Life, as a rule, rarely favors the sisters of historically famous personalities. Most often, they are hidden in the shadow of their eminent brothers and forever remain a mystery to the general public with seven seals. However, the fate of Paula, the younger sister of Adolf Hitler, turned out somewhat differently. Considering the dictator's difficult attitude to kinship and family ties, it is surprising that he kept in touch with her until his death.
Last daughter of a troubled family
Paula Hitler was born in January 1896 in the settlement of Fischlham in Upper Austria. The girl's father, Alois Hitler, had the position of a customs officer, her mother, Clara Pelzl, was a quiet and inconspicuous housewife, 23 years younger than him. Previously, she worked as a housekeeper in the house of Alois and his second wife, and their love relationship began even before the death of the latter. There is every reason to believe that the marriage of Paula Hitler's parents was incestuous. Clara was the daughter of Alois's own sister, therefore, she was his niece. Of the six children they had, only Adolf and Paula survived to adulthood.age, the rest died in infancy.
By the birth of Paula, the last child of the Hitler couple, the material affairs of the family were going quite well: a good house, stable income, a beautiful garden, an apiary. The girl rarely saw her father, who was distinguished by a rather imperious and quick-tempered disposition, he did not like to be at home and was always busy with something. All the upbringing and housekeeping lay on the shoulders of her mother, a meek and hardworking woman.
Robbing with love
The official biography of Paula Hitler is not replete with details of her childhood and youth, however, like her whole life, only separately pop-up fragments allow us to present the big picture. Adolf replaced Paula's father early, she was six years old when the head of the family had a myocardial infarction. And since the young man's own childhood was not easy and was characterized by a large number of corporal punishments of a despotic parent, he, in turn, showed excessive severity to his sister and resorted to beating, referring to educational purposes. Despite this, the younger Hitler always justified her brother, believing that he acted for her good and proceeded only from the best of intentions.
After the death of their father, having sold the house, the family moved to the city of Linz, where four years later (1907) the mother dies of an incurable disease. The Austrian state provided the orphans Paula and Adolf with a small pension, and besides, they still had enough funds from their parents to overcome the first difficulties of independent living. Having issued grants,Adolf leaves to conquer Vienna and leaves his sister with his maternal aunt, Johanna Pelzl.
Individual life
Having received a commercial education, Paula Hitler goes to Vienna after his brother, where he gets a job as a secretary with a good salary. The closed lifestyle of the girl allowed some to mistakenly perceive her as a limited and narrow-minded person. Nevertheless, she had her hobbies, one of which was skiing, and was a frequenter of fashionable resorts.
Paula met her brother only in the early 1920s, by that time he was already chairing the German National Socialist Party and successfully building his political career. Then their relationship was again interrupted for a while, and until the early 1930s they practically did not communicate. It wasn't until Paula's employer Ulrich von Wittelsbach fired her from the Vienna Insurance Company that she began to receive regular financial support from her brother, which continued until his suicide in 1945.
Being a politically significant figure, and later the leader of the country, Adolf directly or indirectly continued to participate in Paula's life, although they rarely saw each other. However, despite financial assistance, he never gave his sister patronage in his career, because he found her a mentally limited person and spoke of her as a "stupid goose."
Under a different name
In 1936, Adolf Hitler invited Paula to the Olympic Games in Garmisch, where he ordered her to change her last name to Wolf and notbe highlighted in society, maintaining strict secrecy. The sister obeys her brother without grumbling and becomes Paula Wolf, hiding from everyone her relationship with an influential politician. Later, she shares that the choice of this surname was not accidental, her brother had such a nickname in childhood, and later used this pseudonym more than once for his own safety.
Paula continued to make attempts to build her career for some time and worked in a Viennese art shop. But soon after the change of surname, by special order of Hitler, she left to run his household at the Berghof residence, where their half-sister Angela Raubal had previously managed. Some sources say that, with some access to documents, Paula Wolf managed to secretly help people on death row.
Sharing the views of a brother
Official sources do not report any political activity of Paula, but there is still information that she shared her brother's nationalist views. Nevertheless, Paula Hitler herself claimed that she had never been a member of any parties and organizations, and even the views and policies of Adolf did not inspire her to become a member of the NSDAP. In addition, he himself did not want this, although he annually sent her a ticket to the party congress in Nuremberg. According to Paula, her brother could not give orders for the monstrous murders of people in concentration camps, and his bad attitude towards the Jewish people was most likely caused by a difficult youth.
Missed wedding
Research by the German historian FlorianBayerl was led to work with Soviet interrogation protocols, from which he managed to find out that Paula Hitler was engaged to Erwin Jaeckelius, one of the most sinister doctors of the Holocaust. He practiced brutal experiments on children and euthanasia, and during the war years was responsible for the murder of more than 4 thousand people in the gas chamber.
In the autumn of 1941, Jaeckelius traveled to Berlin to formally ask Hitler for the hand of his sister. But he did not approve of their love affair. There are suggestions that due to incest in the family, Hitler was afraid to have both his children and his sister was not allowed to marry, suggesting the occurrence of pathology in possible nephews. The conversation with Erwin Jekelius was short, he was met by the Gestapo and urgently sent to the Eastern Front, where after a while he falls into the hands of the Soviet army.
Arrest of Paula Hitler
During the war years, Paula worked in the hospital as a secretary. Just before the surrender of Germany, by order of Martin Bormann, she was sent to Berchtesgaden. At the end of April 1945, Paula received a parting cash gift from her brother, and a month later she was captured by American intelligence officers. A transcript from one agent showed that the woman bore an obvious physical resemblance to her sibling.
Paula spent a year in prison and was repeatedly interrogated, the results of which revealed that she did not have any significant information and Adolf inlast seen in March 1941. Freed, the woman returned to Vienna, and for some time lived modestly on her own remaining savings.
Didn't have time…
In 1952, Paula moved to Berchtesgaden and, according to some reports, lived in seclusion in a two-room apartment under the surname Wolf. Her only passion in those years was the Catholic Church. She also continued to maintain warm relations with former members of the SS and survivors of the ruling circles of Nazi Germany. In 1957, Paula returns her surname to Hitler and begins litigation with the Bavarian government over her brother's personal property.
In the autumn of 1959, Hitler's sister Paula and her two nephews (children of the deceased Angela Raubal) were officially recognized as the legal owners of Adolf Hitler's inheritance. But the issue of payments was constantly delayed. The snag was that Hitler's will in 1938 stated that he was leaving all his property to the party or the state. He asked his sister and other relatives to provide only a modest allowance. However, in February 1960, the Munich court recognized two-thirds of the Eagle's Nest estate in the Bavarian Alps for Paula, the other part was awarded to relatives.
Paula Hitler did not have time to inherit her brother. She died in early June of that year at the age of 64 and was buried in the city cemetery of Berchtesgaden.
Conclusion
Paula Hitler had a long timereputation of an innocent woman, very far from politics, and was in no way identified with the atrocities of her brother. But discovered by researchers in 2005, her diary introduced its own adjustments. Evidence has been established that directly links the Fuhrer's sister to Nazi activities. And her relationship with Erwin Yekelius only confirmed this. Paula's unique notes also revealed sensational facts and shed light on the distant past of the Hitler family, explaining the formation of an antisocial personality and mental abnormalities in the Nazi leader. The authenticity of the document was confirmed by expertise and is beyond doubt.
