Rudolf Häusler

Rudolf Häusler (born December 15, 1893 in Aspang , † July 26, 1973 in Vienna ) was an Austrian businessman. In historical research on Hitler, he is considered to be one of the few witnesses from Adolf Hitler's life in Munich and Vienna in 1913/1914.

Life and significance for research on Hitler

Häusler was born in Vienna in 1893. He attended elementary school in Vienna, then for three years a middle and commercial school in Vienna. He then completed a commercial apprenticeship from 1908 to 1910 . At the age of nineteen he became unemployed. After an argument with his father, he was banned from visiting his parents' house and moved out. He found new accommodation in the men's dormitory on Meldemannstrasse in Vienna , where he lived from February 4 to May 25, 1913.

During his time in the men's home, Häusler met the young Adolf Hitler . On May 25, 1913, Hitler and Häusler moved to Munich together. From May 1913 to February 1914 they shared a room there in the house of the Munich master tailor Josef Popp at Schleissheimer Strasse 34 ( Maxvorstadt ). While Hitler pursued an idle lifestyle in Munich as a postcard painter and self-taught, Häusler hired himself out as a casual worker. In February 1914, after moving out of the common quarters in the Popp house, Häusler looked for a room of his own. However, he was still in close contact with Hitler. After the outbreak of World War I , Häusler returned to Austria on August 3, 1914, where he enlisted in the military. He experienced the war as a soldier and later as a platoon leader in Romania and Italy . His marriage in 1918 resulted in a daughter, Marianne, who was born in the same year. In 1919 Häusler left the Austro-Hungarian army .

Until 1921 Häusler lived as an independent businessman in Vienna. From 1927 to 1933 he was a bank clerk at Wiener Lomb. and Esk. bank . In 1929 his wife died. From 1933 to 1937 he was managing director of a hotel on the Bischofskoppe in Bohemia and from 1938 wagmeister in a sugar factory. An attempt by Häusler to pay a visit to the newly appointed Chancellor Hitler in 1933 failed because his assurances that he were an old friend of the “Führer” were not believed and he was not allowed to see him. In 1938 Häusler joined the NSDAP . From 1938 to 1945 he worked for the German Labor Front (DAF) in Vienna, where he was responsible for the allocation of apartments. On December 1, 1938 he was given the rank of chief department head. In 1940 he was promoted to chief of the NSDAP in Vienna.

Unlike other witnesses from Hitler's early years, such as the tramp Reinhold Hanisch or the pianist August Kubizek , Häusler never wrote down his memories of the time they shared with Hitler. In addition, although he could be found in telephone books until his death in 1973, he was never interviewed by a historian. However, the Austrian historian Brigitte Hamann was able to locate and question Häusler's daughter in the 1990s. Thanks to the reports of his daughter, at least some of Häusler's experiences with the young Hitler and some of the impressions he gained from him could subsequently be preserved for historical research on the basis of his family stories. The information obtained about Hitler is of limited methodological value because it is not based on an immediate (eye) witness, but on the knowledge of a third party. In addition, there were some letters and postcards in the estate of the Häusler family that Hitler had written to Häusler's sister Ida and his mother from Munich.

literature

• Brigitte Hamann: Hitler's Vienna. Apprenticeship as a dictator . Piper, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-492-03598-1 , p. 566 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ This is expressly conceded by Hamann. See Hamann: Hitler's Vienna. P. 275.