This is not a portrait of an insane man...
I've been to Munich and Austria, Munich was a very disturbing area of the world, I didn't like it at all. We went to the Munich Octoberfest in 1990, which was part of our tour.
Austria had a much more peaceful feeling.
From this link:
Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A young Hitler (left) posing with other German soldiers.
Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich
From 1905 on, Hitler lived a
bohemian life in
Vienna on an orphan's pension and support from his mother. He was rejected twice by the
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1907–1908), citing "unfitness for painting", and was told his abilities lay instead in the field of
architecture.
[12] His
memoirs reflect a fascination with the subject:
The purpose of my trip was to study the picture gallery in the Court Museum, but I had eyes for scarcely anything but the Museum itself. From morning until late at night, I ran from one object of interest to another, but it was always the buildings which held my primary interest.
[13]
Following the school rector's recommendation, he too became convinced this was his path to pursue, yet he lacked the proper academic preparation for architecture school:
In a few days I myself knew that I should some day become an architect. To be sure, it was an incredibly hard road; for the studies I had neglected out of spite at the Realschule were sorely needed. One could not attend the Academy's architectural school without having attended the building school at the Technic, and the latter required a high-school degree. I had none of all this. The fulfillment of my artistic dream seemed physically impossible.
[13]
On 21 December 1907, Hitler's mother died of
breast cancer at age 47. Ordered by a court in Linz, Hitler gave his share of the
orphans' benefits to his sister Paula. When he was 21, he inherited money from an aunt. He struggled as a painter in Vienna, copying scenes from postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists. After being rejected a second time by the Academy of Arts, Hitler ran out of money. In 1909, he lived in a shelter for the homeless. By 1910, he had settled into a house for poor working men.
Hitler said he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna,
[13] which had a large Jewish community, including
Orthodox Jews who had fled the
pogroms in
Russia. But according to a childhood friend,
August Kubizek, Hitler was a "confirmed anti-Semite" before he left Linz, Austria.
[13] Vienna at that time was a hotbed of traditional religious prejudice and 19th century racism. Hitler may have been influenced by the writings of the ideologist and anti-Semite
Lanz von Liebenfels and
polemics from politicians such as
Karl Lueger, founder of the
Christian Social Party and
Mayor of Vienna, the composer
Richard Wagner, and
Georg Ritter von Schönerer, leader of the
pan-Germanic Away from Rome! movement. Hitler claims in
Mein Kampf that his transition from opposing antisemitism on religious grounds to supporting it on racial grounds came from having seen an Orthodox Jew:
There were very few Jews in Linz. In the course of centuries the Jews who lived there had become
Europeanized in external appearance and were so much like other human beings that I even looked upon them as Germans. The reason why I did not then perceive the absurdity of such an illusion was that the only external mark which I recognized as distinguishing them from us was the practice of their strange religion. As I thought that they were persecuted on account of their faith my aversion to hearing remarks against them grew almost into a feeling of abhorrence. I did not in the least suspect that there could be such a thing as a systematic antisemitism. Once, when passing through the inner City, I suddenly encountered a phenomenon in a long caftan and wearing black side-locks. My first thought was: Is this a Jew? They certainly did not have this appearance in Linz. I carefully watched the man stealthily and cautiously but the longer I gazed at the strange countenance and examined it feature by feature, the more the question shaped itself in my brain: Is this a German?
[13]
If this account is true, Hitler apparently did not act on his new belief. He often was a guest for dinner in a noble Jewish house, and he interacted well with Jewish merchants who tried to sell his paintings.
[14]
Hitler may also have been influenced by
Martin Luther's
On the Jews and their Lies. In
Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Martin Luther as a great warrior, a true statesman, and a great reformer, alongside
Wagner and
Frederick the Great.
[15] Wilhelm Röpke, writing after the Holocaust, concluded that "without any question,
Lutheranism influenced the political, spiritual and social history of Germany in a way that, after careful consideration of everything, can be described only as fateful."
[16][17]
Hitler claimed that Jews were enemies of the
Aryan race. He held them responsible for Austria's crisis. He also identified certain forms of
Socialism and
Bolshevism, which had many Jewish leaders, as Jewish movements, merging his antisemitism with anti-
Marxism. Later, blaming Germany's military defeat in
World War I on the
1918 revolutions, he considered Jews the culprits of Imperial Germany's downfall and subsequent economic problems as well.
