Shiff Says

Departing from my new friend Jenet:

I return to my long-time companion, Mr. Hitler. (yes, I read a lot about The Nazis. No, I’m not an anti-semite. For real. Joke’s over.)

Adolf Hitler’s father, Alois Hitler, born Alois Schicklgruber, was born to the unmarried Maria Schicklgruber. When Maria married Johann Goerg Hiedler, fiver years after her son’s birth, Johann raised her son as his own, and Alois’ birth father has never been known. Speculations about the possibility of Adolf Hitler’s jewish heritage derives from this unknown paternal grandfather. When Alois was in his 40’s he was legally legitimized by Hielder’s family, and changed his last name to Hitler (taken, obviously, from Hiedler).

Okay, here’s where it gets fun.

So, Alois Hitler seems to have been a bit of a shmuck. Or, you could call him unlucky in love. He was married a total of three times. He separated from his first wife after a nearly 20-year marriage, and she died shortly thereafter. No children resulted from that union. One month after his estranged wife’s death, he married again, to a woman with whom he’d already had a child out of wedlock. Within a year of the birth of their second child, Angela, Alois’ second wife died of Tuberculosis. Six months later, his third marriage was to Klara Polzl, who was not only 23 years younger than Alois, but also the granddaughter of his adoptive uncle, in whose home he had spent the majority of his childhood. Klara, herself, had also spent some time living at Alois ‘s home during his first marriage.

The ultimately illustrious Adolf Hitler was the third child born during his father’s third marriage, but the first to survive past infancy. Two more came after him, a boy who died at the age of 6, and, finally the youngest, Paula, who lived into adulthood.

Okay, but remember Angela, Hitler’s half sister from his father’s second marriage? Angela was the only one of his siblings with whom Adolf maintained a closeness, and it was HER daughter, his niece, Geli, with whom Hitler supposedly “fell in love” some years later. Now, mind you, my personal opinion is that Hitler was gay gay totally gay Anderson Cooper gay, (he avoided questions about his refusal to settle down romantically with a woman because he was “Married to Germany, the Motherland”), but he has been legitimately noted to have had strong relationships with three different women. Geli Raubal was the second of these and, as noted in one of my Fun Facts a few months ago, Geli committed suicide while involved with the man who would later come to be known by many as the greatest villain the world has ever known.

And…scene.