Frankenberger thesis

The Frankenberger thesis , also known as the Frankenreiter thesis , is a thesis that has been largely disproved in historical research and that claims that Adolf Hitler was of Jewish descent .

With reference to the unsettled descent of Hitler's father Alois Hitler - who was born in 1837 as the illegitimate son of the house maid Anna Maria Schicklgruber - the Frankenberger thesis asserts that the unknown producer of Hitler's father was a Jewish merchant Graz was called Leopold Frankenberger (or Frankenreiter) - or his teenage son - and that Adolf Hitler was a "quarter Jew" in the sense of the Nuremberg race laws later initiated by his own regime .

Origin of the thesis

The Frankenberger thesis in its final form goes back to the memoirs of Hans Frank published under the title Im Angesicht des Galgens . Frank, who served as Hitler's attorney in the late 1920s and early 1930s, states that he was commissioned by Hitler in 1930 to discreetly investigate the various rumors that were circulating in the press and public at the time that alleged Hitler's Jewish descent .

In an in-depth research, Frank said, he was able to unearth some circumstantial evidence that made these rumors appear not entirely absurd: For example, Hitler's grandmother Anna Maria Schicklgruber worked as a housemaid or cook in the house of a Graz Jew named Frankenberger in the 1830s . In 1837, heavily pregnant, she returned to her home village, where her son Alois was born. In the baptismal register, the column for the child's father - who was therefore given the mother's surname - remained empty, but Anna Maria Schicklgruber received financial support from Frankenberger for the following 14 years. The grandmother's activity in Graz in 1837 is unlikely. More probable is an activity in Gratzen (today Nové Hrady ), which is about a day's journey from your home village and where allegedly a Jewish merchant named Frankenberger lived at that time, but this cannot be proven either.

Scientific evaluation of the thesis

The validity of the Frankenberger thesis has been questioned in historical research since its emergence. It is consequently rejected by most well-known researchers. Both Frankenberger's fatherhood and his status as a Jew are questioned.

As early as 1956, Franz Jetzinger pointed out that "the name Frankenberger [...] does not sound Jewish at all" and that it must therefore "first be proven" that Frankenberger - even if he was actually Alois Hitler's father - was actually a Jew be. Jetzinger also emphasized that "any evidence" was missing for alleged alimony payments. His conclusion is therefore: "Frank's report reaches at most a suspicion of Jewish ancestry, he does not guarantee a certainty."

The archive of the city of Graz came to the conclusion in the 1960s that the alleged Frankenberger was probably identical to Leopold Frankenreiter: On the one hand, there was not a single Frankenberger to be found in the residents' lists of the city of Graz for the period in question and, on the other hand, this name corresponds to that Name that Hitler's nephew William Patrick Hitler attributed to Hitler's grandmother's employer. Frankenreiter was not of Jewish descent, but was baptized Catholic with his entire family. Even after this correction, the name Frankenberger remained the one to be found far more frequently in literature.

Joachim Fest judged that "the lack of verifiable evidence [...] admittedly makes the thesis appear extremely questionable". Frank had little reason to knowingly wrongly attribute Jewish ancestors to Hitler, but "the thesis could hardly withstand serious discussion". The “real meaning” of the thesis “lies less in its objective validity”. It was “far more decisive and psychologically important” that Hitler had to see his origins being questioned by Frank's results. [...] Adolf Hitler did not know who his grandfather was. ” Brigitte Hamann wrote,“ Here the angry anti-Semite Frank wanted to shift responsibility for an allegedly Jewish Hitler to the hated Jews and to make them insecure with rumors ”.

Well-known historians who reject the thesis are Ian Kershaw , Robert Payne , Walter Görlitz , Anton Joachimsthaler , Christian Graf von Krockow , John Toland and Ernst Deuerlein .

Apart from serious historical research, the “revelation” of Hitler's “Jewish ancestry” has been taken up again and again up to the present day in publications with a popular scientific, conspiracy-theoretical or sensationalist element. Characteristic of this literature, which is barely manageable in its abundance, is that it has tried for decades to present source material that has been known for decades, in particular Frank's rumors, as new discoveries and does not mention the continuous and almost unanimously skeptical and negative reception by the leading Hitler biographers.

Only more recent results on the question of Hitler's ancestry were presented in 2009 by the Belgian journalist Jean-Paul Mulders . According to DNA samples, the dictator's great-nephews and relatives have the haplogroup E1b1b. The genealogical research describes that this DNA trait occurs more frequently in North Africans, Berbers , Somalis and Ashkenazi Jews than, for example, in Western Europeans and Teutons. Only about 9% of the population of Germany and Austria had this haplogroup, of which 80% had no Jewish ancestors.

Web links

• Der Spiegel, July 24, 1967: Contemporary history / Hitler descent: Dense inbreeding
• Holocaust Reference: Did Hitler Have Jewish Ancestors? "Who can interpret all of this!"
• DNA test: genealogically, it cannot be ruled out from the outset that Hitler had Jewish ancestors

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans Frank: In the face of the gallows. 1955, p. 320.
2. ^ Hitler against Hitler profile online, February 5, 2005.
3. ^ Franz Jetzinger: Hitler's youth. Fantasies, lies - and the truth. 1956, p. 32.
4. ^ City of Graz: Historical yearbook of the city of Graz. Vol. 2-4, 1969, pp. 8-10.
5. ↑ Joachim Fest: Hitler. A biography. 1973, p. 32.
6. ↑ Ibid.
7. ^ Brigitte Hamann: Hitler's Vienna. Piper, Munich 1997, p. 77.
8. ^ Kershaw: Hitler, 1889-1936. Hubris. 2000, p. 8.
9. ^ Payne: The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler. 1973, p. 6.
10. ^ Görlitz: Adolf Hitler. 1960, p. 13.
11. ^ Anton Joachimsthaler: Correction of a biography. 1989, p. 11.
12. ↑ Krockow: Hitler and his Germans. 2001, p. 12.
13. ↑ John Tolad: Hitler. 1976, p. 246.
14. ↑ Deuerlein: The rise of the NSDAP in eyewitness reports. 1968, p. 63.
15. ↑ Jean-Paul Mulders: In Search of Hitler's Son: A Record of Evidence, 2009
16. ↑ Family Tree DNA questions reporting about Hitler's origins. (PDF; 76 kB) (No longer available online.) FamilyTreeDNA, August 30, 2010, archived from the original on May 21, 2013 ; accessed on November 10, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.