Source:ww2gravestone.com

Angela Hitler, Adolph’s older sister

Angela Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria-Hungary, on July 28th, 1883. She was the second child of Alois Hitler and Franziska Matzelsberger, whom Hitler Sr. married after the death of his first wife, Anna Glasl-Hörer. Even before Anna’s death, the couple was involved in an affair that started shortly after Hitler and Anna’s wedding.

Angela was one year old when her mother died. Her father married for the third and final time in 1885 and Angela and her older brother, Alois Jr. went to live with him and their stepmother, Klara Pölzl. On April 20th, 1889, Alois Sr. and Klara had the first of their two children that survived the childhood, Adolph Hitler. Four of Hitler’s siblings died very young. Gustav and Ida died of diphtheria in 1886. Otto was born in 1887 and died the same year. After Adolph Hitler, Klara gave birth to Edmund in 1894, only to see him die of measles six years later. It was just Paula, born in 1896, who survived to adulthood as the only Hitler’s sibling.

In 1903, Alois Hitler Sr. died. In September of the same year, Angela Hitler married her first husband, Leo Raubal. The couple lived in Linz, where Klara moved with the children after her husband died. Angela and Leo had a son, Leo Jr., and two daughters, Geli and Elfriede. Leo died in 1910, leaving Angela to take care of the children alone. By that time, she has lost contact with Adolph Hitler.

Source:allthatsinteresting.com

After the World War I, Angela and the girls moved to Vienna. She found a job as a manager of Mensa Academia Judaica, a boarding school for Jewish boys. She often had to defend them from anti-Semitic attackers and this earned her a favorable mention in Walter Langer’s report on Hitler, called The Mind of Adolf Hitler.

“Some of our informants knew her during this time and report that in the student riots Angela defended the Jewish students from attack and on several occasions beat the Aryan students off the steps of the dining hall with a club. She is a rather large, strong peasant type of person who is well able to take an active part,” Langer said of her.

In 1919, Angela was contacted by her stepbrother after a decade of no communication. Adolph Hitler was imprisoned in Landsberg prison and Angela went to see him. This is perhaps the reason why Hitler mentioned only her of his several siblings and half-siblings in Mein Kampf. They became close again and in 1928, Angela and her daughters Geli and Elfriede moved to Hitler’s home Berghof at Obersalzberg. Angela was given the position of a housekeeper, while Geli started living with her uncle in his Munich apartment. She committed suicide in 1931.

Angela disapproved of Hitler’s relationship with Eva Braun and this was probably the reason she moved to Dresden, where she married her second husband, a famous architect Professor Martin Hammitzsch. Angela and Adolph apparently patched things up sometime during the war and he borrowed her some money to relocate from Dresden, as the city was in danger of falling to the Soviet troops in 1945.

Source:ww2gravestone.com

Shortly after the war ended, Martin Hammitzsch committed suicide and Angela moved again, this time to Hannover, where she died from a stroke in 1949.

Source: ww2gravestone.com

As one of the founders of foreignspolicyi.org Knjaz Milos tries to bring all the latest news regarding politics. He loves history and is passionate about writing.
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