Josef Greiner

Josef Greiner (born June 28, 1886 in Markt Preding , Styria , † September 4, 1971 in Vienna-Roßau ) was an Austrian casual worker and writer . He was best known as a witness to the Vienna years of the later German dictator Adolf Hitler , about whom he wrote two books.

Live and act

Greiner came from Styria and came to Vienna around 1908. There he earned his living in various jobs, such as a sign painter and lighting technician in a cabaret .

From January to April 1910, Greiner lived in Vienna in the Meldemannstrasse men's dormitory , where the young Adolf Hitler had also lived since February 1910. According to an article by Reinhold Hanisch , which was published in the American newspaper The New Republican in 1939 , Hitler formed an adventurous team with Greiner for several weeks, with whom he pursued a series of obscure projects. The two tried to fill old tin cans with a paste and then sell it on as an antifreeze for window panes.

In March 1938, Greiner published His Struggle and Victory. A memory of Adolf Hitler , in which he claims to have known Hitler for a year in 1912 in the men's home on Meldemannstrasse . In this richly illustrated work, Greiner celebrates Hitler, the “ Lord of the Ostmark ” , in a glorifying tone and in pompous language as a “genius” and “messiah” . He sent copies of the document with dedications to Hitler, Benito Mussolini , Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring , speculating that the NSDAP would publish the work as an advertising publication and would make him so rich. He also hoped to be appointed by Hitler as Minister of Economics in the Reich government.

However, Hitler had the plant crushed. At the same time, a warning card was added to the NSDAP's files, describing Greiner as a “dangerous notorious blackmailer” who was “unsustainable” for the party . Accordingly, Greiner's repeated applications for membership in the NSDAP, which had been made since May 1938, were always rejected on the grounds that he was “an outspoken economic man and an unscrupulous business man” .

Greiner used this rejection after 1945 to knit the legend that he was a resistance fighter against the Nazi regime , which he spread in his book Das Ende des Hitler-Mythos , published in 1947 . Like his work from 1938, Greiner sent the book to a number of prominent personalities, including Josef Stalin . As the first report by an alleged “knowing” after 1945, the end of the Hitler myth turned into a great commercial success. In a letter to Stalin, which he enclosed with the book, Greiner introduced himself as a member of the “Society for the Maintenance of Cultural and Economic Relations with the Soviet Union ”. In addition, he offered the “generalissimo” some of his “self-invented technical innovations” and agreed to leave these to the Soviet state in return for the waiver of all Austrian reparations payments to the Soviet Union.

Allegations of Greiner about Hitler

In The End of the Hitler Myth in 1947, Greiner claims to have known Hitler in 1907 and 1908 in the men's home in Vienna's Meldemannstrasse - at a time when Hitler, who only came to the men's home in 1909, was still living in Linz or in a Vienna apartment building. He also asserts that Hitler worked for an Eastern Jewish junk dealer in Vienna and at the same time earned money collecting bugs . After he once put a load of bed bugs in his client's bed, he was released. Then, according to Greiner, Hitler gave “Aryan” children chocolate in order to get them to insult their Jewish playmates as “Pig Jews”. In the "Café Fenstergucker" he again demonstrated his anti-Semitism by placing a fish bladder full of red ink under the bottom of a festively dressed Jewess . Furthermore, Greiner claims that Hitler once tried to rape and abuse one of his painter models (Hitler never actually drew people when he was in Vienna). He was also infected with syphilis in a prostitute in Vienna's Leopoldstadt . In 1945, according to Greiner, Hitler did not commit suicide by any means, but fled by plane on June 30, 1945: “a deception that looks like an ancient heroic epic” .

Greiner's assertion that he was an active resistance fighter after the annexation of Austria to the German Reich and that he even attempted an assassination attempt on Hitler is equally untrustworthy . Furthermore, he pointed out to his former colleagues in the men's hostel that the treatment of the Jews was reprehensible and rejected his application to join the Reich government as Minister of Economics.

The evaluation of Greiner's writings as a historical source

As early as 1956, Franz Jetzinger showed in a detailed investigation that Greiner's 1947 book was a "tangible web of lies" . Jetzinger identified Hitler's Mein Kampf , the Hitler biography of Konrad Heiden from 1936 and conversations that Greiner had with him, Jetzinger, as sources for the work of the former casual worker .

The conclusion that Jetzinger draws from the mass of abstruse factual errors in Greiner's book, namely that Greiner could not have known Hitler at all, is, however, incorrect, as Brigitte Hamann proves in her book Hitler's Vienna . Jetzinger puts forward the assumption that Hanisch only invented the man named Greiner mentioned in his essay in the New Republican , and Greiner, for his part, then simply exploited Hanisch's claim about a coincidental namesake in the men's home and constructed his story from it. With the help of the Vienna population register , Hamann can prove that a Josef Greiner actually lived from January 15 to April 17, 1910, like Hitler and Hanisch, in the Vienna men's home on Meldemannstrasse and that he was identical to the later author, i.e. Greiner actually knew the two must have.

It remains unclear why Greiner, despite his actual acquaintance with Hitler, did not have anything to report about him and only spread fantasies. Hamann thinks it is conceivable that Greiner was a male colleague of Hitler and Hanisch, but did not know Hitler better. Hanisch would have tried to disavow the hated Hitler in the 1930s by pointing out an alleged friendship with the fantasist and deceiver Greiner. Since Greiner was mentioned in 1936 in Heiden's book as Hitler's alleged male colleague, he had a welcome opportunity to profit from his friendship with Hitler, which was thus “guaranteed”. This is supported by the fact that Greiner Heiden's book mentioned the end of the Hitler myth in the first sentence of the preface to his own book .

Hamann draws the conclusion about Greiner's writings: “Greiner always produced what promised success and political advantage: before 1945 the legend of the Messiah Hitler, after 1945 the legend of the syphilitic and deceiver. In any case, his books are not a quotable source. ” From this it follows that the alleged facts about Hitler, which Greiner has willingly adopted in Hitler's literature since the late 1940s - mostly without quoting him - are also wrong. According to Hamann, biographers have to "clean up" Greiner's previous literature in order to arrive at a truthful picture. This also invalidates theories based on Greiner's book, in particular the famous story of Hitler's alleged syphilis infection in a Jewish prostitute.

Fonts

• His fight and victory. A memory of Adolf Hitler , 1938.
• The end of the Hitler myth . Amalthea, Vienna, 1947.

literature

• Hitler and the women . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1952 ( online ).

Web links

• Josef Greiner at Google Books

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death register of the registry office Vienna-Alsergrund No. 1952/1971.
2. ↑ Brigitte Hamann: Hitler's Vienna , p. 279.
3. ↑ Perhaps this explains why some sources refer to him as a (graduate) engineer .
4. ↑ Hamann refutes this claim with reference to the result of a Wassermann test that Hitler underwent in 1940, which clearly showed that he was not suffering from syphilis (Hamann: Hitler's Vienna , p. 276).
5. ↑ Brigitte Hamann: Hitler's Vienna , p. 277f.