HITLER-ARCHITECT.

Western Star, 3 December 1935, Page 4

HITLER-ARCHITECT.

<S> HIS ONLY PRACTICE. SIMPLE MOUNTAIN CHALET FUHRER’S ALPINE RETREAT I Adolf Hitler wanted in his youth tobe an architect and in fact studied a s a draftsman in Munich. But the only: architecture he has ever achieved has' consisted in the improvements and addi-' tions to his chalet high up in theBavarian Alps above Berchtesgaden.l These are of his own designing, aud( they give hi s mountain retreat an inter., est over and above its interest as the week-end capital of the Reich. Originally a simple wooden chalet perched 2000 ft up on the pine-clad slopes of the Obersalzberg, Hitler’s house has attached to itself a new verandah andl garage and new wings to accommodate visitors and guards. Haus Wachenfeld, as the Chauceller calls his place, differs in no way from thousands of other Bavarian chalets except for the enlargements and the fact that it is furnished more simply 1 and in rather better taste than the average home of tli e Bavarian peasant. One does not know how much of its tasteful interior furnishings was done by Hitler and how much by his sister, Frau Angela Raubal, who keeps house for him.

COLOUR SCHEME IN GREEN. The colour scheme throughout is green. The hall i s filled with a show of cactus plants, and throughout the living rooms there are cushions and knickknacks presented by anonymous admiters 111 Hitler’s bedroom there is a portrait of his mother, who died when. he was 18. along with a jewelled hunting born presented to him by s ome unknown follower and a magificient rug of silver 1 fox skins sent him by some friend In the Argentine. Outside there are cherry trees, the fragrance of the pines and an immense view of great peaks clothed with daik forests, while at night the lights twinkle down in Austrian Salzburg, only ten miles away It would'be difficult to imagine any ruler of a great Stole using a. more unassuming retreat. Hitler in fact has planted his country seat here only because the Nazi leaders did most . of their early plotting in these mountains Munich, the Mecca of German art, where Hitler went in 1912 to- study architecture, is only a hundred miles away. The Hitler putsch which gave Munich a day’s excitement in 1923 is supposed to have been planned in the parlour of a mountain inn above Berchtes. gaden.

\N ADMIRABLE JOB. In the cellar of the same inn the leaders are supposed to have hidden after th© failure of the putsch. The inn continued to be the secret headquarters of the Nczi movement until after Hitler’s release from gaol. Tt was then that be bought Hiqus Wachenfeld. which ever since has been the real lieadcmarters of “the uartv.” Time was when Bprchtessr’den was on unspoiled plnine villarr- whose principal occnpa+Min was the carving of wooden tovs. Tt lias more scriou.- matters on hand nowadays, centring in Hitler’s expanding chalet. the additions to which have all been kept in harmony with its simple wooden lines. Whatever the Chancellor might have done if he had avoided politics and stuck to architecture, he has made an admirable lob of the Haus Wachenfeld of to-day. Tf there are bine prints of its additions in existence, they may easily he the onlv blue prints known which v-on,. the signature “A. Hitler, architect.”