Eva Braun
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| Eva Braun | |
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Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler (right) on the veranda of the Berghof.
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| Born | Eva Anna Paula Braun February 6, 1912 Munich, Germany |
| Died | April 30, 1945 (aged 33) Berlin, Germany |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
| Other names | Eva Hitler |
| Spouse | Adolf Hitler |
Eva Anna Paula Braun, died Eva Anna Paula Hitler[1] (February 6, 1912 – April 30, 1945) was the longtime companion of Adolf Hitler and briefly his wife.
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[edit] Background
Born in Munich, Germany, Eva Braun was the second daughter of school teacher Friedrich "Fritz" Braun and Franziska Kronberger, who both came from respectable Bavarian families. Her elder sister Ilse was born in 1909 and her younger sister Margarete (called "Gretl") was born in 1915. Braun was educated at a lyceum, then for one year at a business school in a convent where she had average grades and a talent for athletics. She worked for several months as a receptionist at a medical office, then at age 17 took a job as an office and lab assistant and photographer's model for Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer for the Nazi Party.[2] She met Adolf Hitler, 23 years her senior, at Hoffmann's studio in 1929.[2] He had been introduced to her as "Herr Wolff" (a childhood nickname he used during the 1920s for security purposes). She described him to friends as a "gentleman of a certain age with a funny moustache, a light-coloured English overcoat, and carrying a big felt hat." He appreciated her eye color which was said to be close to his mother's.[2] Both of their families were strongly against the relationship and little is known about its first two years.
[edit] Relationship and turmoil
Hitler saw more of Braun after the alleged 1931 suicide of his half sister Angela's daughter Geli Raubal, who may have been his mistress. Some historians suggest Raubal killed herself because she was distraught over Hitler's relationship with Braun, while others speculate Hitler killed her or had her murdered. Braun was unaware that Raubal was a rival for Hitler's affections until after Raubal committed suicide.[3] Braun was seen by some as a replacement for Raubal.[3]
Meanwhile, Hitler was seeing other women, such as actress Renate Müller, whose early death was also termed a suicide. Braun first attempted suicide in 1932, at the age of 20,[3] by shooting herself in the neck and attempted suicide a second time in 1935 by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. After Braun's recovery Hitler became more committed to her and arranged for the substantial royalties from widely published and popular photographs of him taken by Hoffmann's photo studio to pay for a villa in Wasserburgerstrasse, a Munich suburb. This income also provided her with a Mercedes, a chauffeur and a maid. Braun's sister Gretl moved in with her. Hoffmann asserted that Braun became a fixture in Hitler's life by first attempting to commit suicide less than a year after Geli Raubal's own suicide (and accompanying rumors of murder). Hitler wished to avoid any further scandal.[4]
When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Braun sat on the stage in the area reserved for VIPs as a secretary, to which Hitler's sister Angela strongly objected, along with the wives of other ministers. Angela, a housekeeper for Hitler, was banned from living anywhere near Braun as a result.[3] By 1936, Braun was at Hitler's household at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden whenever he was in residence there and her parents were also invited for dinner several times. Braun's political influence on Hitler was apparently minimal. She was never allowed to stay in the room when business or political conversations took place. However, some historians have inferred she was aware of at least some sordid details concerning the Third Reich's inner workings. By all accounts she led a sheltered and privileged existence and seemed uninterested in politics.[4]
Hitler and Eva never appeared as a couple in public and there is some indication that this, along with their not having married early in their relationship, was due to Hitler's fear that he would lose popularity among female supporters.[3] The German people were entirely unaware of Eva Braun and her relationship with Hitler until after the war. According to the memoirs of Albert Speer, Braun never slept in the same room as Hitler and had her own bedrooms at the Berghof, in Hitler's Berlin residence and in the Berlin bunker. Speer wrote:
- Eva Braun was allowed to be present during visits from old party associates. She was banished as soon as other dignitaries of the Reich, such as cabinet ministers, appeared at the table ... Hitler obviously regarded her as socially acceptable only within strict limits. Sometimes I kept her company in her exile, a room next to Hitler's bedroom. She was so intimidated that she did not dare leave the house for a walk. Out of sympathy for her predicament I soon began to feel a liking for this unhappy woman, who was so deeply attached to Hitler.
Speer later said, "Eva Braun will prove a great disappointment to historians."[5]
[edit] Lifestyle
Even during World War II Braun apparently lived a life of leisure, spending her time exercising, reading romance novels, watching films and early German television (at least until around 1943) along with later helping to host gatherings of Hitler's inner circle. Unlike most other Germans she was reportedly free to read European and American magazines and watch foreign films. Her affection for nude sunbathing (and being photographed at it) is known to have infuriated Hitler. She reportedly accepted gifts which were stolen property belonging to deposed European royal families. Braun had a lifelong interest in photography and their closest friends called her the Rolleiflex Girl (after the well-known camera model). She did her own darkroom processing of silver (black and white) stills and most of the extant colour stills and movies of Hitler are her work.
Otto Günsche and Heinz Linge, during extensive debriefings by Soviet intelligence officials after the war, said Braun was at the center of Hitler's life for most of his twelve years in power. It was said that in 1936,
He was always accompanied by her. As soon as he heard the voice of his lover he became jollier. He would make jokes about her new hats. He would take her for hours on end into his study where there would be champagne cooling in ice, chocolates, cognac, and fruit.
The interrogation report adds that when Hitler was too busy for her, "Eva would often be in tears."
Linge said that before the war, Hitler ordered an increase of the police guard at Braun's house in Munich after she reported to the Gestapo that a woman had said to her face she was the "Führer-whore".
Hitler is known to have been opposed to women wearing cosmetics (in part because they were made from animal by-products) and sometimes brought the subject up at mealtime. Linge (who was his valet) said Hitler once laughed at traces of Braun's lipstick on a napkin and to tease her, joked, "Soon we will have replacement lipstick made from dead bodies of soldiers".[6]
In 1944, Eva invited her cousin Gertraud Weisker to visit her at the Berghof near Berchtesgaden. Decades later, Weisker recalled that although women in the Third Reich were expected not to wear make-up, drink, or smoke, Eva did all of these things. "She was the unhappiest woman I have ever met," said Weisker, who informed Braun about how poorly the war was going for Germany, having illegally listened to BBC news broadcasts in German.
On June 3, 1944 Eva Braun's younger sister Gretl (1915-1987) married Hermann Fegelein who served as Heinrich Himmler's liaison on Hitler's staff. Hitler used the marriage as an excuse to allow Eva to appear at official functions.[4] When Fegelein was caught in the closing days of the war trying to escape to Sweden with another woman, Hitler personally ordered his execution. Gretl was eight months pregnant with a daughter at this time and after the war named the child Eva Barbara Fegelein in remembrance of her beloved sister (Eva Fegelein committed suicide in 1975 after an unhappy romance).
[edit] Marriage and suicide
In early April 1945 Braun traveled by car from Munich to Berlin to be with Hitler at the Führerbunker. Eva refused to leave as the Red Army closed in, insisting she was one of the few people loyal to him left in the world. Hitler and Braun were married on April 29, 1945 during a brief civil ceremony which was witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. The bride wore a black (some accounts say dark blue) silk dress.
With Braun's marriage her legal name changed to Eva Hitler. When Eva signed her marriage certificate she wrote the letter B for her family name, then lined this out and replaced it with Hitler. Although bunker personnel were instructed to call her Frau Hitler her new husband continued to call his wife Fräulein Braun.[7]
There was gossip among the Führerbunker staff that Eva was carrying Hitler's child but there is no evidence she was ever pregnant.
Braun and Hitler committed suicide together on April 30, 1945 at around 3:30 p.m. The occupants of the bunker heard a gunshot and the bodies were soon discovered. She had bitten onto a cyanide capsule (most historians have concluded Hitler used a combination method, shooting himself in the right temple immediately after biting a cyanide capsule). Braun was 33 years old when she died. Their corpses were burned in the Reich Chancellery garden just outside the bunker's emergency exit.
The charred remains were found by the Russians and secretly buried at the SMERSH compound in Magdeburg, East Germany along with the bodies of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and their six children. All of these remains were exhumed in April 1970, completely cremated and dispersed in the Elbe river.[8]
The rest of Braun's family survived the war, including her father, who worked in a hospital and to whom Braun sent several trunks of her belongings in April 1945. Her mother, Franziska, died aged 96 in January 1976, having lived out her days in an old farmhouse in Ruhpolding, Bavaria.[9]
[edit] References
- ^ BBC News | EUROPE | Hitler's final witness
- ^ a b c Robert George Leeson Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler. Consulted on August 14, 2007.
- ^ a b c d e Guido Knopp, Hitler's Women. Consulted on August 14, 2007.
- ^ a b c Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny. Consulted on August 14, 2007.
- ^ The Independent, The Eva Braun story: Behind every evil man..., 2 March 2006, retrieved 18 December 2007
- ^ World History | Stalin\'s secret files on Hitler |
- ^ Johnson, Daniel, arlindo-correia.com, Review of The flirtatious Fraulein by Angela Lambert, retrieved 18 December 2007
- ^ ::The Death of Adolf Hitler::
- ^ hh.schule.de, Biographie: Eva Braun (in German), retrieved 18 December 2007
[edit] Further reading
- Lambert, Angela The Lost Life Of Eva Braun: 2007--St. Martin's Press
- In de ban van Hitler: Maria Reiter, Geli Raubal, Unity Mitford, Eva Braun by Alex Alexander - 2005
- Eva Braun: Hitler's Mistress by Nerin E. Gun, 1969
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- A collection of rare home movie footage of Braun, via Youtube
- Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, color documentary
