Alois Hitler (Schicklgruber): Customs officer and Father of Adolf Hitler

(7 June 1837 – 3 January 1903)

Early life

Alois Hitler was born Alois Schicklgruber in the hamlet of Strones, a parish of Döllersheim 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. At his baptism in Döllersheim, the space for his father's name on the baptismal certificate was left blank and the priest wrote "illegitimate". His mother cared for Alois in a house she shared with her elderly father, Johannes Schicklgruber.

Sometime later, a man named Johann Georg Hiedler moved in with the Schicklgrubers. He married Maria when Alois was five, and Maria died when Alois was nine. By the age of 10, Alois had been sent to live with Johann Georg Hiedler's younger brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, who owned a farm in the nearby village of Spital (south of Weitra). Alois attended elementary school and took lessons in shoemaking from a local cobbler. Growing up in the same household with Alois was Johanna, the mother of his future wife Klara.

At the age of 13, Alois left Johann Nepomuk Hiedler's farm in Spital and went to Vienna as an apprentice cobbler, working there for about five years. In response to a recruitment drive by the Austrian government offering employment in the civil service to people from rural areas, Alois joined the frontier guards (customs service) of the Austrian Finance Ministry in 1855 at the age of 18.

Career as customs official

Schicklgruber was a Liberal, Pan-German and German nationalist, but was loyal to the Emperor of Austria.

Initially Schicklgruber made steady progress in the semi-military profession of customs official. The work involved frequent reassignments and he served in a variety of places across Austria. By 1860, after five years of service, he reached the rank of Finanzwach-Oberaufseher (Revenue guard Senior warden, analogous to an Army Corporal). By 1864, after special training and examinations, Schicklgruber had advanced to provisorischer Amtsassistent (provisional Office assistant, analogous to a provisional Second lieutenant) and was serving in Linz, Austria. He later became a Zollamts-Official (Inspector of customs, i.e. (First) Lieutenant) posted at Braunau am Inn in 1875. Then his career suddenly came to a nearly dead end when it took him 17 years to get his last promotion. In 1892, he eventually rose to provisorischer resp., and in 1894 to definitiver Zolloberamts-Official (definite senior inspector of customs, i.e. Army captain). Schicklgruber (from 1877 under his new surname Hitler) could go no higher because he lacked the necessary school degrees.

Early married life

Alois Hitler was 36 years old in 1873 when he married for the first time. Anna Glasl-Hörer was a wealthy, 50-year-old daughter of a customs official. She was infirm when they married and was either an invalid or became one shortly afterwards.

Not long after marrying his first wife, Alois 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 had numerous affairs in the 1870s, resulting in his wife initiating legal action; on 7 November 1880, Alois and Anna separated by mutual agreement but remained married. The 19-year-old Matzelsberger became the 43-year-old Hitler's mistress.

In 1876, four years before separating from Anna, he had hired Klara Pölzl as a household servant. She was the 16-year-old granddaughter of his step-uncle Nepomuk (who may also have been his biological father or uncle). If Nepomuk were Alois Hitler's biological father then Klara was Alois's half-niece; alternatively, if Johann Georg were Alois’s biological father, then Klara was Alois’s first cousin once removed. Matzelsberger demanded that the "servant girl" Klara find another job, and Hitler sent Klara Pölzl away.

On 13 January 1882, Matzelsberger gave birth to Hitler's illegitimate son, also named Alois, but since they were not married, the child's last name was Matzelsberger, making him "Alois Matzelsberger". Alois Hitler kept Fanni Matzelsberger as his mistress while his lawful wife (Anna from whom he had separated) grew sicker and died on 6 April 1883. The next month, on 22 May at a ceremony in Braunau with fellow custom officials as witnesses, Alois, 45, married Matzelsberger, 21. He then legitimized his son as Alois Hitler Jr. The second child of Alois (Senior) and his wife Fanni was Angela, born on 28 July 1883.

Alois was secure in his profession and no longer an ambitious climber. Historian Alan Bullock described him as "hard, unsympathetic and short-tempered". His wife Fanni, still only 23, acquired a lung disorder and became too ill to function. She was moved to Ranshofen, a small village near Braunau. During the last months of Fanni's life, Klara Pölzl returned to Alois's home to look after the invalid and the two children (Alois Jr. and Angela). Fanni Hitler, the second wife of Alois Hitler, died in Ranshofen on 10 August 1884 at the age of 23. After Fanni’s death, Klara Pölzl remained in his home as housekeeper.

Retirement and death

In February 1895, Alois Hitler purchased a house on a 3.6-hectare (9-acre) plot in Hafeld near Lambach, approximately 50 kilometres (30 mi) southwest of Linz. The farm was called the Rauscher Gut. He moved his family to the farm and retired on 25 June 1895 at the age of 58, after 40 years in the customs service.

On the morning of 3 January 1903, Alois went to the Gasthaus Wiesinger (no. 1 Michaelsbergstrasse, Leonding) as usual to drink his morning glass of wine. He was offered the newspaper and promptly collapsed. He was taken to an adjoining room and a doctor was summoned, but he died at the inn, probably from a pleural hemorrhage. Adolf Hitler, who was 13 when his father died, wrote in Mein Kampf that he died of a "stroke of apoplexy". In his book, The Young Hitler I Knew, Hitler's childhood friend August Kubizek recalled, "When the fourteen-year-old (sic) son saw his dead father, he burst out into uncontrollable weeping."