Free Hitler by Ian Kershaw Page A

idea than manual labouring. Hitler had told him of his background, and was persuaded by Hanisch to ask his family for some money, probably under the pretext that he needed it for his studies. Within a short time he received the princely sum of 50 Kronen, almost certainly from his Aunt Johanna. With that he could buy himself an overcoat from the government pawn shop. With this long coat and his greasy trilby, shoes looking like those of a nomad, hair over his collar, and dark fuzz on his chin, Hitler’s appearance even provoked his fellow vagrants to remark on it. They nicknamed him ‘Ohm Paul Krüger’, after the Boer leader. But the gift from his aunt meant that better times were on the way. He was now able to acquire the materials needed to begin the little business venture that Hanisch had dreamed up. On hearing from Hitler that he could paint – Hitler actually told him he had been at the Academy – Hanisch suggested he should paint scenes of Vienna which he would then peddle for him, and they would share the proceeds. Whether this partnership began already in the doss-house, or only after Hitler had moved, on 9 February 1910, to the more salubrious surrounds of the Men’s Home in the north of the city is unclear from Hanisch’s garbled account. What is certain is that with his aunt’s gift, the move to Meldemannstraße, and his new business arrangement with Hanisch, Hitler was now over the worst.
    The Men’s Home was a big step up from the Meidling hostel. The 500 or so residents were not down-and-out vagrants, but, for the most part, a mixed bunch of individuals – some, clerks and even former academics and pensioned officers, just down on their luck, others simply passing through, looking for work or in temporary employment, all without a family home to go to. Unlike the hostel, the Men’s Home, built a few years earlier, offered a modicum of privacy, and for an overnight price of only 50 Heller. Residents had their own cubicles, which had to be vacated during the day but could be retained on a moreor less indefinite basis. There was a canteen where meals and alcohol-free drinks could be obtained, and a kitchen where residents could prepare their own food; there were washrooms and lockers for private possessions; in the basement were baths, along with a cobbler’s, a tailor’s, and a hairdresser’s, a laundry, and cleaning facilities; there was a small library on the ground floor, and on the first floor lounges and a reading-room where newpapers were available. Most of the residents were out during the day, but a group of around fifteen to twenty, mainly from lower-middle-class backgrounds and seen as the ‘intelligentsia’, usually gathered in a smaller room, known as the ‘work-room’ or ‘writing-room’, to undertake odd jobs – painting advertisements, writing out addresses and the like. This is where Hanisch and Hitler set up operations.
    Hanisch’s role was to hawk Hitler’s mainly postcard-size paintings around pubs. He also found a market with frame-makers and upholsterers who could make use of cheap illustrations. Most of the dealers with whom he had a good, regular trade were Jewish. Hitler’s view, according to Hanisch, was that Jews were better businessmen and more reliable customers than ‘Christian’ dealers. More remarkably, in the light of later events and his own claims about the importance of the Vienna period for the development of his antisemitism, his closest partner (apart from Hanisch) in his little art-production business, Josef Neumann, was also a Jew – and one with whom Hitler was, it seems, on friendly terms.
    Hitler invariably copied his pictures from others, sometimes following visits to museums or galleries to find suitable subjects. He was lazy and had to be chivvied by Hanisch, who could offload the pictures faster than Hitler painted them. The usual rate of production was about one picture a day, and Hanisch reckoned to sell it for around 5 Kronen, split