152
l'AlnlSAN KEVIEW
the first two years with a roOIl1Il1,lte in the working class district of Mariahilf,
within walking distance of the Ringstrasse, with its ill1posing government
buildings and his beloved Court Opera. Eventually, Hitler disappeared fi'om
the scene, presumably as a hOll1eless drifter bdcxe he elllerged briefly in a
dismal home for the homeless. Froll1 Il) I() to 1l)13 he finally settled in the
Mannerheim in 13rigittenau, a well organized hOll1e for men, one of the
ll10st advanced of its kind, in one of Vienna's rapidly expanding outer dis–
tricts, populated by workers, drifters, the poor and disentranchised and the
steadily swelling streams of recem ill1ll1igrants ti'oll1 the crown lands. All of
Hitler's neighborhoods were seedbeds f()r political agitation, ll10st signifi–
cantly fi'om pan-German, anti-Seilli tic p,lrties wi th ch;lrisll1:ltic leaders, most
proll1inent among them Georg I{.i tter von SchCinerer, his disciple Franz
Stein and his unrelenting opponent Karl Herll1ann Wolf. Their extremist
propaganda was disseminated and discussed in district newspapers, pamphlets
and neighborhood education groups together wi th the latest myths of
Germanic origin by self-proclaill1ed philosophers such as Guido
von
List or
Lanz von Liebenfels. Their rabidly ami-Sell1itic rhetoric was brgcly ignored
or laughed away as extrell1ist hyperbole by the intellectual elite that has
come to be mythologized as the whole
ofjill-de-siMe
Vienna. It is a land–
scape much closer to Gorki's
LJ/lI(,/,
Del}flis
than to Klill1t's
t;;ss.
These were
the districts where impovcrished apartll1em dwell ers rented out their own
beds during the day to
B('lIgiil~l!('r.
often entire hOll1eless t;lI11ilies, who would
catch a few hours of sleep and then hope for a place on the crowded bench–
es in the
WiinIlCS!II!JclI.
public "warll1ing roOll1s." None of the apartments had
heat. Those who could afford it kept warll1 in pubs and cofkehouses, which
offered tl'ee newspapers and unlill1ited rdllls of the gL1SS of water that
accompanied one cup of coHce.
Hi tl er was an avid newsp.lper reader. Hall1ll1an nleticulously combs
through the publications of that till1e, tracing the pan- Gerll1anic rhetoric as
it would reappear in Hi t1er\ reconstructed .lutobiography :\
/eill K,'llll!f
In
her exhaustive research she closely examined local111unicip:d archives, police
records (every person arriving in Vienna had to check in and out with the
police department), newspaper reports and oHlcial protocols of parliall1emary
sessions against Hitler's self-invemions, primarily in
fI/eill
t;clllll!fand in the
published accounts of some of his early fi'iends and acquaintances. In addi–
tion, she tracked down the descendants of people who were in touch wi th
him at that time. ])rawing from overlooked sources and new information,
she deflates some of the most persistent myths in Hitler's biography, includ–
ingJoachim
C.
Fest's standard biography of 1l)73.
Hamman's stratq.,ry of rctl.'rring to her subject throughout as "H."
emphasizes the nondescript quality of this young man troll1 the provinces
wi thout a cl ear goal, let alone vision, who could have been anybody.
