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Saturday, September 14, 2013

Passau (cont) The Hitler Mystery

While exploring Passau today, I took a number of pictures, but it looks like I won' t be able to post them until I get home. I had previously mentioned that both Hitler and Himmler had lived here as children. I have taken pictures of both their residences, which are apartment buildings still standing.

Above: The now-closed Peschl Keller, where Hitler reportedly spoke during a pre-1933 visit to Passau
 
I also had mentioned that according to Passau legend, In January 1894, Hitler was saved from drowning in the Inn River (which runs right behind his apartment building). The incident was reportedly described in the local newspaper. Your intrepid investigative reporter will be posting a photograph of the exact spot where this history-changing event likely took place (according to my investigative hunch). The Hitler family residence was located at Kapuzinerstrasse 31, which is now Kapuzinerstrasse 5. From 1933-1945, Kapuzinerstrasse was named after Hitler's mother, Klara (Klara Hitler Strasse).

5 Kapuzinerstrasse in red

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082640/How-year-old-Adolf-Hitler-saved-certain-death--drowning-icy-river-rescued.html

Here is more (in German) on Johann Kuehberger, the boy who went on to become a priest and well-known church organist in Germany.

http://regiowiki.pnp.de/index.phpf/Johann_Nepomuk_K%C3%BChberger

To me it makes perfect sense that if Hitler was four years old at the time and was saved by the son of the apartment owner of the same building, then the incident must have occurred directly behind the apartment building. The rear of the building sits right over the bank of the river.

5 Kapuzinerstrasse (in red-center) as seen from across Inn River. Above on hill is the Maria Hilfer Hospital.


Above: Bank of Inn river behind 5 Kapuzinerstrasse. with St Stephan Cathedral on opposite bank. Below pictures also taken behind 5 Kapuzinerstrasse. Was it on this spot that history was changed forever?





Except, the news article at the time said it happened under the kaserne military hospital. I must do further checking tomorrow as to where that was located.

Stay tuned for history you won't get anyplace else.

7 comments:

Bartender Cabbie said...

standing by

Findalis said...

I thought that Hitler destroyed the town. Or was it his birth town?

Gary Fouse said...

Find ails,

Neither Passau nor Braunau am Inn, where he was born. You are thinking about the town his father came from since there was a question about grandad or some uncle being of Jewish descent. Of the top of my head, I think the place was called Strones or Strodes.

Siarlys Jenkins said...

Moral of the story: NEVER rescue a drowning child. They might grow up to be Adolf Hitler.

Wouldn't Clara's married name have been Schicklegruber?

My late mother told me she used to come home from seeing newsreels at the movie theater and ask her elders "Who is that little man with brown hair and brown eyes carrying on about a tall blonde-haired blue-eyed Aryan master race?

Geoff Walden said...

The house you found at today's Nr. 5 does not at all resemble the house that was published in 1930s postcards and books as the Hitler house, Klara-Hitler-Strasse 5 (Kapuziner Str. 31 when the Hitlers lived there). Apparently, what was Nr. 5 then is not Nr. 5 now. (see - Hoffmann, "Wie die Ostmark ihre Befreiung erlebte," 1938, page 12)

Gary Fouse said...

Geoff,

I have done some further checking, and there are other sources that indicate this is the same house, but I will do more checking. I seem to recall seeing a photo of the house in the Nazi times.

Still trying to pull up your reference with a photo.

Your site is interesting.

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/65005561

Gary Fouse said...

Geoff,

One additional point: Were you aware that the Hitler family initially lived in an apartment house on Theresienstrasse in Passau? It was either 23 or 21, I don't recall. Interestingly, a few years earlier or later, the Himmler family lived almost directly across the street.