Jakob Altenberg

Jakob Altenberg (* 1875 in Grzymatow , Skralat, Galicia , † 1944 in Vienna ) was an Austrian businessman. Altenberg was a business partner of the young Adolf Hitler during his time in Vienna (1909–1913). In research on Hitler , Altenberg, who was a Jew, gained a certain importance, as the good relationship he had with Hitler is seen variously as evidence of the thesis that Hitler was in his Vienna time - unlike him later himself claims - was not yet an anti-Semite .

Life and significance for research on Hitler

Jakob Altenberg was born in Galicia in 1875 as the son of the Jewish couple Moses and Sarah Altenberg. As a young man Altenberg came to Vienna, where he learned the craft of gilding. He later gave up his Jewish faith and in 1902 married a Catholic Viennese restaurateur's daughter. The marriage resulted in two children, the daughter Adele (* 1896) and the son Jakob junior (* 1902).

In 1898 Altenberg opened his first shop as a frame dealer and gilder at Wiedner Hauptstrasse 37. Within a few years he advanced from a small dealer to the operator of a successful frame workshop and a well-established chain of frame and art shops selling picture frames , pictures and smaller ones Works of art (figures etc.) were offered for sale. In addition to its main branch on Wiedner Hauptstrasse, Altenberg was later able to set up three further branches, including a shop on Mariahilfer Strasse .

Between 1909 and 1913 Altenberg was in business contact with the young Adolf Hitler, who was living as a painter in Vienna at the time. Until he moved to Germany in May 1913, Hitler regularly supplied Altenberg's shops with self-painted pictures, which he sold to Altenberg either himself or through business partners such as Reinhold Hanisch or Josef Löffner, who, like himself, lived in the men's dormitory on Meldemannstrasse. The pictures made by the later German dictator - usually watercolors - were partly used by Altenberg as picture goods for room decorations, but partly also as additions to the more attractive design of the picture frames he offered - which were easier to sell with a filler than when they were offered empty were - resold. The business relationship between Hitler and Altenberg was good, regardless of Altenberg's Jewish ancestry: This is not only supported by the length of the business contact they had with each other, but also by statements by Hanisch and Hitler himself. Hanisch confirmed Hitler's good relationship with Altenberg in his 1939 in the American magazine The Republican , and Hitler himself later made exclusively positive statements about Altenberg's person. This fact, as well as Altenberg's later statement that he had never heard an anti-Semitic statement from Hitler's mouth, are accordingly often seen in Hitler's research as confirmation that Hitler was not an anti-Semite - or at least not an aggressive racial anti-Semite - during his time in Vienna. but it must have become this only during or immediately after the First World War , for example by Brigitte Hamann in her book Hitler's Vienna . In particular, Hitler's own assertion in his book Mein Kampf , published in 1925 , that he was already a staunch anti-Semite in Vienna is heavily questioned against the background of his relationship with Altenberg and other Viennese Jews (such as the men’s home residents Löffner and Neumann and the dealer Morgenstern ). Hamann interprets this assertion as a lie that Hitler spread out of political calculation in order to create the impression that his anti-Semitism was the product of a straightforward development without breaks and contradictions.

After the end of the business relationship with Hitler, Altenberg, to whom historical research also owes one of the few descriptions of Hitler's appearance during his time in Vienna, continued his business for almost twenty-five years. After the German invasion of Austria in 1938, Altenberg's businesses were “Aryanized” and his assets were confiscated except for a minimal pension. In 1938, Altenberg had to sell the two Hitler pictures that were still in his warehouse at the time of the Anschluss for a small fee to the main archive of the NSDAP.

Altenberg escaped deportation after 1942 because of his Aryan wife. He died in Vienna in 1944. Altenberg's son Jakob (Jacques) reestablished the father's company on a modest scale (with only one shop) after the Second World War.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ James Giblin: The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler , 2002, p. 14.
2. ↑ Hans Mommsen : The Third Reich Between Vision and Reality , 2001, p. 34. Mommsen also notes at the same point that the prices that Altenberg Hitler paid for his pictures were reasonable.
3. ^ Ian Kershaw : Hitler, 1889-1936. Hubris , 1999, p. 56.