The German Question, Part One Hundred Five

"The Rise of Hitler and The Nazis" Part One/B
"Hitler in Linz & Vienna"

This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive bio of Hitler. There are countless books and articles on his life and documentaries are still most likely available on DVD.

Hitler had a contentious relationship with his stern father, Alois, who died when Hitler was thirteen. Hitler had aspirations for becoming an artist, and he later went to Vienna where he was rejected for art school. He then turned to architecture, but a troubled childhood left him without a graduation certificate (the American equivalent of a "high school diploma"),* which he needed to be admitted to school. He did some paintings in Vienna which he then sold to earn something of a living. It seems he may well have had help from family members, something he certainly kept quiet about later on when he was rising in politics. His mother, Klara, died from breast cancer in the city of Linz when Hitler was eighteen.** He eventually lived in a shelter for homeless men in Vienna.

Vienna was a very cosmopolitan city. The former capital of the Old German Empire remained as the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, often simply called "Austria-Hungary." Included in the city's people of diverse backgrounds were a fairly large number of Jews, many of whom were refugees from Russia, including the Russian part of Poland. Many were poor and others stood out in their strange (to Vienna) religious garb. Whether this was when Hitler acquired his hatred of Jews is uncertain, as some say it was earlier. The strong Catholicism of Austria certainly had to have made some earlier impression on his view of Jews, which may then have been hardened by his experiences in Vienna. Remember, it has only been in the last decade that the Vatican has reconciled to a fair degree with Judaism, softening its teachings about the other religion. Further, Hitler eventually read much of Luther's teachings. Luther was hateful of Jews, so some Protestant teachings aren't without guilt here too.

Hitler considered Linz to be his hometown for the rest of his life, just as he harbored a resentment for Vienna thereafter, too. His lack of "higher education" seems to have also fostered a resentment for those who had attended such institutions. He later lambasted his generals for having attended military academies, but that it was he who had conquered Europe, even though he hadn't been able to attend an academy. When no one dares to criticize you, you can get away with saying such things. 

Next, "Hitler, Munich & the Great War"

* Hitler's father was a civil servant, a customs official. He wanted Adolf to follow in his stead, but the boy wanted to pursue art and to attend a school where the arts were taught. His father forced him to go to another school and Hitler, by his own admission, deliberately neglected his school work in hopes that his poor marks would help to change his father's mind, but that did not happen, only embittering the boy even further. While I'm not a psychologist, there's no question that our childhoods have a big impact on what we become as adults. (Ah, pardon me for a second. "Hey, ya better not knock over my sand castle, ya moron!") Anyway, it makes me wonder if these sorts of things in Hitler's early life made him crave the power to make others do only what he wanted. The thing was, he did not always take responsibility for things that then went wrong; always blaming Jews, his generals, and finally the German people for HIS failures. Just a thought.

** After his father died, the family moved directly into Linz (they had lived nearby for some time), and Hitler considered Linz to be his hometown. Later in his life as the head of Germany, he dreamed of rebuilding Linz, and it became a bit of an obsession with him, even up to the closing days of the war.

WORD HISTORY:
Skin-This word goes back to Indo European "sken/skend," and carried the notion of "cut, peel, split." This gave Old Germanic "skinthan/skintha," which in turn gave Old Norse^ "skinn," which meant "animal skin or hide." The Old Norse speaking Danes^^ had a substantial presence in England, especially northeastern England, long ago, and Old English borrowed the word during the 1100s as "scinn," still with the "animal skin/hide" meaning. This eventually brought about a sort of flip-flop in meanings. English already had the old form of the word "hide" as the general word for "skin." The borrowed word "scinn" eventually lost, as its main meaning, "animal hide," and began to mean the more general "skin." The "animal skin" meaning then was left with "hide," although "hide" tends to be used more for large animals, and "skin" is still used for smaller animals. This all seems to have transpired by the 1300s/1400s. The spelling eventually became "skinn" before the modern spelling. The verb form, "(to) skin," developed from the noun circa 1400 (initially as 'skinnen?'). There are various forms in the other Germanic languages related to "skin," and the North Germanic languages still have the word, spelled "skinn" (although Danish has "skind"), again with the "animal hide" meaning, but I'm not certain if it is in common usage by many of them as much anymore. German has the verb "schinden" (once spelled 'skinten'), which means "to skin," but in more recent times it has taken on more figurative meanings, like "mistreatment,"^^^ Flemish, one of the major languages of Belgium, and now pretty much considered by linguists to be a dialect of Dutch, has "schinde," which means "tree bark," with the obvious connection being the "skin of a tree."

^ Old Norse is the old form of North Germanic, and didn't so much die out, as evolve into the various North Germanic languages (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Faroese). The same is certainly true of Latin, which evolved into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc.

^^ The English called them Danes, but they were both Dane and Norwegian.

^^^ Just as English has the expression, "skin someone alive," German too seems to have taken the idea of "skinning" to mean "mistreatment, torture."