that Hitler would have liked to commit suicide in the Danube, not managing to allure the young girl during spring 1906. Klara Pölzl, which from now on is convinced that his/her son will not do anything with the college, accepts that it tries his entry in the Art schools.

Short collocation in Vienna (February 1908 - October 1908)

Hitler is on the point of trying the entrance examination in the Art schools of Vienna in October 1907, it moves in the Austrian capital. When Adolf Hitler fails first once, he does not warn Kubizek nor his mother and fact seeming to continue to study the drawing. In December 1907, he learns the hospitalization from his mother and court with his bedside with Linz: she succumbs to her cancer the 21. The Kubizek family then proposed in Hitler to pass the festivals of Christmas with them, this last refuses. According to the testimony of Kubizek, Hitler would have succeeded in convincing the father of this last to enable him to try the Academy of Vienna (February 1908). They rent a small room with a piano in Stumpergasse. August learns the violin and makes a success of its entry with the Academy. They have little money to live, although one receives pocket money of Linz and that the other perceives an orphan pension. October 8th, 1908, Hitler retente its entry in the Art schools, it is a new failure. One does not know exactly for which reason, perhaps that it carried out its military service, Kubizek was absent at this period. It receives postcards of Hitler and when it returns to Vienna in November, it finds the open stope, Hitler left.

Life of Kubizek of 1909 to 1956

August Kubizek will not find Hitler, since this last lives from now on among the tramps of Vienna. As for him it continues its studies and arrives, as from October 1912 and until the bursting of the First World War, to obtain a post of head of orchestra to the theater of Marburg on Drau (today Maribor). In August 1914, Kubizek is enlisted, unlike Hitler, in the Austro-Hungarian army. After the demobilization of 1918, it accepts a post of head of orchestra to the theater of Eferding (with 30 kilometers of Linz, High-Austria), the music continues to be its passion. It Marie, two wire were born from this union. In 1933, it congratulates personally Adolf Hitler for its nomination with the chancellery. The Nazis require of him to write a work on the youth of the Führer ( Reminiscences , 2 volumes, 1938). Between 1938 and 1940, he is the personal guest with the festivals of Bayreuth at the sides of Führer. Between 1945 and 1946, it is imprisoned by the Americans who show it to have been near to Hitler. It is finally released and writes a work on this special friendship in 1953 under the title: Adolf Hitler, mein Jügendfreund (Adolf Hitler my friend of childhood). He dies in Linz, in October 1956, at the 68 years age.

Memories of Kubizek: a good source for the historian?

In the years 1950 and that until a recent date, the historians, in particular American, seriously gave in doubt the information given by Kubizek, by showing it to invent the majority of the anecdotes. Brigitte Hamann then others, proposed to revalorize its testimony. While looking at there more closely, one realizes finally that it provided authentic details. From there, L. Machtan wondered whether Kubizek had not had a homosexual relation with Hitler, which rejects firmly Ian Kershaw. However, Kubizek notes in its memories that at the time where they cohabited in Vienna, and even in Linz, Hitler always had advances of girls or women what it did not support (this is homosexual jealousy?). It also notes, which his/her friend was insane in love with Stéphanie that it wanted to marry. Kubizek makes a long description of this remote relation between Hitler and the young girl. In the years 1950, this person had become the widow of colonel Rabatsch. Installed in suburbs Viennese, she was very requested. She ends up writing a note:

" I do not remember Adolf Hitler. What said Mr. Kubizek of the love that it would have carried to me is possible; the indications which it gave on the spot of my walks with my mother, on my family, myself are exact except on a point: my hair was not capped in long braids. It was interdict with the college (...). I remember to have received, towards the 20 years age, a letter of an unknown boy. He wrote to me that he left for Vienna, where he was going to enter to the Academy of the Art schools, but which he would return to marry me. I do not know any more if it were signed nor of which name. At the time the young girls in boys younger than they were not interested (...). "

That thus reveals that the information given by Kubizek is exact. In fact, according to F. Delpla, it did not even make an error since it does not say that Stéphanie carried braids on the way of the college, but only on one photograph that itself knew much later. It is thought today that the widow tried to dissimulate a relation which could perhaps have been born if Hitler had not been timid and if he had not become tramp following its second failure in the Art schools in 1908.

On the other hand, the historians doubt always today Kubizek about the emergence of the Antisémitisme in the Hitler young person. Moreover it is rather confused in its information. According to him, Adolf Hitler was a looked after young man, posed who hated the war until criticizing the brothers Wright to have tried out the air shooting. A contrario , B. Hamann, affirms without formal evidence that since its childhood he adores the war, compared to a speech which he gave in 1923 to Munich on the Guerre of Boers. Kubizek, note also that his/her friend nourished a vocation of dictator whom it would have found in Rienzi of Wagner: it is about the rise of a political leader while being based on the masses. It is not really known if Hitler which lived in Vienna in 1908 were anti-semite or not as he affirms it in Mein Kampf . Kubizek as for him, makes go up the anti-semitism of Hitler at the time of Linz (thus before 1908). He explains why at the time of a ballade, Hitler and would have passed to him in front of a Synagog and that this last pointed out that did not form part of Linz. Then another time, in Vienna, Hitler would have denounced with the police force a Jewish beggar who swindled the passers by. This information cannot unfortunately be checked. The historians today tend to explain the " period of Linz" rather like an approach of the Pan-Germanism, Hitler would have declared rather patriotic German like taught professor Pötsch to him. As for the emergence of its hatred of the Jews, it is probably to locate when he became tramp (winter 1908-1909) in a city where he was " normal" to hate the Jews, as underlined it with virulence the mayor anti-semite of Vienna, Karl Lueger. The doctrines Nazi are in fact only one synthesis between the Pan-Germanism of Schönerer and the anti-semitism of Lueger.

Sources

August Kubizek, Adolf Hitler - mein Jugendfreund , 1953. ISBN 370200971X
Ian Kershaw, Adolf Hitler: 1889-1936 , Norton, 1999.
François Delpla, Hitler , Grasset, 1999.
Brigitte Hamann, Vienna d' Hitler: years of training of a dictator , Editions of Syrtes, 2001.
Lothar Machtan, The Hidden Hitler , Basics Books, 2001.

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