version: January 7, 2018 - NIOD-begin | beginpagina Droog




J. Sydney Jones

Hitler in Vienna (1982)

Introduction
Alarming 'Aknowledgements'
1907 - Hitlers Art School Examinations
1907 - Hitler's examination drawings (forgeries)
1910 - Conflict Hitler and Reinhold Hanisch
1910 - Hitler the housepainter?
1910 - Altenberg, Landsberger and Morgenstern
1910 and 1942 - Hitler on his paintings
1910 - Morgenstern and Feingold
1911 - Jacob Altenberg

Compilation: Jaap van den Born & Bart FM Droog, 2018

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Introduction

J. Sydney Jones Hitler in Vienna, 1907-1913 Clues to the future. New York, Blond & Briggs, London, 1983. Cover shown is reprint, 2002.

This book, written in 1979-1982, on the young Hitler in Vienna is partially based on highly unreliable witness accounts (Reinhold Hanisch and Josef Greiner), on unreliable Hitler biographies (from Werner Maser, John Toland and Robert G.L. Waite) and on information reached to him by nazi art swindlers Dr. Johannes von Müllern-Schönhausen and Prof. Dr. August Priesack.

On the other hand, J. Sydney Jones did research in German, Austrian and US archives and interviewed reliable witnesses. He has provided this work with excellent references on sources, which makes it possible, with the knowledge of 35 years hindsight, to distinguish concoctions from facts in this work.

J. Sydney Jones has interwoven the story on Hitler with chapters on Hitler's contemporaries in Vienna, like the painters Gerstl, Klimt, Kokoschka, the composer Mahler and the architects Loos and Otto Wagner. He also paid much attention to Hitler's supposed sex life, including golden showers and so on.

As our investigation focuses on the artwork attributed to Hitler, we investigated only the relevant passages in J. Sydney Jones' book.


Alarming 'Aknowledgements'

The book opens with 'Aknowledgements'. The third paragraph is:

"I should like to thank also those many individuals who helped shape the book with private interviews; Dr. Wilfried Daim and Dr. Müllern-Schönhausen in Vienna and Dr. August Priesack in Munich. (...);"

Dr. Wilfried Daim* was the same man who guided the naieve Hitler biographer John Toland in the 1970's to Von Müllern-Schönhausen.**

* Dr. Wilfried Daim was 'Leiter des Wiener Instituts für Politische Psychologie' in 1959. Hij wrote this book: Der Mann, der Hitler die Ideen gab. Von den religiösen Verirrungen eines Sektierers zum Rassenwahn des Diktators; Isar Verlag, München, 1958. It's a biography of Adolf lanz alias Dr. Georg Adolf Josef Lanz von Liebenfels, 'brother' of the 'Orden des Neuen Tempels'.
See also: Nationalsozialismus. Äfflinge und Heldlinge. Der Spiegel, 14-01-1959.
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-42624318.html
** John Toland, page 1270.
http://www.bartfmdroog.com/droog/dd/mullern-schonhausen.html#nt1

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1907 : Entrance examination for the Academy of Fine Arts
Page 11.


notes:
¹ Hitler, Mein Kampf, page 19.
² Werner Maser. Adolf Hitler: Legend, Myth and Reality. New York, 1971.
NB: Maser is a very unreliable Hitler biographer.

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Page 12


notes


In Adolf Hitler als Maler und Zeichner (1983), the book Priesack was working on, on pages 103 'these' the four test drawings are depicted, preceded by this text:

Price 40

PB: D1; F : P = Privatbesitz; Privatsammlung in Südwestdeutschland, Fotoquelle, Bildarchiv Dr. Priesack, München.
The provenance story tells us Price 40 is very likely to be a forgery.

Price 41

PB: D1; F : P = Privatbesitz; Privatsammlung in Südwestdeutschland, Fotoquelle, Bildarchiv Dr. Priesack, München.
The provenance story tells us Price 41 is very likely to be a forgery.

Price 42

PB: D1; F : P = Privatbesitz; Privatsammlung in Südwestdeutschland, Fotoquelle, Bildarchiv Dr. Priesack, München.
The provenance story tells us Price 42 is very likely to be a forgery.

Price 43

PB: D1; F : P = Privatbesitz; Privatsammlung in Südwestdeutschland, Fotoquelle, Bildarchiv Dr. Priesack, München.
The provenance story tells us Price 43 is very likely to be a forgery.

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Even more Hitlers from 1907!

Priesack presents in Adolf Hitler als Maler und Zeichner on page 104 also three watercolors 'from' Hitler's 1907 portfolio. These works:

Price 44

PB: E; F : J = Privatbesitz; Privatsammlung Marquess of Bath, Longleat House, England; Fotoquelle ; Peter Jahn Wien.
The provenance story tells us Price 44 is very likely to be a forgery. As the marquess of Bath possessed a large collection of forged Hitlers and Peter Jahn was a notorius swindler.

Price 45


PB: E; F : E = Privatbesitz; Privatsammlung Marquess of Bath, Longleat House, England; Fotoquelle: Marquess of Bath.
The provenance story tells us Price 45 is very likely to be a forgery.

Price 46

PB: E; F : J = Privatbesitz; Privatsammlung Marquess of Bath, Longleat House, England; Fotoquelle ; Peter Jahn Wien.
The provenance story tells us Price 44 is very likely to be a forgery.

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further notes on page 12

⁴ Hitler, Mein Kampf, page 20
⁵ Quoted in Maser, p. 356, n. 5.
⁶ To be fair to Hitler, at least one other of the applicants who failed that year went on to become a professor at the same Academy (Maser, p. 40). Toland points out (p. 25) that Marc Chagall was rejected by the St. Petersburg Academy. Though this is not to suggest that Hitler's talent was misunderstood genius. Few drawings exist from these early years, but those that do remain show a somewhat unskilled hand at wok on paintings, primarily architectural in nature, and in the style of Rudolph van Alt, an Austrian master. (...) But the rejection from the academy did not mean, per se, that Hitler was without talent.
⁷ Maser, p. 40.

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Page 187: Conflict Hitler and Reinhold Hanisch, 1910


notes:
⁴⁷ HA [NSDAP Hauptarchiv], File 1741, reel 82
⁴⁸ Reinhold Hanisch. I was Hitler's Buddy. The New Republic, 1939. Page 299.

188

notes:
⁴⁹ HA, File 1741, reel 86
⁵⁰ HA, File 1741, reel 86
⁵¹ Hanisch, p. 299; HA, File 40, Reel 2.

189

... were filing out, Hanisch called to Hitler (...): "When and where will we see each other again to make a settlement?" (Hanisch, p. 299).

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199 - Hitler the housepainter? Autumn 1910


notes:
¹ Hanisch, p. 272.

200

notes:
² Dit verhaal over Hitlers werkzaamheden als decoratieschilder in het Weens 'Kunsthistorisches Museum, stamt van een oud-museumdirecteur. J. Sydney Jones geeft bij deze noot uitvoerige uitleg, zie: Hitler in Kunsthistorisch Museum, 1910?
Of dit verhaal op waarheid berust of niet kan niet nagegaan worden. Maar veel belangrijker dan die vraag is dat uit dit verhaal mogelijk de mythe van Hitler-de-huisschilder gegroeid is.

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201 - Altenberg, Landsberger and Morgenstern

notes:
⁴ Statement by Professor Leidenroth, HA, File 1741, Reel 86.
Comment: At this time Hitler still received an orphans pension.

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202 Hitler on his paintings, ca. 1942


notes:


210 - Morgenstern and Feingold

notes



229 - Jacob Altenberg, 1911-1913


notes:
¹ Altenberg Statement, HA, File 1741, Reel 86.
This might be the statement of Altenberg, deposited at the Viennese police in 1935, in the police investigation into Hitler forgeries by Reinhold Hanisch.

230


notes:
² Description according to interview with Altenberg's daughter-in-law, Senta Altenberg, in Vienna.
³ HA, File 1741, Rel 86, and File 36, Reel 2.
⁴ Altenberg interview.
⁵ HA, File 1741, Reel 86. Cf. greiner, p. 77, in which Greiner states that Hitler was always very polite to his Jewish customers and then laughed behind their backs.

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Hitler in Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1910?

Page 316-318, notes 2 and 3 by page 199-200. Is this the source for the Hitler-the-house-painter myth?



318




The frame maker Jacob Altenberg (name also spelled as 'Jakob Altenberg', 1875-1944) was one of the buyers of Hitlers paintings in 1910-1913.

Altenberg himself stated that he had bought 25 Hitler paintings.

Yet, in the Price book his name as original owner is only mentioned twice. With these two works, Price-263 'Penzing - St. Rochus Kapelle 1912' and 'Price-264, 'Wien 1912 I. B(ez.) Ruprechtskirche 1912'.




If these works depicted in Price (albeit with very strange dates of the statements by Altenberg, are really the same as the ones once owned by Altenberger, these works must be authentic Hitlers.

According to Price they were in 1981 in the possession of Graf Klenau in München.

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