Causes of Hitler's Antisemitism

Before Klara’s death in 1909 Hitler had already asked the Academy’s president, Professor Sigmund Allemand why he was not eligible to enter, and he was informed that his drawings: "Showed an unfitness for painting, and that your ability obviously lay in the field of architecture." (Hitler, Mein Kampf)

Sigmund Allemand was Jewish, but only one of the many men on the acceptance board, not all of whom were Jewish. Years later Hitler would blame his "artistic" misfortune on not being able to enter the academy because of an obvious "Jewish conspiracy." (Hitler’s Table-Talk, 1941)

This is false, Allemand was a Jew, and delivered the news, but Hitler wasn’t the only young man to get the bad news after the two days of examinations which were required, with candidates choosing from groups of themes such as "Expulsion from Paradise," "The Hunt," "Spring," "Death," "Joy," "Music," "Episode from the Deluge," and "Dance." Hitler's surviving examination drawings include Nos. 44-46.

In the classification list for the entrants, officials at the Academy wrote the following entry after Hitler's name (this still exists in Vienna):

"(Born in) Braunau-on-the-Inn, upper Austria, April 20, 1889, German, Catholic.
Father civil servant.
4 classes in Realschule.
Few heads (drawn).
Test drawing unsatisfactory.

Hitler was not alone since a total of 87 other candidates failed that examination, 52 of whom had their records also marked "test drawing unsatisfactory". This was of course his first of two failed exams, in Oct. 1907. When he was frustrated this time on the grounds that his "art" exhibited more architectural skill than artistic talent; his failing to pursue architecture was his own fault, and no-one else.

Not a "Jew conspiracy" as he later claimed in Mein Kampf. That is because he had refused to take his final graduation testing for Real Schule (knowing the areas where he was weakest were those which would be tested) in order to obtain his graduation diploma. So even though he always admitted architecture was his great love, his lack of a secondary school diploma effectively barred any pursuance of architectural studies at the technical institute of Vienna.

Most of the others who failed their entry exams in Vienna received no comment at all, so he obviously showed a "skill", just not the artistic "talent" required for the Fine Arts Academy. Of the total of 115 candidates, only 28 were accepted for first year studies. Academy standards were high and selection criteria were vigorous. At that time failure was neither uncommon nor proof of inability.

Acceptance by the Academy, however, virtually guaranteed recognition by the rather closed circle of artists in Austria and made critical and commercial success easier. Artistic careers outside Academy circles also were possible, but considerably more difficult and unusual. After his unsuccessful bid for admission, Hitler briefly took art lessons from a Viennese sculptor and made a second attempt to enter the Academy the following year. He failed yet again.

Then he took piano lessons, failed at mastering that, started writing poetry and growing his hair long, he failed to sell any poetry, and finally started making a living painting postcards and water colors which he sold through a Jewish friend who owned a gallery. He made enough money doing this to move into the Mannerheim (the best men's hostel) in Vienna, where he lived for three years before moving to Munich.

He came close to being expelled from the Mannerheim when his income bordered on the 1500 kroner a year limit. Remember he was still receiving that 240 kroner a year tax free orphans pension, so he must have been legally taking in (and reporting/paying taxes on) about 100 kroner a month, i.e. 1200 kroner per year. The Mannerheim had been established by a Jewish family, and the "powers that be" allowed the young Hitler to skirt the income limit and stay there anyway.

Hitler didn’t start hating Jews because of his failure at the Vienna Academy, nor did he begin hating Jews because his mother passed away from breast cancer while under the care of a Jewish physician. He admired and protected Dr. Eduard Bloch, even allowing the Dr. to emigrate without hindrance. He made special dispensations so the Dr. Bloch could continue to practice medicine (a unique waiver), not to wear the "yellow star", and to continue to live in his home.

Hitler's anti-Semite stand came into existance as a political expedient post-WW1, finding a suitable "scapegoat" the NSDAP party could point a finger at. At least that is how I see it, remember the fellow who nominated and awarded him both his second and first class Iron Cross medals, as well as his Wound Badge was a Jewish officer.

 

Here is an addition to this post, I found the following letter in the Propagander site

September 16, 1919:
'The Gemlich Letter'

"Dear Herr Gemlich,

The danger posed by Jewry for our people today finds expression in the undeniable aversion of wide sections of our people. The cause of this aversion is not to be found in a clear recognition of the consciously or unconsciously systematic and pernicious effect of the Jews as a totality upon our nation. Rather, it arises mostly from personal contact and from the personal impression which the individual Jew leaves ­almost always an unfavorable one. For this reason, anti-Semitism is too easily characterized as a mere emotional phenomenon. And yet this is incorrect. Anti-Semitism as a political movement may not and cannot be defined by emotional impulses, but by recognition of the facts. The facts are these: First, Jewry is absolutely a race and not a religious association. Even the Jews never designate themselves as Jewish Germans, Jewish Poles, or Jewish Americans but always as German, Polish, or American Jews. Jews have never yet adopted much more than the language of the foreign nations among whom they live. A German who is forced to make use of the French language in France, Italian in Italy, Chinese in China does not thereby become a Frenchman, Italian, or Chinaman. It's the same with the Jew who lives among us and is forced to make use of the German language. He does not thereby become a German. Neither does the Mosaic faith, so important for the survival of this race, settle the question of whether someone is a Jew or non­Jew. There is scarcely a race whose members belong exclusively to just one definite religion.

Through thousands of years of the closest kind of inbreeding, Jews in general have maintained their race and their peculiarities far more distinctly than many of the peoples among whom they have lived. And thus comes the fact that there lives amongst us a non­ German, alien race that neither wishes nor is able to sacrifice its racial character or to deny its feeling, thinking, and striving.

Nevertheless, it possesses all the political rights we do. If the ethos of the Jews is revealed in the purely material realm, it is even clearer in their thinking and striving. Their dance around the golden calf is becoming a merciless struggle for all those possessions we prize most highly on earth.

The value of the individual is no longer decided by his character or by the significance of his achievements for the totality but exclusively by the size of his fortune, by his money.

The loftiness of a nation is no longer to be measured by the sum of its moral and spiritual powers, but rather by the wealth of its material possessions.

This thinking and striving after money and power, and the feelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the Jew who is unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in their employment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favor of "His Majesty" and misuses it like a leech fastened upon the nations. In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before the "majesty of the people," and recognizes only the majesty of money.

He destroys the character of princes with Byzantine flattery, national pride (the strength of a people), with ridicule and shameless breeding to depravity. His method of battle is that public opinion that is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless managed and falsified by it. His power is the power of money, which multiplies in his hands effortlessly and endlessly through interest, and which forces peoples under the most dangerous of yokes. Its golden glitter, so attractive in the beginning, conceals the ultimately tragic consequences. Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination.

In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations.

The deduction from all this is the following: an anti-Semitism based on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expression in the form of the pogrom. An anti-Semitism based on reason, however, must lead to systematic legal combating and elimination of the privileges of the Jews, that which distinguishes the Jews from the other aliens who live among us (an Aliens Law). The ultimate objective [of such legislation] must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general.

For both these ends a government of national strength, not of national weakness, is necessary.

The Republic in Germany owes its birth not to the uniform national will of our people but the sly exploitation of a series of circumstances which found general expression in a deep, universal dissatisfaction. These circumstances however were independent of the form of the state and are still operative today. Indeed, more so now than before. Thus, a great portion of our people recognizes that a changed state ­form cannot in itself change our situation. For that it will take a rebirth of the moral and spiritual powers of the nation.

And this rebirth cannot be initiated by a state leadership of irresponsible majorities, influenced by certain party dogmas, an irresponsible press, or internationalist phrases and slogans. [It requires] instead the ruthless installation of nationally minded leadership personalities with an inner sense of responsibility.

But these facts deny to the Republic the essential inner support of the nation's spiritual forces. And thus today's state leaders are compelled to seek support among those who draw the exclusive benefits of the new formation of German conditions, and who for this reason were the driving force behind the revolution;­ the Jews. Even though (as various statements of the leading personalities reveal) today's leaders fully realized the danger of Jewry, they (seeking their own advantage) accepted the readily proffered support of the Jews and also returned the favor. And this payoff consisted not only in every possible favoring of Jewry, but above all in the hindrance of the struggle of the betrayed people against its defrauders, that is in the repression of the anti-Semitic movement.

Respectfully, Adolf Hitler

See:

Adolf Hitler: His Views on Jews