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

44 DER FUEHRERPolzl, to run. The farm was situated in his home village of Spital, morethan a hundred miles from Braunau, his place of service. Thus AloisSchicklgruber-Hidcr was apparendy preparing his return to the homesod.On April 20, 1889, at half-past six in the evening, at the Hotel zumPommer in Braunau, another son was born, in the fifth year of his thirdmarriage. Two days later, at a quarter after three in the afternoon, thischild was baptized by the name of Adolfus. This was Alois Hitler'sfourth child, the second from his marriage with Klara Polzl. Thegodparents were a couple by the name of Prinz (possibly of Jewishdescent) from the Lowengasse in Vienna. The little son of the Austrianborder official spent his first years on German soil in the border city ofPassau, not far from Braunau.Then some quarrel must have broken out in the family and AloisHitler abandoned the idea of returning home. He had himself transferredto Linz, the capital of Upper Austria, and there he retired on pension atthe strikingly early age of fifty-eight (1895). There now began a restlessperiod. He bought and sold farm after farm in the little townshipsaround Linz; it looked more like land speculation than any idea ofsetding down. At length he established himself for the last years of hislife in Leonding, a suburb of Linz.The school reports of his son, Adolfus, have been preserved from theseyears. On April 2, 1895, the six-year-old entered the public school in thevillage of Fischlham; two years later he was sent to the cloister school atLambach; then followed a year at public school in Leonding. His reportcards from these years show only marks of 'excellent,' with anoccasional exception in singing, drawing, and gymnastics.A six-year-old boy — a sixty-year-old father. A thirty-seven year-oldmother. Adolfus grew up in a violently, unnaturally divided world. Tohis mother — this we can feel from his own account — he was deeplydevoted, and she in turn was devoted to the point of weakness to theself-reliant, stormy son. Was he self-reliant? Light and shade alternatestrangely in this character. Reports of teachers, fellow pupils, andneighbors concur in their description: a big 'Indian chief,' a rough-neck,an eloquent, loud-voiced ring-