Hitler and the Nazi Cult of Celebrity (3 page)

He noted in his diaries, as recorded by his wife Cosima, ‘All Jews should be burned at a performance of Nathan the Wise’,
37
and wrote of ‘cursed Jew scum’.
38
He wrote to Franz Liszt, Cosima’s father: ‘I have cherished a long repressed resentment about this Jew money-world, and this hatred is as necessary to my nature as gall is to blood.’
39

Hitler knew well of Wagner’s outspoken anti-Semitism, and believed what Wagner said was true, and that the music he wrote was the work of a prophetic genius. Wagner’s anti-Semitism, his mantras, his music and the spectacle of the operas all played
important
roles in Hitler’s future Germany.

Hitler was in awe and envy of Wagner’s fame – of his celebrity. After death, Wagner lived on in his music and his fame. It was a form of immortality, and that appealed to Hitler, along with the other trappings of fame – wealth, adulation, admiration. Hitler
wanted all that and became convinced that he could have it all, that it was his for the taking, that his destiny had been revealed to him by his god Wagner.

Wagner was more than a composer: he was a national hero and powerful political force. Writers, philosophers and politicians testified to his profound influence. Such was the adulation from King Ludwig II of Bavaria, he helped to finance the Bayreuth
Festspielhaus
, which was designed specifically by Wagner for the performance of his operas. Wagner had been thinking about a
festival
since 1850, and it became the world-famous Bayreuth Festival. Wagner societies were springing up everywhere and were promoted in the German-nationalistic
Bayreuther Blätter
. From the opening of the festival in 1876, anti-Semitism and racism were embedded in the Bayreuth opera.
40

The relationship between Hitler and Wagner’s music has long been recognised as a major factor in Hitler’s life and career.

His background, the influences in his early years, and indeed his personality traits, simply gave him a particular predisposition to have his fantasies and delusions ignited by a night at the opera. He wanted to be famous, he wanted to be wealthy, he wanted to show the
bourgeois
he wasn’t to be rejected. Wagner’s operas, particularly
Rienzi
and also
Lohengrin
, told him, like a personal revelation – through the power of the emotion of the music and the drama and his own
overwhelming
idolisation of Wagner – that not only could he achieve all those things but that he was destined to bring them all to pass.

To a great degree, Wagner’s music made Adolf Hitler into the monster he became. It was the catalyst for what was to come, and the driving force throughout Hitler’s life. A vision had
transformed
him – one might say
transfigured
him in an almost religious sense. Years later, in Bayreuth in 1939, Kubizek met Hitler again and reminded him of the night they first saw
Rienzi
. Hitler was prompted to tell his hostess Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law of the maestro, ‘In that hour, it began.’
41

M
usic and drama alone could not create a Hitler. There had to be some form of madness that gave him a predisposition to the influence of Wagner, and to his unrealistic dreams of fame and fortune. The answer may well lie in his genes. His father was Alois Hitler, and his mother was Klara Pölzl. Klara wasn’t just Alois’s wife, but his foster daughter too. As if that were not a bizarre enough circumstance, Klara’s mother’s name was Hitler, and that was because Alois and Klara shared a common ancestor – his grandfather, her great-grandfather. Klara was a first cousin once removed to Alois.

Alois Hitler of the Austrian Finance Ministry and his first wife Anna Glassl-Hoerer (she was fifty when they married, he
thirty-six
) had fostered Klara when she was sixteen, after Anna became invalided by sickness and he inherited a large sum of money from his mother’s estate. Through an affair he had with Franziska Matzelsberger he had a son, Alois Junior, and a daughter, Angela, and after Anna died, he married Franziska. When she became seriously ill, Klara took care of her and the two children. Franziska died on 10 August 1884.

Alois wasted no time in seducing Klara – there is the
suggestion
he raped her – and she became pregnant. They married on 7 January 1885, and she gave birth to a son, Gustav, on 17 May 1885, nine months after Franziska died. A daughter, Ida, followed on 23 September 1886, or so it is alleged; there was the suspicion that Ida was an ‘imbecile’ and may have been kept hidden from public view. A third child, Otto, was born and died in 1887. According to William Patrick Hitler, the son of Adolf’s half-brother Alois Jr, another illegitimate child had been born to the couple earlier, but no record of it exists.
42

On 20 April 1889, Adolf Hitler was born in Ranshofen, a village annexed to the municipality of Braunau am Inn, Upper Austria. His family moved to Kapuzinerstrasse in Passau, Germany when Adolf was three. Living in Passau for a mere two years as an infant was enough to imbue the boy with a German accent.

Alois Jr disliked his younger half-brother, who he felt was spoiled by his mother. As adults the half-brothers were never close, and when Adolf came to power, he and Alois Jr had practically no contact with each other. Hitler did not mention Alois Jr in
Mein Kampf
, and he allegedly had him sent to a concentration camp in 1942, although there is no record of that happening except in a dubious newspaper report.
43
However, Alois Jr’s son Heinz died in a Soviet prison in 1942 after being captured on the Eastern Front during the war, which might have led to the conclusion that it was Alois Jr who had been sent to a concentration camp. Alois Jr actually died in Hamburg in 1956.

Two more children were born to Klara and Alois – Edmund on 24 March 1894, and Paula on 21 January 1896. Edmund died of measles on 28 February 1900. Paula was said to be a little on the ‘stupid side’,
44
and as an adult she called herself ‘Frau Wolf’ and was described by a neighbour as ‘very queer’.
45
The family doctor, Eduard Bloch, believed that Klara and Alois had another daughter called Klara, slightly older than Adolf, whom they hid away because she was an ‘imbecile’, although Dr Bloch may have actually seen the supposedly dead Ida; in either case, there is the strong possibility that the Hitler family had at least one daughter who was mentally disabled.
46

With the loss of so many children, one daughter on the ‘stupid side’, and another possible daughter an imbecile – and one who would become the personification of evil – there would seem to be what American psychiatrist Walter C. Langer classified ‘a
constitutional
weakness’ in the Hitler family, and a question of the ‘purity of the blood’,
47
that was the result of an incestuous relationship between Alois and Klara. If there was impurity of the Hitler blood, Adolf was infected.

Adolf was the focal point of Klara’s life and she lavished all her
affection on him, until Edmund was born and changed all that. Two years after that, baby sister Paula provided him with further competition for his mother’s attention and affection. Adding to his misery at home was his father’s domineering temperament which, according to William Patrick Hitler, led to beatings for all the family, including Klara. On one occasion he beat Alois Jr into unconsciousness, and another time beat Adolf and left him for dead. Alois Sr was a drunkard who spent much of his time in the taverns, returning home to beat Klara, the children and even the dog. Adolf hated his father, and became ever more dependent on his doting mother’s affection.

Adolf’s schooling suffered as his father’s work kept the family moving from one place to another. He enjoyed his time at a Catholic school in an eleventh-century Benedictine monastery cloister from the age of eight, and was so impressed and intrigued by the
religious
life there that he decided to become a priest. What inspired him most of all was the theatricality of worship; he enjoyed the opportunity ‘to intoxicate myself with the solemn splendour of the brilliant church festivals’.
48
He was expelled when caught smoking, and he developed a hatred for the monks but retained his delight in religious ceremony, which was later manifest among all the
theatrical
elements of his style of leadership and government.

He constantly fought with his father and teachers, and he lost interest in his lessons. The only subjects in which he excelled were freehand drawing and gymnastics, subjects that required no
preparation
or thought. He was becoming the kind of person that can be found among psychiatric patients, according to Walter C. Langer, who are actually very intelligent but refuse to work, and who are bright enough to understand the fundamental principles without exerting themselves, giving the impression of knowing something without ever actually studying, and glossing over superficial
knowledge
with glib words and terminology.
49

Hitler possessed no great intellect and read lowbrow books such Karl May’s Wild West stories. He came to school with Bowie knives and hatchets, and tried to get the other boys to play at being
Indians. He always wanted to be the chief, but none of the other boys considered him someone with leadership qualities and ostracised him.
50
He slipped more and more into his own fantasy world in which he was the leader. The problem was, he had no followers.

He became bitter and mutinous, and took an obsessive interest in German nationalism as a means of rebelling against his father, who was proud to serve in the Austrian government. Most who lived near the Austrian–German border considered themselves
German-Austrians
. Alois favoured Austria over Germany, but Adolf took the opposite view. He transferred his love for his mother to Germany, which, being young and vigorous and holding the promise of a great future under the right circumstances, became a symbol of his ideal mother. Austria became a representation of his father – old, exhausted, and decaying from within. While most Germans referred to Germany as the ‘fatherland’, Hitler often referred to it as the ‘motherland’.
51
In defiance of the Austrian monarchy as well as his father, Hitler refused to join in singing the Austrian
imperial
anthem and sang instead the German anthem,
Deutschland über Alles
.

After Alois died on 3 January 1903 from a stroke, Adolf’s
behaviour
became more disruptive. In 1906 he was expelled from the
Realschule
in Steyr because he used his school certificate upon completion of his second year as toilet paper; he received a dressing down that was probably the most humiliating experience of his life.
52
He vowed never to return to school and returning to live with his mother and sister Paula in Linz, he dedicated himself ‘wholly to art’; drawing, watching his first movies
53
and going to the opera. He wrote that these were ‘the happiest days which seemed to me almost like a beautiful dream’
54
– they were days spent in idleness, which is how he wanted to spend the rest of his life, and he thought he could achieve that by becoming an artist.

Aged eighteen, he went to Vienna for the first time, and was impressed by the architectural splendours of the bourgeois city, describing the parliament building ‘a Hellenic marble on German soil’ which he painted in watercolours. He even managed to sell
some of his work. He was ‘full of confident self-assurance’
55
when in October 1907 he applied to the Academy of Art. He failed because his sample drawing was graded ‘unsatisfactory’;
56
the director of the academy advised him to study architecture. Hitler described this whole experience as ‘an abrupt blow’,
57
but still had every intention of becoming an artist – or doing nothing at all.

On 21 December 1907, Klara died from breast cancer. Hitler returned to Linz and created a lasting impression of his beloved mother by sketching her in death. His intense grief was brightened when Magdalena Hanisch, who owned the house where his mother had lived and died, wrote a letter of recommendation to Alfred Roller, one of Germany’s finest stage designers, who worked at the
Hofoper
and taught at the Vienna Academy of Arts and Crafts, describing Hitler as ‘an earnest, aspiring young man’, and that he ‘has in mind a serious goal’. Roller replied that he would be happy to meet with the young man
58
and, imagining that he would become a set designer for plays and operas under the tutorage of Alfred Roller, Hitler arrived back in Vienna in February 1908.

What actually took place between Hitler and Roller is unknown. Their letters were carefully preserved by the Third Reich, but Hitler remained forever silent on the matter, probably because Roller most likely did little more than encourage Hitler to study and work hard, anathema to Hitler, who scorned the very idea that a man must work to live. All he really wanted to do was live the life of an artist and remain free to indulge in music and opera.

He applied to the academy again; he could only qualify for his orphan’s pension if he was engaged in a formal course of education. He also lived on his father’s inheritance and his mother’s legacy. Kubizek came to Vienna to study at the Conservatory of Music, and they shared a single dreary rented room. Hitler rarely rose from bed before noon and then spent afternoons visiting museums and libraries, and in the evenings went to the opera; he saw
Tristan and Isolde
up to forty times.
59

He sketched buildings and wrote a thesis on his concept of an ideal German state. He studied Wagner’s life, work, philosophies
and anti-Semitic proclamations. He would later recall the sensation of hearing the funeral march from
Götterdämmerung
for the first time, and of the anti-Semitic feelings it stirred within him:

Götterdämmerung – Twilight of the Gods
– is the last in Wagner’s cycle of four operas,
Der Ring des Nibelungen
(
The Ring of the Nibelung,
or sometimes just called
The Ring
), concluding the story of Siegfried and Brünnhilde and how she betrays him, leading him to his death the only way he can be killed – by a spear in his back. When she rides her horse into his funeral pyre, the world and Valhalla go up in flames, and all gods and heroes die in the fire – the twilight of the gods,
Götterdämmerung
.

Hitler was to become obsessed with the whole concept of
Götterdämmerung
, and how he would one day follow Siegfried into the flames that would end the world at whatever cost to all others. That’s how powerful an influence Wagner was on Hitler. Death, he concluded, was to be celebrated: his cult of death would pervade his life and career. And it would be consummated in fire, resulting in what might be called a Nero complex – a desire to see all he ruled razed by fire so he could rebuild it.

Failing as an artist, Hitler imagined he could write a Wagnerian opera; he had to emulate the man he considered the supreme artist in every way. He knew that among Wagner’s papers had been found an unfinished piece,
Wieland the Smith
, and Hitler announced to Kubizek that he would complete it.
61
With no musical training, he created melodies by finding the notes on the piano, which Kubizek wrote down.

Wieland the Smith
is an Icelandic legend about King Nidur, who is driven purely by avarice to rape his daughter, kill his sons, and drink
from cups fashioned out of their skulls. Hitler wrote erupting
volcanoes
, Icelandic glaciers, and valkyries riding through the clouds. He considered himself to be a new Wagner, and his imagination knew no bounds, but his talent and patience did; the opera was never finished. Failing to become the new Wagner, he decided fame and fortune instead awaited him as a playwright, and he took to writing a stage drama using ideas from Germanic sagas. Kubizek noted that when writing plays, Hitler imagined ‘the most magnificent staging’, and was impressed by the ‘enormous pomp’ which put all that Wagner had ever created for the stage ‘completely in the shade’. But, like his opera, Hitler’s plays also came to nothing. His thoughts returned to painting, and in September 1908 he submitted paintings to the academy once more. Again he was rejected, and he found himself slipping into an identity crisis, fearing he could never emulate Wagner the genius and supreme artist in any way whatsoever.

Driven by his rejection at the hands of the establishment, his persona took on a new dimension. Kubizek observed that he was given to sudden and vehement fits of despair, intense aggression and an apparent unrestrained facility for hatred. Humiliated, he withdrew into isolation, without any explanation moving out of the apartment he shared with Kubizek and into one alone where he could rant inwardly at the bourgeois world that had turned against him.