Aus den Gemeinden von Burgenland: Revisiting the question of Adolf Hitler’s paternal grandfather

Abstract

Hans Frank was Adolf Hitler’s personal attorney. In Frank’s memoir, published seven years after his execution in 1946 at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Frank claimed to have uncovered evidence in 1930 that Hitler’s paternal grandfather was a Jewish man living in Graz, Austria, in the household where Hitler’s grandmother was employed. Contemporary historians have largely dismissed Frank’s claim, primarily on the grounds that there were purportedly no Jews living in Graz in 1836, when Hitler’s father Alois Schicklgruber was conceived. This consensus can be traced to a single historian, Nikolaus von Preradovich, who claimed that ‘not a single Jew’ (kein einziger Jude) was living in Graz prior to 1856. No independent scholarship has confirmed Preradovich’s conjecture. In this paper, evidence is presented that there was in fact eine kleine, nun angesiedelte Gemeinde – ‘a small, now settled community’ – of Jews living in Graz before 1850. The contemporary consensus regarding Hitler’s paternal grandfather does not have a strong evidentiary basis. Other evidence, deriving from earlier sources, suggests that the contemporary consensus may be incorrect. Avenues for further research which might help to clarify the question are suggested.