48 Facts About Alois Hitler

Alois Hitler was an Austrian civil servant in the customs service, and the father of German dictator Adolf Hitler.

Alois Hitler's mother was Maria Schicklgruber, but his biological father remains unknown.

In 1876, Alois Hitler convinced the Austrian local authorities to acknowledge his deceased stepfather Johann Georg Hiedler as his biological father.

Also in 1876, while Alois Hitler was still married to his first wife, Anna, he hired his relative Klara as a household servant, and began an affair with her.

Alois Hitler treated his children with similar contempt and often beat them.

Alois Hitler was born Alois Schicklgruber in the hamlet of Strones, a parish of Dollersheim in the Waldviertel of northwest Lower Austria; his mother was a 42-year-old unmarried peasant Maria Schicklgruber, whose family had lived in the area for generations.

Alois Hitler's mother cared for Alois in a house she shared with her elderly father, Johannes Schicklgruber.

Alois Hitler married Maria when Alois was five, and Maria died when Alois was nine.

Alois Hitler attended elementary school and took lessons in shoemaking from a local cobbler.

At the age of 13, Alois Hitler left Johann Nepomuk Hiedler's farm in Spital and went to Vienna as an apprentice cobbler, working there for about five years.

In 1931 Adolf Alois Hitler ordered the to investigate the rumors regarding his ancestry, and they found no evidence of any Jewish ancestors.

Alois himself had claimed Johann Georg Hiedler was his biological father, and a priest accordingly amended Alois's birth certificate in 1876, which was considered certified proof for Hitler's ancestry; thus Hitler was considered a "pure" Aryan.

Also in 1876, Alois Hitler hired 16-year-old Klara as a household servant.

The indulgence normally accorded to a man's origins is out of place in the case of Adolf Alois Hitler, who made documentary proof of Aryan ancestry a matter of life and death for millions of people but himself possessed no such document.

Frank says he determined that at the time Maria Schicklgruber gave birth to Alois Hitler, she was working as a household cook in the town of Graz, that her employers were a Jewish family named Frankenberger, and that her child might have been conceived out of wedlock with the family's 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger.

Kershaw cites several stories circulating in the 1920s about Alois Hitler's alleged Jewish ancestry, including one about a "Baron Rothschild" in Vienna in whose household Maria Schicklgruber had worked for some time as a servant.

Ron Rosenbaum suggests that Frank, who had turned against Nazism after 1945 but remained an anti-Semitic fanatic, made the claim that Alois Hitler had Jewish ancestry as a way of proving that Alois Hitler was a Jew and not an Aryan.

Alois Hitler appeared before the parish priest in Dollersheim and asserted that his father was Johann Georg Hiedler, who had married his mother and now wished to legitimize him.

The priest agreed to amend the birth certificate, the civil authorities automatically processed the church's decision and Alois Hitler Schicklgruber had a new name.

Historian Bradley F Smith states that Alois Schicklgruber openly admitted having been born out of wedlock before and after the name change.

In early 1869, Alois Hitler had an affair with Thekla Penz was born on 24 September 1844 and of Leopoldstein, Arbesbach, in the district of Zwettel, Lower Austria.

Alois Hitler was 36 years old in 1873 when he married for the first time.

Alois Hitler was infirm when they married and was either an invalid or became one shortly afterwards.

Not long after marrying his first wife, Alois Hitler began an affair with Franziska "Fanni" Matzelsberger, one of the young female servants employed at the Pommer Inn, house number 219, in the town Braunau am Inn, where he was renting the top floor as a lodging.

Smith states that Alois Hitler had numerous affairs in the 1870s, resulting in his wife initiating legal action; on 7 November 1880, Alois Hitler and Anna separated by mutual agreement but remained married.

Alois Hitler was the 16-year-old granddaughter of his step-uncle Nepomuk.

Matzelsberger demanded that the "servant girl" Klara find another job, and Alois Hitler sent Klara Polzl away.

Alois Hitler kept Fanni Matzelsberger as his mistress while his lawful wife grew sicker and died on 6 April 1883.

Alois Hitler then legitimized his son as Alois Hitler Jr.

The second child of Alois Hitler and his wife Fanni was Angela, born on 28 July 1883.

Alois Hitler was secure in his profession and no longer an ambitious climber.

Alois Hitler was moved to Ranshofen, a small village near Braunau.

Fanni Hitler, the second wife of Alois Hitler, died in Ranshofen on 10 August 1884 at the age of 23.

Historian Bradley Smith writes that if Alois Hitler had been free to do as he wished, he would have married Polzl immediately in 1884, but because of the 1877 affidavit concerning his last name and paternity, Alois Hitler was now legally Polzl's first cousin once removed, too close to marry.

Alois Hitler submitted an appeal to the church for a humanitarian waiver.

Permission from Rome arrived, and on 7 January 1885 a wedding was held at Alois Hitler's rented rooms on the top floor of the Pommer Inn.

On 17 May 1885, four months after the wedding, the new Frau Klara Alois Hitler gave birth to her first child, Gustav.

Alois Hitler was 51 when he was born, and had little interest in child-rearing; he left it all to his wife.

One month after Alois Hitler accepted a better-paying position in Linz, on 1 April 1893 his wife and the children moved to a second floor room at Kapuzinerstrasse 31 in Passau.

Alois Hitler was the last child of Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl.

Alois Hitler had five children ranging in age from infancy to 14.

Alois Hitler wanted his son Adolf to seek a career in the civil service.

Alois Hitler sneered at the thought of a lifetime spent enforcing petty rules.

Alois Hitler tried to browbeat his son into obedience, while Adolf did his best to be the opposite of whatever his father wanted.

In February 1895, Alois Hitler purchased a house on a 3.6-hectare plot in Hafeld near Lambach, approximately 50 kilometres southwest of Linz.

Alois Hitler moved his family to the farm and retired on 25 June 1895 at the age of 58, after 40 years in the customs service.

Alois Hitler was taken to an adjoining room and a doctor was summoned, but he died at the inn, probably from a pleural hemorrhage.

Adolf Alois Hitler, who was 13 when his father died, wrote in Mein Kampf that he died of a "stroke of apoplexy".