Leathmac: 07/01/2005

CHAPTER I

IN THE HOME OF MY PARENTS

It has turned out fortunate for me to-day that destiny appointed

Braunau-on-the-Inn to be my birthplace. For that little town is situated

just on the frontier between those two States the reunion of which

seems, at least to us of the younger generation, a task to which we

should devote our lives and in the pursuit of which every possible means

should be employed.

German-Austria must be restored to the great German Motherland. And not

indeed on any grounds of economic calculation whatsoever. No, no. Even

if the union were a matter of economic indifference, and even if it were

to be disadvantageous from the economic standpoint, still it ought to

take place. People of the same blood should be in the same REICH. The

German people will have no right to engage in a colonial policy until

they shall have brought all their children together in the one State.

When the territory of the REICH embraces all the Germans and finds

itself unable to assure them a livelihood, only then can the moral right

arise, from the need of the people to acquire foreign territory. The

plough is then the sword; and the tears of war will produce the daily

bread for the generations to come.

And so this little frontier town appeared to me as the symbol of a great

task. But in another regard also it points to a lesson that is

applicable to our day. Over a hundred years ago this sequestered spot

was the scene of a tragic calamity which affected the whole German

nation and will be remembered for ever, at least in the annals of German

history. At the time of our Fatherland's deepest humiliation a

bookseller, Johannes Palm, uncompromising nationalist and enemy of the

French, was put to death here because he had the misfortune to have

loved Germany well. He obstinately refused to disclose the names of his

associates, or rather the principals who were chiefly responsible for

the affair. Just as it happened with Leo Schlageter. The former, like

the latter, was denounced to the French by a Government agent. It was a

director of police from Augsburg who won an ignoble renown on that

occasion and set the example which was to be copied at a later date by

the neo-German officials of the REICH under Herr Severing's

regime (Note 1).

[Note 1. In order to understand the reference here, and similar

references in later portions of MEIN KAMPF, the following must be borne

in mind:

From 1792 to 1814 the French Revolutionary Armies overran Germany. In

1800 Bavaria shared in the Austrian defeat at Hohenlinden and the French

occupied Munich. In 1805 the Bavarian Elector was made King of Bavaria by

Napoleon and stipulated to back up Napoleon in all his wars with a force

of 30,000 men. Thus Bavaria became the absolute vassal of the French.

This was 'TheTime of Germany's Deepest Humiliation', Which is referred

to again and again by Hitler.

In 1806 a pamphlet entitled 'Germany's Deepest Humiliation' was

published in South Germany. Amnng those who helped to circulate the

pamphlet was the Nürnberg bookseller, Johannes Philipp Palm. He was

denounced to the French by a Bavarian police agent. At his trial he

refused to disclose thename of the author. By Napoleon's orders, he was

shot at Braunau-on-the-Innon August 26th, 1806. A monument erected to

him on the site of the executionwas one of the first public objects that

made an impression on Hitler asa little boy.

Leo Schlageter's case was in many respects parallel to that of Johannes

Palm. Schlageter was a German theological student who volunteered for

service in 1914. He became an artillery officer and won the Iron Cross of

both classes. When the French occupied the Ruhr in 1923 Schlageter helped

to organize the passive resistance on the German side. He and his

companions blew up a railway bridge for the purpose of making the

transport of coal to France more difficult.

Those who took part in the affair were denounced to the French by a

German informer. Schlageter took the whole responsibility on his own

shoulders and was condemned to death, his companions being sentenced to

various terms of imprisonment and penal servitude by the French Court.

Schlageter refused to disclose the identity of those who issued the order

to blow up the railway bridge and he would not plead for mercy before a

French Court. He was shot by a French firing-squad on May 26th, 1923.

Severing was at that time German Minister of the Interior. It is said

that representations were made, to himon Schlageter's behalf and that he

refused to interfere.

Schlageter has become the chief martyr of the German resistancc to the

French occupation of the Ruhr and also one of the great heroes of the

National Socialist Movement. He had joined the Movement at a very early

stage, his card of membership bearing the number 61.]

In this little town on the Inn, haloed by the memory of a German martyr,

a town that was Bavarian by blood but under the rule of the Austrian

State, my parents were domiciled towards the end of the last century. My

father was a civil servant who fulfilled his duties very

conscientiously. My mother looked after the household and lovingly

devoted herself to the care of her children. From that period I have not

retained very much in my memory; because after a few years my father had

to leave that frontier town which I had come to love so much and take up

a new post farther down the Inn valley, at Passau, therefore actually in

Germany itself.

In those days it was the usual lot of an Austrian civil servant to be

transferred periodically from one post to another. Not long after coming

to Passau my father was transferred to Linz, and while there he retired

finally to live on his pension. But this did not mean that the old

gentleman would now rest from his labours.

He was the son of a poor cottager, and while still a boy he grew

restless and left home. When he was barely thirteen years old he buckled

on his satchel and set forth from his native woodland parish. Despite

the dissuasion of villagers who could speak from 'experience,' he went

to Vienna to learn a trade there. This was in the fiftieth year of the

last century. It was a sore trial, that of deciding to leave home and

face the unknown, with three gulden in his pocket. By when the boy of

thirteen was a lad of seventeen and had passed his apprenticeship

examination as a craftsman he was not content. Quite the contrary. The

persistent economic depression of that period and the constant want and

misery strengthened his resolution to give up working at a trade and

strive for 'something higher.' As a boy it had seemed to him that the

position of the parish priest in his native village was the highest in

the scale of human attainment; but now that the big city had enlarged

his outlook the young man looked up to the dignity of a State official

as the highest of all. With the tenacity of one whom misery and trouble

had already made old when only half-way through his youth the young man

of seventeen obstinately set out on his new project and stuck to it

until he won through. He became a civil servant. He was about

twenty-three years old, I think, when he succeeded in making himself

what he had resolved to become. Thus he was able to fulfil the promise

he had made as a poor boy not to return to his native village until he

was 'somebody.'

He had gained his end. But in the village there was nobody who had

remembered him as a little boy, and the village itself had become

strange to him.

Now at last, when he was fifty-six years old, he gave up his active

career; but he could not bear to be idle for a single day. On the

outskirts of the small market town of Lambach in Upper Austria he bought

a farm and tilled it himself. Thus, at the end of a long and

hard-working career, he came back to the life which his father had led.

It was at this period that I first began to have ideals of my own. I

spent a good deal of time scampering about in the open, on the long road

from school, and mixing up with some of the roughest of the boys, which

caused my mother many anxious moments. All this tended to make me

something quite the reverse of a stay-at-home. I gave scarcely any

serious thought to the question of choosing a vocation in life; but I

was certainly quite out of sympathy with the kind of career which my

father had followed. I think that an inborn talent for speaking now

began to develop and take shape during the more or less strenuous

arguments which I used to have with my comrades. I had become a juvenile

ringleader who learned well and easily at school but was rather

difficult to manage. In my freetime I practised singing in the choir of

the monastery church at Lambach, and thus it happened that I was placed

in a very favourable position to be emotionally impressed again and

again by the magnificent splendour of ecclesiastical ceremonial. What

could be more natural for me than to look upon the Abbot as representing

the highest human ideal worth striving for, just as the position of the

humble village priest had appeared to my father in his own boyhood days?

At least, that was my idea for a while. But the juvenile disputes I had

with my father did not lead him to appreciate his son's oratorical gifts

in such a way as to see in them a favourable promise for such a career,

and so he naturally could not understand the boyish ideas I had in my

head at that time. This contradiction in my character made him feel

somewhat anxious.

As a matter of fact, that transitory yearning after such a vocation soon

gave way to hopes that were better suited to my temperament. Browsing

through my father's books, I chanced to come across some publications

that dealt with military subjects. One of these publications was a

popular history of the Franco-German War of 1870-71. It consisted of two

volumes of an illustrated periodical dating from those years. These

became my favourite reading. In a little while that great and heroic

conflict began to take first place in my mind. And from that time

onwards I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in

any way connected with war or military affairs.

But this story of the Franco-German War had a special significance for

me on other grounds also. For the first time, and as yet only in quite a

vague way, the question began to present itself: Is there a

difference--and if there be, what is it--between the Germans who fought

that war and the other Germans? Why did not Austria also take part in

it? Why did not my father and all the others fight in that struggle? Are

we not the same as the other Germans? Do we not all belong together?

That was the first time that this problem began to agitate my small

brain. And from the replies that were given to the questions which I

asked very tentatively, I was forced to accept the fact, though with a

secret envy, that not all Germans had the good luck to belong to

Bismarck's Empire. This was something that I could not understand.

It was decided that I should study. Considering my character as a whole,

and especially my temperament, my father decided that the classical

subjects studied at the Lyceum were not suited to my natural talents. He

thought that the REALSCHULE (Note 2) would suit me better. My obvious

talent for drawing confirmed him in that view; for in his opinion drawing

was a subject too much neglected in the Austrian GYMNASIUM. Probably also

the memory of the hard road which he himself had travelled contributed to

make him look upon classical studies as unpractical and accordingly to

set little value on them. At the back of his mind he had the idea that

his son also should become an official of the Government. Indeed he had

decided on that career for me. The difficulties through which he had to

struggle in making his own career led him to overestimate what he had

achieved, because this was exclusively the result of his own

indefatigable industry and energy. The characteristic pride of the

self-made man urged him towards the idea that his son should follow the

same calling and if possible rise to a higher position in it. Moreover,

this idea was strengthened by the consideration that the results of his

own life's industry had placed him in a position to facilitate his son's

advancement in the same career.

[Note 2. Non-classical secondary school. The Lyceum and GYMNASIUM were

classical or semi-classical secondary schools.]

He was simply incapable of imagining that I might reject what had meant

everything in life to him. My father's decision was simple, definite,

clear and, in his eyes, it was something to be taken for granted. A man

of such a nature who had become an autocrat by reason of his own hard

struggle for existence, could not think of allowing 'inexperienced' and

irresponsible young fellows to choose their own careers. To act in such

a way, where the future of his own son was concerned, would have been a

grave and reprehensible weakness in the exercise of parental authority

and responsibility, something utterly incompatible with his

characteristic sense of duty.

And yet it had to be otherwise.

For the first time in my life--I was then eleven years old--I felt

myself forced into open opposition. No matter how hard and determined my

father might be about putting his own plans and opinions into action,

his son was no less obstinate in refusing to accept ideas on which he

set little or no value.

I would not become a civil servant.

No amount of persuasion and no amount of 'grave' warnings could break

down that opposition. I would not become a State official, not on any

account. All the attempts which my father made to arouse in me a love or

liking for that profession, by picturing his own career for me, had only

the opposite effect. It nauseated me to think that one day I might be

fettered to an office stool, that I could not dispose of my own time but

would be forced to spend the whole of my life filling out forms.

One can imagine what kind of thoughts such a prospect awakened in the

mind of a young fellow who was by no means what is called a 'good boy'

in the current sense of that term. The ridiculously easy school tasks

which we were given made it possible for me to spend far more time in

the open air than at home. To-day, when my political opponents pry into

my life with diligent scrutiny, as far back as the days of my boyhood,

so as finally to be able to prove what disreputable tricks this Hitler

was accustomed to in his young days, I thank heaven that I can look back

to those happy days and find the memory of them helpful. The fields and

the woods were then the terrain on which all disputes were fought out.

Even attendance at the REALSCHULE could not alter my way of spending my

time. But I had now another battle to fight.

So long as the paternal plan to make a State functionary contradicted my

own inclinations only in the abstract, the conflict was easy to bear. I

could be discreet about expressing my personal views and thus avoid

constantly recurrent disputes. My own resolution not to become a

Government official was sufficient for the time being to put my mind

completely at rest. I held on to that resolution inexorably. But the

situation became more difficult once I had a positive plan of my own

which I might present to my father as a counter-suggestion. This

happened when I was twelve years old. How it came about I cannot exactly

say now; but one day it became clear to me that I would be a painter--I

mean an artist. That I had an aptitude for drawing was an admitted fact.

It was even one of the reasons why my father had sent me to the

REALSCHULE; but he had never thought of having that talent developed in

such a way that I could take up painting as a professional career. Quite

the contrary. When, as a result of my renewed refusal to adopt his

favourite plan, my father asked me for the first time what I myself

really wished to be, the resolution that I had already formed expressed

itself almost automatically. For a while my father was speechless. "A

painter? An artist-painter?" he exclaimed.

He wondered whether I was in a sound state of mind. He thought that he

might not have caught my words rightly, or that he had misunderstood

what I meant. But when I had explained my ideas to him and he saw how

seriously I took them, he opposed them with that full determination

which was characteristic of him. His decision was exceedingly simple and

could not be deflected from its course by any consideration of what my

own natural qualifications really were.

"Artist! Not as long as I live, never." As the son had inherited some of

the father's obstinacy, besides having other qualities of his own, my

reply was equally energetic. But it stated something quite the contrary.

At that our struggle became stalemate. The father would not abandon his

'Never', and I became all the more consolidated in my 'Nevertheless'.

Naturally the resulting situation was not pleasant. The old gentleman

was bitterly annoyed; and indeed so was I, although I really loved him.

My father forbade me to entertain any hopes of taking up the art of

painting as a profession. I went a step further and declared that I

would not study anything else. With such declarations the situation

became still more strained, so that the old gentleman irrevocably

decided to assert his parental authority at all costs. That led me to

adopt an attitude of circumspect silence, but I put my threat into

execution. I thought that, once it became clear to my father that I was

making no progress at the REALSCHULE, for weal or for woe, he would be

forced to allow me to follow the happy career I had dreamed of.

I do not know whether I calculated rightly or not. Certainly my failure

to make progress became quite visible in the school. I studied just the

subjects that appealed to me, especially those which I thought might be

of advantage to me later on as a painter. What did not appear to have

any importance from this point of view, or what did not otherwise appeal

to me favourably, I completely sabotaged. My school reports of that time

were always in the extremes of good or bad, according to the subject and

the interest it had for me. In one column my qualification read 'very

good' or 'excellent'. In another it read 'average' or even 'below

average'. By far my best subjects were geography and, even more so,

general history. These were my two favourite subjects, and I led the

class in them.

When I look back over so many years and try to judge the results of that

experience I find two very significant facts standing out clearly before

my mind.

First, I became a nationalist.

Second, I learned to understand and grasp the true meaning of history.

The old Austria was a multi-national State. In those days at least the

citizens of the German Empire, taken through and through, could not

understand what that fact meant in the everyday life of the individuals

within such a State. After the magnificent triumphant march of the

victorious armies in the Franco-German War the Germans in the REICH

became steadily more and more estranged from the Germans beyond their

frontiers, partly because they did not deign to appreciate those other

Germans at their true value or simply because they were incapable of

doing so.

The Germans of the REICH did not realize that if the Germans in Austria

had not been of the best racial stock they could never have given the

stamp of their own character to an Empire of 52 millions, so definitely

that in Germany itself the idea arose--though quite an erroneous

one--that Austria was a German State. That was an error which led to

dire consequences; but all the same it was a magnificent testimony to

the character of the ten million Germans in that East Mark. (Note 3)

Only very few of the Germans in the REICH itself had an idea of the bitter

struggle which those Eastern Germans had to carry on daily for the

preservation of their German language, their German schools and their

German character. Only to-day, when a tragic fate has torn several

millions of our kinsfolk away from the REICH and has forced them to live

under the rule of the stranger, dreaming of that common fatherland

towards which all their yearnings are directed and struggling to uphold

at least the sacred right of using their mother tongue--only now have

the wider circles of the German population come to realize what it means

to have to fight for the traditions of one's race. And so at last

perhaps there are people here and there who can assess the greatness of

that German spirit which animated the old East Mark and enabled those

people, left entirely dependent on their own resources, to defend the

Empire against the Orient for several centuries and subsequently to hold

fast the frontiers of the German language through a guerilla warfare of

attrition, at a time when the German Empire was sedulously cultivating

an interest for colonies but not for its own flesh and blood before the

threshold of its own door.

[Note 3. See Translator's Introduction.]

What has happened always and everywhere, in every kind of struggle,

happened also in the language fight which was carried on in the old

Austria. There were three groups--the fighters, the hedgers and the

traitors. Even in the schools this sifting already began to take place.

And it is worth noting that the struggle for the language was waged

perhaps in its bitterest form around the school; because this was the

nursery where the seeds had to be watered which were to spring up and

form the future generation. The tactical objective of the fight was the

winning over of the child, and it was to the child that the first

rallying cry was addressed:

"German youth, do not forget that you are a German," and "Remember,

little girl, that one day you must be a German mother."

Those who know something of the juvenile spirit can understand how youth

will always lend a glad ear to such a rallying cry. Under many forms the

young people led the struggle, fighting in their own way and with their

own weapons. They refused to sing non-German songs. The greater the

efforts made to win them away from their German allegiance, the more

they exalted the glory of their German heroes. They stinted themselves

in buying things to eat, so that they might spare their pennies to help

the war chest of their elders. They were incredibly alert in the

significance of what the non-German teachers said and they contradicted

in unison. They wore the forbidden emblems of their own kinsfolk and

were happy when penalised for doing so, or even physically punished. In

miniature they were mirrors of loyalty from which the older people might

learn a lesson.

And thus it was that at a comparatively early age I took part in the

struggle which the nationalities were waging against one another in the

old Austria. When meetings were held for the South Mark German League

and the School League we wore cornflowers and black-red-gold colours to

express our loyalty. We greeted one another with HEIL! and instead of

the Austrian anthem we sang our own DEUTSCHLAND ÜBER ALLES, despite

warnings and penalties. Thus the youth were educated politically at a

time when the citizens of a so-called national State for the most part

knew little of their own nationality except the language. Of course, I

did not belong to the hedgers. Within a little while I had become an

ardent 'German National', which has a different meaning from the party

significance attached to that phrase to-day.

I developed very rapidly in the nationalist direction, and by the time I

was 15 years old I had come to understand the distinction between

dynastic patriotism and nationalism based on the concept of folk, or

people, my inclination being entirely in favour of the latter.

Such a preference may not perhaps be clearly intelligible to those who

have never taken the trouble to study the internal conditions that

prevailed under the Habsburg Monarchy.

Among historical studies universal history was the subject almost

exclusively taught in the Austrian schools, for of specific Austrian

history there was only very little. The fate of this State was closely

bound up with the existence and development of Germany as a whole; so a

division of history into German history and Austrian history would be

practically inconceivable. And indeed it was only when the German people

came to be divided between two States that this division of German

history began to take place.

The insignia (Note 4) of a former imperial sovereignty which were still

preserved in Vienna appeared to act as magical relics rather than as the

visible guarantee of an everlasting bond of union.

[Note 4. When Francis II had laid down his title as Emperor of the Holy

Roman Empireof the German Nation, which he did at the command of Napoleon,

the Crownand Mace, as the Imperial Insignia, were kept in Vienna. After

the German Empire was refounded, in 1871, under William I, there were many

demands tohave the Insignia transferred to Berlin. But these went

unheeded. Hitler had them brought to Germany after the Austrian Anschluss

and displayed at Nuremberg during the Party Congress in September 1938.]

When the Habsburg State crumbled to pieces in 1918 the Austrian Germans

instinctively raised an outcry for union with their German fatherland.

That was the voice of a unanimous yearning in the hearts of the whole

people for a return to the unforgotten home of their fathers. But such a

general yearning could not be explained except by attributing the cause

of it to the historical training through which the individual Austrian

Germans had passed. Therein lay a spring that never dried up. Especially

in times of distraction and forgetfulness its quiet voice was a reminder

of the past, bidding the people to look out beyond the mere welfare of

the moment to a new future.

The teaching of universal history in what are called the middle schools

is still very unsatisfactory. Few teachers realize that the purpose of

teaching history is not the memorizing of some dates and facts, that the

student is not interested in knowing the exact date of a battle or the

birthday of some marshal or other, and not at all--or at least only very

insignificantly--interested in knowing when the crown of his fathers was

placed on the brow of some monarch. These are certainly not looked upon

as important matters.

To study history means to search for and discover the forces that are

the causes of those results which appear before our eyes as historical

events. The art of reading and studying consists in remembering the

essentials and forgetting what is not essential.

Probably my whole future life was determined by the fact that I had a

professor of history who understood, as few others understand, how to

make this viewpoint prevail in teaching and in examining. This teacher

was Dr. Leopold Poetsch, of the REALSCHULE at Linz. He was the ideal

personification of the qualities necessary to a teacher of history in

the sense I have mentioned above. An elderly gentleman with a decisive

manner but a kindly heart, he was a very attractive speaker and was able

to inspire us with his own enthusiasm. Even to-day I cannot recall

without emotion that venerable personality whose enthusiastic exposition

of history so often made us entirely forget the present and allow

ourselves to be transported as if by magic into the past. He penetrated

through the dim mist of thousands of years and transformed the

historical memory of the dead past into a living reality. When we

listened to him we became afire with enthusiasm and we were sometimes

moved even to tears.

It was still more fortunate that this professor was able not only to

illustrate the past by examples from the present but from the past he

was also able to draw a lesson for the present. He understood better

than any other the everyday problems that were then agitating our minds.

The national fervour which we felt in our own small way was utilized by

him as an instrument of our education, inasmuch as he often appealed to

our national sense of honour; for in that way he maintained order and

held our attention much more easily than he could have done by any other

means. It was because I had such a professor that history became my

favourite subject. As a natural consequence, but without the conscious

connivance of my professor, I then and there became a young rebel. But

who could have studied German history under such a teacher and not

become an enemy of that State whose rulers exercised such a disastrous

influence on the destinies of the German nation? Finally, how could one

remain the faithful subject of the House of Habsburg, whose past history

and present conduct proved it to be ready ever and always to betray the

interests of the German people for the sake of paltry personal

interests? Did not we as youngsters fully realize that the House of

Habsburg did not, and could not, have any love for us Germans?

What history taught us about the policy followed by the House of

Habsburg was corroborated by our own everyday experiences. In the north

and in the south the poison of foreign races was eating into the body of

our people, and even Vienna was steadily becoming more and more a

non-German city. The 'Imperial House' favoured the Czechs on every

possible occasion. Indeed it was the hand of the goddess of eternal

justice and inexorable retribution that caused the most deadly enemy of

Germanism in Austria, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to fall by the very

bullets which he himself had helped to cast. Working from above

downwards, he was the chief patron of the movement to make Austria a

Slav State.

The burdens laid on the shoulders of the German people were enormous and

the sacrifices of money and blood which they had to make were incredibly

heavy.

Yet anybody who was not quite blind must have seen that it was all in

vain. What affected us most bitterly was the consciousness of the fact

that this whole system was morally shielded by the alliance with

Germany, whereby the slow extirpation of Germanism in the old Austrian

Monarchy seemed in some way to be more or less sanctioned by Germany

herself. Habsburg hypocrisy, which endeavoured outwardly to make the

people believe that Austria still remained a German State, increased the

feeling of hatred against the Imperial House and at the same time

aroused a spirit of rebellion and contempt.

But in the German Empire itself those who were then its rulers saw

nothing of what all this meant. As if struck blind, they stood beside a

corpse and in the very symptoms of decomposition they believed that they

recognized the signs of a renewed vitality. In that unhappy alliance

between the young German Empire and the illusory Austrian State lay the

germ of the World War and also of the final collapse.

In the subsequent pages of this book I shall go to the root of the

problem. Suffice it to say here that in the very early years of my youth

I came to certain conclusions which I have never abandoned. Indeed I

became more profoundly convinced of them as the years passed. They were:

That the dissolution of the Austrian Empire is a preliminary condition

for the defence of Germany; further, that national feeling is by no

means identical with dynastic patriotism; finally, and above all, that

the House of Habsburg was destined to bring misfortune to the German

nation.

As a logical consequence of these convictions, there arose in me a

feeling of intense love for my German-Austrian home and a profound

hatred for the Austrian State.

That kind of historical thinking which was developed in me through my

study of history at school never left me afterwards. World history

became more and more an inexhaustible source for the understanding of

contemporary historical events, which means politics. Therefore I will

not "learn" politics but let politics teach me.

A precocious revolutionary in politics I was no less a precocious

revolutionary in art. At that time the provincial capital of Upper

Austria had a theatre which, relatively speaking, was not bad. Almost

everything was played there. When I was twelve years old I saw William

Tell performed. That was my first experience of the theatre. Some months

later I attended a performance of LOHENGRIN, the first opera I had ever

heard. I was fascinated at once. My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth

Master knew no limits. Again and again I was drawn to hear his operas;

and to-day I consider it a great piece of luck that these modest

productions in the little provincial city prepared the way and made it

possible for me to appreciate the better productions later on.

But all this helped to intensify my profound aversion for the career

that my father had chosen for me; and this dislike became especially

strong as the rough corners of youthful boorishness became worn off, a

process which in my case caused a good deal of pain. I became more and

more convinced that I should never be happy as a State official. And now

that the REALSCHULE had recognized and acknowledged my aptitude for

drawing, my own resolution became all the stronger. Imprecations and

threats had no longer any chance of changing it. I wanted to become a

painter and no power in the world could force me to become a civil

servant. The only peculiar feature of the situation now was that as I

grew bigger I became more and more interested in architecture. I

considered this fact as a natural development of my flair for painting

and I rejoiced inwardly that the sphere of my artistic interests was

thus enlarged. I had no notion that one day it would have to be

otherwise.

The question of my career was decided much sooner than I could have

expected.

When I was in my thirteenth year my father was suddenly taken from us.

He was still in robust health when a stroke of apoplexy painlessly ended

his earthly wanderings and left us all deeply bereaved. His most ardent

longing was to be able to help his son to advance in a career and thus

save me from the harsh ordeal that he himself had to go through. But it

appeared to him then as if that longing were all in vain. And yet,

though he himself was not conscious of it, he had sown the seeds of a

future which neither of us foresaw at that time.

At first nothing changed outwardly.

My mother felt it her duty to continue my education in accordance with

my father's wishes, which meant that she would have me study for the

civil service. For my own part I was even more firmly determined than

ever before that under no circumstances would I become an official of

the State. The curriculum and teaching methods followed in the middle

school were so far removed from my ideals that I became profoundly

indifferent. Illness suddenly came to my assistance. Within a few weeks

it decided my future and put an end to the long-standing family

conflict. My lungs became so seriously affected that the doctor advised

my mother very strongly not under any circumstances to allow me to take

up a career which would necessitate working in an office. He ordered

that I should give up attendance at the REALSCHULE for a year at least.

What I had secretly desired for such a long time, and had persistently

fought for, now became a reality almost at one stroke.

Influenced by my illness, my mother agreed that I should leave the

REALSCHULE and attend the Academy.

Those were happy days, which appeared to me almost as a dream; but they

were bound to remain only a dream. Two years later my mother's death put

a brutal end to all my fine projects. She succumbed to a long and

painful illness which from the very beginning permitted little hope of

recovery. Though expected, her death came as a terrible blow to me. I

respected my father, but I loved my mother.

Poverty and stern reality forced me to decide promptly.

The meagre resources of the family had been almost entirely used up

through my mother's severe illness. The allowance which came to me as an

orphan was not enough for the bare necessities of life. Somehow or other

I would have to earn my own bread.

With my clothes and linen packed in a valise and with an indomitable

resolution in my heart, I left for Vienna. I hoped to forestall fate, as

my father had done fifty years before. I was determined to become

'something'--but certainly not a civil servant.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Ruth Lucy and Dorothy

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Humour Test For Dementia

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Surfers Paradise October 2004

Wine

Geraldine

Friday, July 22, 2005

First Chapter - Mein Kampf