Hitler

Linz in the evenings, would lecture him on the need to tear down, remodel, and replace the central public buildings, showing his friend countless sketches of his rebuilding plans.
    The make-believe world also included Adolf’s infatuation with a girlwho did not even know of his existence. Stefanie, an elegant young lady in Linz to be seen promenading through the town on the arm of her mother, and occasionally greeted by an admirer among the young officers, was for Hitler an ideal to be admired from a distance, not approached in person, a fantasy figure who would be waiting for the great artist when the right moment for their marriage arrived, after which they would live in the magnificent villa that he would design for her.
    Another glimpse into the fantasy world is afforded by Adolf ’s plans for the future when, around 1906, the friends bought a lottery ticket together. Adolf was so certain they would win first prize that he designed an elaborate vision of their future residence. The two young men would live an artistic existence, tended by a middle-aged lady who could meet their artistic requirements – neither Stefanie nor any other woman of their own age figured in this vision – and would go off to Bayreuth and Vienna and make other visits of cultural value. So certain was Adolf that they would win, that his fury at the state lottery knew no bounds when nothing came of their little flutter.
    In spring 1906, Adolf persuaded his mother to fund him on a first trip to Vienna, allegedly to study the picture gallery in the Court Museum, more likely to fulfil a growing ambition to visit the cultural sites of the Imperial capital. For two weeks, perhaps longer, he wandered through Vienna as a tourist taking in the city’s many attractions. With whom he stayed is unknown. The four postcards he sent his friend Gustl and his comments in
Mein Kampf
show how captivated he was by the grandeur of the buildings and the layout of the Ringstraße. Otherwise, he seems to have spent his time in the theatre and marvelling at the Court Opera, where Gustav Mahler’s productions of Wagner’s
Tristan
and
The Flying Dutchman
left those of provincial Linz in the shade. Nothing had changed on his return home. But the sojourn in Vienna furthered the idea, probably already growing in his mind, that he would develop his artistic career at the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts.
    By the summer of 1907, this idea had taken more concrete shape. Adolf was now aged eighteen but still never having earned a day’s income and continuing his drone’s life without career prospects. Despite the advice of relatives that it was about time he found a job, he had persuaded his mother to let him return to Vienna, this time with the intention of entering the Academy. Whatever her reservations, the prospect of a systematic study at the Academy in Vienna must have seemedto her an improvement on his aimless existence in Linz. And she did not need to worry about her son’s material welfare. Adolf ’s ‘Hanitante’ – Aunt Johanna – had come up with a loan of 924 Kronen to fund her nephew’s artistic studies. It gave him something like a year’s salary for a young lawyer or teacher.
    By this stage, his mother was seriously ill with breast cancer. She had already been operated on in January, and in the spring and early summer was frequently treated by the Jewish family doctor, Dr Bloch. Frau Klara – now in the new family home at Urfahr, a suburb of Linz – must have been seriously worried not only about the mounting medical costs, but about her eleven-year-old daughter Paula, still at home and looked after by Aunt Johanna, and about her darling boy Adolf, still without a clear future. Adolf, described by Dr Bloch as a tall, sallow, frail-looking boy who ‘lived within himself’, was certainly worried about his mother. He settled the bill of 100 Kronen for her twenty-day stay in hospital at the start of the year. He wept when Dr Bloch had to tell him and his sister the bad news that their mother had little chance of surviving her cancer. He tended to her during her illness and was anguished at the intense pain she suffered. He had, it seems, to take responsibility for whatever decisions had to be made about her care. Despite his mother’s deteriorating condition, however, Adolf went ahead with his plans to move to Vienna. He left for the capital in early September 1907, in time to take the entrance examination for the Academy of Fine