August Kubizek

Biography

In November 1908 August Kubizek returned to Vienna after eight weeks of military service and found that the room he shared with his friend was empty. The landlady did not know where her lodger had gone, and neither did Hitler’s half-sister Angela Raubal. So ended a friendship that had lasted about four years.

It had begun differently. Kubizek was born on 3 August 1888 in Linz, into the family of the upholsterer Michael Kubizek; according to some accounts, his parents were of Czech and Sudeten German origin. His three sisters died in early childhood, and he was left as the only child. His father expected him to take over the workshop, and after the town school August began training as an upholsterer. In secret he dreamed of becoming a conductor.

He met Hitler, who was almost a year younger, in 1904, according to some accounts while the two were competing for standing room at the Landestheater in Linz. What drew them together was a love of the operas of Richard Wagner. By Kubizek’s own recollection, Hitler persuaded his father to let him study music in Vienna. From 22 February until early summer 1908 they rented a single room in Stumpergasse from a Czech woman, Maria Zakreys. Kubizek entered the Kaiser music school and studied there until 1912: he played the viola and studied composition and conducting. Hitler, for his part, was refused admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, and by his friend’s account kept quiet about it for some time. Kubizek himself at first thought that Hitler was studying at the academy.

After his studies, from October 1912, he was second conductor at the municipal theatre in Marburg on the Drau (now Maribor). According to some accounts, he then obtained a post at the theatre in Klagenfurt. The First World War interrupted his career: Kubizek was called up, was wounded at Eperjes in the Carpathian winter campaign of 1915, and returned to the front after hospital. Before leaving for the war he married Anna Funke, a violinist from Vienna; they had three sons, among them the composer Augustin.

After the war it was hard for musicians in Austria to find work. From 1920 to 1945 Kubizek served in the town administration of Eferding in Upper Austria, and with the town’s music society he led the town orchestra. Music remained, in effect, a second profession; masses, a trio for flute, clarinet and piano, and songs survive from those years.

Around 1920 he saw Hitler on the cover of an illustrated magazine and began to follow his career, but he did not venture to make contact until 1933, when he wrote to congratulate him on becoming Chancellor. The reply is dated 4 August 1933. They met on 9 April 1938 in Linz. Hitler offered him the post of conductor of an orchestra; Kubizek declined, but agreed to let Hitler pay for his sons’ studies at the Anton Bruckner Conservatory. In 1939 and 1940 Kubizek was his guest at the Bayreuth Festival. Their last meeting took place on 23 July 1940. He joined the Nazi Party in 1940 or in 1942 (the sources give different dates); he himself described it as a gesture of loyalty to his friend and said that he had kept clear of politics all his life.

In 1945 he was arrested by American forces and spent about sixteen months in the Glasenbach camp, where he was interrogated repeatedly. The letters and drawings from Hitler that Kubizek had kept were not found in the search of his house: they were hidden there. He was released on 8 April 1947. At first he turned down offers to publish his memoirs, and agreed only in the early 1950s. The book “Adolf Hitler, My Childhood Friend” appeared in 1953 and was translated into several languages.

Historians dispute how reliable it is. In 1956 Franz Jetzinger wrote that 90 per cent of its information was false, and this verdict long gave Kubizek the reputation of an unreliable witness. Later Brigitte Hamann judged him on the whole credible; doubts remain chiefly about his accounts of the young Hitler’s antisemitism.

Kubizek died on 23 October 1956 and is buried in Eferding.