Story Highlights
- Historical event:
- 20 April 1889
- Above is a photograph of Adolf Hitler taken as a child. He was born in the Austrian town of Braunau on the River Inn.
Adolf Hitler was born on this day in the Austrian town of Braunau on the River Inn. His father was Alois Hitler and he worked as a customs inspector in Braunau, located on the German-Austrian border.
Hitler’s father was an illegitimate son and his birth name was Schicklgruber, but at the age of 39 he changed his last name to Hitler, after his stepfather. There was some speculation that Alois’s biological father was a Jew Leopold Frankenberger, but there is no evidence of that.
Adolf Hitler’s mother was Klara Pölzl – quiet, devout and loving wife according to her doctor’s descriptions. On the other hand, Adolf’s father was strict and authoritarian, and soon the father-son conflict erupted.
Already after elementary school, little Adolf Hitler wanted to become an artist, but his father forbade that, trying to make him become a civil servant like himself.
He sent him to a technical high school, where Adolf became a poor student out of protest. For the same reason, Adolf rejected his father’s Austrian citizenship and considered himself a German.
After his father died, Adolf devoted himself to art and left for Vienna, where he attempted to enroll at an art academy. He was rejected in painting and architecture, which devastated him.
He was out of money and lived in a Viennese homeless shelter for several years. It is interesting that Hitler became an anti-Semite precisely in Vienna, largely under the influence of then anti-Jewish mayor Karl Lueger.
