In Europe

liberal Vienna. In Herzl's utopia, there was no Star of David.
    And finally we arrive at the anonymous observer to all this: the daydreamer, the homeless pauper, the hopeless painter Adolf Hitler. He spent six years in Vienna, from September 1907 until May 1913, between the ages ofeighteen and twenty-four. Without a doubt, the city made an enormous impression on him. According to his future assistant Albert Speer, decades later Hitler could still draw the Ring with all its great monuments, to scale, by heart.
    ‘Adolf Hitler, as he was known [to friends and colleagues], did not particularly stand out amid the drab army of Viennese workers and the unemployed, neither by reason of any special talent, nor by reason of any lack of scruples, any criminality or demonic trait.’ This is how the historian Brigitte Haman summarises the conclusions of her impressive search for traces of Adolf Hitler in Vienna. In those days, she says, he could not have been much more than yet another hot-tempered eccentric, talking everyone's ear off and idolising the German people. No one had yet noticed the ‘compelling power’ of his regard. In his Viennese days, little or nothing could be seen of anti-Semitism on his part. For in spite of his avid political interest, he had only one goal: to become an architect.
    None of this, however, rules out the fact that many of Hitler's ideas were drawn from the Vienna of that day. In his later views, the
fin de siècle
politics of Vienna are found everywhere. Schönerer's ideology and the cult that surrounded him were transferred almost intact to Hitler's National Socialist movement, up to and including the
Führerprinzip
and the street violence. His histrionic style, too, was probably borrowed almost directly from Schönerer. Years later, he would tell his table companions that he was a true ‘Schönererian’, and that he had come to Vienna as an art student with a great antipathy for Lüger. Only later did that antipathy turn to admiration. The roots of Hitler's radical racism, therefore, are probably best attributed to Schönerer.
    What Hitler learned from Lüger, however, was at least as important: the political theatrics, the key role of public relations, and above all the crucial importance of social policies and major public-works projects. Demagoguery alone was never enough: people had to be governed as well. Hitler learned from Lüger, as he admitted in a speech much later, that ‘great works can secure the dominion’ of a movement. ‘If the words no longer reverberate, then the stones must speak.’
    Is there anything left in Austria of this young Viennese eccentric? A few hours by train from Vienna lies Leonding, once a small village,now a suburb of Linz, with a village square and a bakery-cum-bistro where the local ladies spend their mornings in gossip. The American historian John Lukacs heard about the grave right after 1945 – friends of his who had recently been released from Mauthausen had picnicked near it – and he told me it was still there. But when I see the snowy churchyard I can barely imagine it. Almost all the graves are shiny and new, making it look as though an entire generation has died in this village in the last few years. The graves are usually emptied here after ten years, the poster with regulations says, and I almost abandon hope.
    I search the graveyard systematically, scanning all the Fritzes, Franzes, Aloises and Theresas lying here. After forty-five minutes of ploughing through the snow, after I have covered almost the entire churchyard, I stumble upon it. The strange thing is that I feel no satisfaction, only a shock. The stone with the big black cross stands a little awry. An enormous pine tree is growing from the grave. The enamel portraits of the deceased are all too familiar. With half-frozen fingers I jot down:
Alois Hitler, k.-u.-k.k. Zollamts Oberoffizial I.P. und Hausbesitzer, gest. 3 Jänner 1903 im 65. Lebensjahr. Dessen Gattin Frau Klara Hitler, gest. Dez. 1907 i. 47 Lebj. RIP
. The stone allows no further inscription for her.
    The low yellow house behind the graveyard is still there as well, the house where their little boy devoured Karl May westerns, played Boer War and chased the rats in the churchyard.
    The Hitlers have no living descendants, but their headstone is decorated with freshly cut pine boughs and violets. The letters have recently been gilded. There are three new candles on the grave. A new wreath hangs on the cross.
    In the