HITLER’S PAST

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 35, 4 November 1933, Page 24

HITLER’S PAST

A Casual Labourer ONCE IN “HOMELESS” SHELTER Herr Reinhold Hanisch, an etcher living in the suburbs of Vienna, who hitherto has been steadfastly reticent about his friendship with Adolf Hitler when the two did jobs together in Vienna before the war, has now been persuaded by the “Wiener Sonn-und Montags-Zeitung” to tell his story (writes a special correspondent to the London “Observer”). Herr Hanisch tells of Hitler’s struggle to make both ends meet when he came to the capital in August, 1909, at the age of eighteen. Hanisch first met Hitler in a shelter for homeless men near the Meidlinger Sudbahnhof, where they were allotted adjacent beds. Soon in conversation, they found they had much in common, Hitler, noticing that Hanisch, by birth a German Bohemian, spoke with a Berlin accent, straightaway expressed his admiration for Germany and things German. He was apparently in great need at this time; his clothes were torn and he gratefully accepted Hanisch’s offer of bread. He confessed that for several nights he had been sleeping in the open. Looking for Work. The two men agreed to look for work together, and that autumn beat carpets for tired housewives, carried luggage to and from the stations, and did casual, unskilled jobs for builders. When winter set in work became Increasingly difficult to obtain. 111-nour-ished and possessing no overcoat, Hitler would have starved had he been unable to procure food and warmth at a free soup kitchen. Later the two made the acquaintance of a tramway foreman, who employed them to sweep snow from the tram lines. This work —snow falls heavily in Vienna—brought them in enough money to pay for lodging in the Viennese equivalent of a London Rowton House. Here, dissatisfied with their hard and uncertain way of living, they determined to turn to profit Hitler’s gift for drawing. Hitler, they decided, should paint postcards, while Hanisch should sell them from door to door. But first there was the question of. capital necessary for the preliminary purchase of cards, brushes, and paints. So Hitler wrote to his sister Paula, to whom he had made over his share of a. small parental legacy, asking her to send him a few schillings. These soon arrived, and with them Hitler was able to buy his materials. Tallied Politics. The new enterprise went comparatively well, so well, in fact, that there were days when Hitler did no painting, but sat by the lodging-house stove talking politics with his fellow-lodgers. These discussions, Herr Hanisch remembers, often led to lively quarrelling. On one occasion the friends did so well out of the joint business that Hitler went away for a whole week, telling no one whither. When he returned he brought with him a considerable number of newspapers, whose news and editorials he used as the text for long political sermons. On another occasion, when business had been unusually brisk, Hitler visited the cinema, then in its primitive H saw a film called “Tunnel,” in which a public speaker was seen to harangue workmen with great effect. Hitler was immensely impressed, and for long afterwards discussed with his friend the power of the spoken word. From this time on, according to Herr Hanisch, Hitler spent all his savings on newspapers, and discussed religion and politics with anyone willing to listen to him. He condemned the Habsburgs for their hostility towards Germany and pronounced the Roman Catholic creed unsuitable for Germans. Of present-day creeds favoured the Lutheran, but always maintained in these stove-side talks that Protestantism had not had the effect of elevating Germany; only the redeification of the old German gods could do that. He condemned the pogroms in Russia on the ground that action should not be taken against the Jews as a whole, but against individual Jews. Towards the end of 1911 Hitler and Hanisch parted as the result of Hitler suspecting his friend of having cheated him over the sale of a picture. A few months later they met fortuitously in the street. Hitler wished to speak, but Hanisch refused to acknowledge him. Then, in 1912, Hitler left Vienna with the hope of bettering his fortunes in Munich.