Eva Braun's diaries

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The diaries of Eva Braun are from a few individual sheets since 1945 to be lost. The alleged records, which have been published repeatedly under titles such as The Diary of Eva Braun , are based on a forgery spread by Luis Trenker in the late 1940s .

The original diaries

Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler, photo from the Federal Archives

Lore history

Numerous letters and notebooks of the written products of Eva Braun , the lover and later wife of Adolf Hitler , have been preserved in private estates and collections as well as in German and foreign archives. Her diaries, which she kept from 1935 at the latest, have been considered to have disappeared since the end of the war and were most likely destroyed on her instructions. Only the controversial Nazi researcher and apologist David Irving declared in the 1970s that he had clarified their whereabouts, but could not substantiate this claim.

Evidently only 22 pages of handwritten entries have been preserved from Eva Braun's diaries. Recordings begin on February 6, 1935, Braun's 23rd birthday, and end on May 28, 1935, just before she attempted a bogus suicide . Braun's sister Ilse tore the diary pages from the original diary after the suicide attempt was discovered and took them back, but later returned them to her sister, who then kept them on the Obersalzberg . These individual pages were not destroyed by Eva Braun's family, despite Eva Braun's express instructions, but rather hidden together with other private items. Secret service employees of the 3rd US Army later confiscated the material, which was initially included in the files of the Office of Military Government for Germany and then in the holdings of the National Archives, Washington .

They were first published in German in 1968 by the author and journalist Nerin E. Gun , sometimes with incorrect transcription. They appeared in facsimile print in 1971 in a new transcription and with sparse commentary in Werner Maser's standard work Adolf Hitler. Legend-Myth-Reality.

Only Anton Joachimsthaler fundamentally questioned the existence of Eva Braun's diary in his book Hitler's List in 2003 .

Content and rating

First page of the remaining diary entries

According to the Hitler researcher Werner Maser, the entries were written “without any intention of publication or stylization”. The historian Anna Maria Sigmund describes the texts as follows: "Without punctuation, awkward in expression and with the diction of a teenager, the 23-year-old tells of her small, trivial everyday worries." The recordings give a clear insight into the naivety and egomaniacal worldview of the young Eva Braun and her purely private relationship with Adolf Hitler, which she describes in banal harmlessness:

“I am so infinitely happy that he loves me so much and I pray that it will always stay that way. I never want to be at fault if he doesn't like me anymore. "(February 18, 1935)

So she wishes for “a dog” for her birthday, “then I wouldn't be so completely alone”, and is disappointed when she doesn't get one from Hitler: “Now it's nothing again” (February 6, 1935). When Hitler toyed with the idea that she should give up her job as a saleswoman, she happily notes:

“I would no longer have to open the door to our 'honorable customers' and do shopgirls. Dear God grant that it is really true and that it will become reality in the foreseeable future. "(February 18, 1935)

Even dramatic political events are only perceived by her in relation to her own private feelings, such as the brutal purges in the context of the Röhm putsch :

“Is that his insane love that he has assured me so often when he doesn't give me a good word for 3 months. / Well, he had his head full during this time with political problems, but isn't there a relaxation now? And how was it last year? Didn't Röhm u. Italy also troubled a lot and still he found time for me. ”(May 28, 1935)

Eva Braun completely subordinated herself in the relationship, but suffered from neglect and would rather die than accept a separation from Hitler.

“The weather is so wonderful u. I, the lover of the greatest man in Germany and the world, sit and look at the sun through the window. ”(May 10, 1935)“ I only wish for one thing to be seriously ill and not know anything about him for at least 8 days. Why does nothing happen to me, why do I have to go through all this. I would never have seen him. I am desperate. ”(March 11, 1935)“ Dear God help me that I can still speak to him today, tomorrow it will be too late. / I have decided on 35 pieces, this time it should really be a 'surefire' affair. / If he would at least have someone called. "(May 28, 1935)

The lack of interest in Hitler research in Eva Braun's person, which is expressed in the small amount of biographical literature, is based not least on Braun's disinterest in supra-individual processes, which is becoming too clear in her private notes. “It had none of the dazzling qualities of the conventional tyrant maitress. She was neither a Theodora , nor a Pompadour , nor a Lola Montez, ”said Albert Speer from his own perspective . From a scientific perspective, her diary and correspondence hardly provide any new knowledge. The British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper therefore summarized: "Eva Braun is a disappointment in history."

The "Trenker forgery"

French edition of the Trenker forgery 1948

Release history

Immediately after the end of the war, speculation about the whereabouts of Hitler and Eva Braun continued. Many doubted the reports of her death in Berlin. They speculated about an escape of the couple by submarine to South America, Tibet or the Antarctic Neuschwabenland and the FBI collected reports according to which Hitler on a scheduled flight from Spain to the United States in the Yugoslav village Bobovo and the subway entrance Houston Street was seen in New York or was supposed to live in a huge underground hacienda in Argentina .

The public was just as eager for supposedly “intimate details” from the world of Nazi celebrities, which before the end of the war only circulated as rumors or propaganda reports. In this climate, the first newspaper notes that Eva Braun had left a private diary met with a grateful reception. The publications referred to statements by Luis Trenker, who claimed to have received the diary personally from Eva Braun in Kitzbühel in 1944 . He then had the sealed envelope with the notes opened in Bolzano in 1945 in the presence of a notary . In addition, the manuscript had been checked by members of the American War Department , although Trenker never stated by whom and when this should have happened.

Trenker, who had good media contacts as an actor and director, was also known as a bestselling author in the publishing scene. However, his relationship to copyright law was not considered to be particularly pronounced, because he had not written many of the books published under his name himself and was therefore repeatedly involved in legal disputes with ghostwriters and co-authors . After the end of the war he found it difficult to reconnect with his profession and had serious financial problems. Presenting Hitler's mistress in public as a witness to Hitler's eccentric private life promised quick profit in this situation. It is known that Trenker was looking for photo material and detailed information about Eva Braun and the actress and director Leni Riefenstahl as early as 1946 in order to use this material for publications.

The first reports about a possible publication of the diary, which appeared from 1947 onwards, generated a huge press coverage, especially in France, in which there was speculation about a Hollywood film version of the material. There is evidence that Trenker tried to sell the manuscript in Europe and the USA as early as 1946. So he turned to the German-American artist agent Paul Kohner , the American film author Géza Herczeg and a Swiss-American film distributor and presented the manuscript to the New York publishing house Reynal & Hitchcock , which ordered and received an expert opinion from the well-known publicist Hans Habe . In February 1948, Habe publicly invoked the authenticity of the text and advocated publication: He knew Eva Braun's writing, and the “semi-educated, petty-bourgeois, screwed-up and eccentric style of the letters” can be found in the diary. Even entries by Braun such as that she has “nothing to wear” because “Adi never takes care of my clothes” speak for the authenticity. This hasty statement led to malicious attacks on property for years.

The text was first published in book form in France and Italy in 1948, and then in English and Dutch in 1949.

content

The alleged diary consisted of 96 typewriter pages, which had no corrections and no handwritten signature by Eva Braun. In terms of content, numerous sexual allusions mixed with wild colportage dominated the work:

“For the guests, Dr. Ley, the leader of the Workers' Front, has prepared some fine fun. A bull was exposed to the scorching summer heat for several days before the guests arrived without a single drop of water. Then, on Saturday afternoon, the animal was taken to a fenced off shady area and unlimited amounts of water were given to it. The bull, whose intelligence apparently did not match its strength, began to drink like a fish and the effect Ley had planned soon set in: the animal's intestines burst and in front of an amused audience it fell to pieces. Hitler and Himmler in particular found the idea 'original'. "
Riefenstahl and Hitler 1934, photo from the Federal Archives

Leni Riefenstahl was also treated, who was alleged in the alleged diary that she was Hitler's lover and danced naked in front of him. In this case, too, the alleged Eva Braun entries repeated rumors that had been circulating for a long time and were not without a humorous appeal:

“I have to wait in the bedroom, in my nightgown, until he comes. Will she now perform the nude dances below, which we keep talking about and which I am never allowed to be there because I am 'a little girl' and she is 'the secret queen'? "

Eager researchers soon found out that considerable parts of the diary were partly literal, partly analogous to the scandal memories of Countess Marie Louise von Larisch-Wallersee from 1913. This is how the alleged Eva Braun reports on gifts from Hitler:

“The creams he sent me seem to be good - a face pad made from raw veal twice a week and a bath in warm olive oil once a week. How reluctantly I got used to the leather laundry, for example, the way he wanted it. "

The template read:

“Empress Elisabeth was not committed to any particular facial care, occasionally she wore a mask at night that was filled with raw veal inside, the Empress often took warm olive baths. She loved tight-fitting shirts, her trousers were made of leather in winter ... "

Public reactions

Eva Braun's family immediately described the text as “a piece of work” and later presented a declaration by the Grand Hotel Kitzbühel, according to which Braun was last there in 1942, so that the handover claimed by Trenker could not have taken place. Leni Riefenstahl, who was also affected, approached Trenker directly in the summer of 1948, but Trenker replied: “Since you were very prominent as an artist under Hitler's government, it is understandable that people write about you in a positive and negative sense. Artists have to put up with criticism and attacks. "

When, after the Viennese newspaper “ Welt am Abend ”, the Munich magazine “Wochenend” began to preprint the alleged diary in German in September 1948, the first edition of the Braun family with Leni Riefenstahl as a joint plaintiff issued a preliminary injunction from the regional court Munich I stopped. At the trial, Eva Braun's mother denied - as we know today, untruthfully - that her daughter had even kept a diary: "Eva was very reluctant to write letters, and the cake parcels for Dad were always only a short greeting." They were particularly outraged by the intimate descriptions , such as the mention of leather underwear. In order to refute this entry in the diary, the former Hitler secretary Traudl Junge appeared as a witness , who testified that Eva Braun's "laundry was no different from the usual items and was by no means made of leather." The negotiation became completely absurd when Hitler's chauffeur Erich Kempka indignantly denied the claim that the Führer had only washed his feet instead of taking a bath.

Immediately after the prohibition ruling by the Munich regional court, Hans Habe distanced himself from his previous public assessment of the diary. He was never able to judge whether the text was authentic or not, he now explained, which was in stark contrast to his earlier statements. Trenker, on the other hand, stated from safe Italy that he would stick to his account of the origin of the records and that he could "not be held responsible if the memoirs do not correspond to the facts". Decades later, Trenker didn't want to hear anything about this episode either. When asked about the forged diaries, he explained in 1976:

“I have never published an Eva Braun diary, it was an allegation by some press people who published the alleged diary notes against my will because they then sold them more easily. In my life I have never read or heard of a diary of Countess Larisch. "

Despite these facts, the fake is still sold in English-speaking countries as a "real" diary of Eva Braun.

Forger question

As a rule, it was and is assumed that not only the distribution of the text, but also the forgery came from Luis Trenker. Some of Trenker's relatives said the diary's diction would remind them of his letter style. They thought it was possible that he had revised Eva Braun's real records and added them from other sources. However, intellectually, then as now, hardly anyone trusted Trenker to create a forgery by hand.

For a short time, Hans Habe, who was already exposed in the matter, was suspected of being the author, as was the writer and repeated ghostwriter Trenker's Fritz Weber , who even defended himself against this presumption in court. The weekly Aufbau, however, held Gaston Oulman as the author without further justification . This was a well-known impostor of the early post-war period, who, in addition to his work as a fraudster and black marketeer, reported on the Nuremberg trial as a fake Cuban press officer and, after being exposed and escaped in the French zone, became editor-in-chief of Radio Saarbrücken before he was exposed again and after one failed Attempted suicide was deported. In a television documentary completed in 2009, "South Tyrolean Nazi journalists" were named as Trenker's backers. The real authorship remained unclear. To this day, Trenker's authorship is usually assumed.

Literary and parodic processing of the diary

Ever since her role as a person became known, Eva Braun has been dealt with in numerous stories, novels and plays, as well as portrayed dramatically in several films .

Her diary first played a role in 1968 in the esoteric book "Mönch-Story" by Albert Wallner. The work, known as the “diary report”, describes Eva Braun and Hitler's escape from Berlin and their parachute jump over Tibet, where they hide in a monastery and Hitler dies as a monk in 1947. The book is supposedly based on Eva Braun's diary, which a Tibetan monk in the Himalayas is said to have given to a Bavarian mountaineer. The book, which is at times quite comical in its own way, and which also works with clear allusions to Luis Trenker, did not achieve greater circulation.

Harry Mulisch: Siegfried. Munich 2001

The novel "Siegfried" by the Dutch author Harry Mulisch achieved a stronger public response . Contents of the book: In Vienna, an old servant couple reveals the secret of the hitherto unknown son of Hitler and Eva Braun, Siegfried, who was killed on the orders of the Führer, to the successful Dutch writer Rudolf Herter. In truth, however, Siegfried was the victim of an intrigue by Heinrich Himmler , who ascribes Eva Braun to Eva Braun because he fears that Hitler might later appoint the illegitimate son as his successor. The novel is a collage of the voices of the author, his literary colleague, the old couple and Eva Braun's fictional diary. In it, Braun, who is under guard, remembers Hitler's call, which was decisive for the fable of the novel: “Tschapperl! The whole thing is a misunderstanding! You will be picked up today at noon and taken to the Berghof. But prepare yourself for some horrific news: there has been an accident. Siggi is no longer alive. ”(P. 167) The book ends in unsystematic philosophical excursions by the hero Herter and the author Mulisch. The novel was largely criticized.

In 1992 Emma magazine announced the start of a six-part preprint of Eva Braun's diaries under the motto “The truth about the silent tolerance of a woman at the side of a cruel dictator”, which, according to Emma , “provides a unique insight into the entanglement of everyday life Give sexism and final racism ”. According to Emma, the 18 volumes allegedly available to the magazine, which looked like poetry albums, portrayed the woman at Hitler's side as a “resistance fighter; in the undramatic, inconspicuous, unassuming way that is woman's way. The boldness with which she stayed by his side to the end and shared his death demands respect. "

In the second episode, the magazine then opened that the photographer Bettina Flitner and Alice Schwarzer had forged the diaries, and stopped further printing. Readers missed the presentation of the complex of topics “Why Eva Braun wanted Hitler to have a child”, “What Hitler whispered in her ear when he came to power” and “How Eva almost saved a Jewish woman”. The satire was a belated reaction to the 1983 fake Hitler diary scandal .

Processing of the forgery history

Under the title Luis Trenker - The Thin Line of Truth , Wolfgang Murnberger made a film about Luis Trenker and the falsification of diaries, the script was written by Peter Probst , and Tobias Moretti plays Trenker.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Nerin E. Gun: Eva Braun-Hitler. Life and destiny. Blick + Bild , Velbert / Kettwig 1968.
  2. ↑ a b Anna Maria Sigmund : Eva Braun. In: Dies .: The women of the Nazis. Munich 2000, pp. 229-278.
  3. ↑ David Irving: Hitler's War . London 1977. Was Hitler called Fridolin? In: Die Zeit No. 20/1983.
  4. ^ Entries in the OMGUS database of the Institute for Contemporary History .
  5. ^ Inventory of the National Archives, Washington .
  6. ↑ a b Werner Maser: Adolf Hitler. Legend-Myth-Reality. Cologne [1983], pp. 293-337.
  7. ^ Anton Joachimsthaler: Hitler's List. A document of personal relationships. Herbig, Munich 2003, p. 450.
  8. ^ Anna Maria Sigmund : Eva Braun. In: Dies .: The women of the Nazis. Munich 2000, p. 245.
  9. ↑ cit. n. Marcel Atze : Our Hitler. The Hitler myth as reflected in German-language literature after 1945. Göttingen 2003, p. 236.
  10. ↑ cit. n. Anna Maria Sigmund : Eva Braun. In: Dies .: The women of the Nazis. Munich 2000, p. 278.
  11. ^ Tilmann Berger: Hitler lives in Oklahoma! In: Junge Freiheit No. 35 from August 21, 1998.
  12. ↑ a b Le Journal intime d'Eva Braun. Paris: Société française des éditions du cheval ailé 1948.
  13. ↑ a b Colorful world. In: Hamburger Abendblatt of October 20, 1948, p. 2 ( abendblatt.de (PDF)).
  14. ↑ a b Werner Fuld: Diaries. In: Ders .: The Lexicon of Forgeries. Frankfurt / M. 1999, pp. 254-258, here: p. 257.
  15. ↑ a b Luis Trenker. Münchhausen the mountains . In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 1954, pp. 29-31 ( online ).
  16. ↑ a b c d cake for dad . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1948, p. 5 f . ( online ).
  17. ↑ a b cf. Marcel Atze: »The Invisible Woman«. A short literary history by Eva Braun. In: Ders .: Our Hitler. The Hitler myth in the mirror of German-language literature after 1945. Göttingen 2003, pp. 235-252.
  18. ↑ Leni Riefenstahl: Trenker and Eva Braun's diary. In: Dies .: Memoirs. Cologne 2000, pp. 448-462.
  19. ↑ Heike Klapdor: I am an incurable European: letters from exile. Berlin 2007, p. 461.
  20. ↑ The publishing house “Farrar & Rinehart” is mentioned elsewhere, but it only existed under this name until 1946.
  21. ↑ a b c About Eva Braun's “diary”. In: Construction No. 38 of September 17, 1948, p. 17 ( facsimile ).
  22. ↑ a b Eva Braun's diaries - find or fake? In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 1954, pp. 35 ( online ).
  23. ↑ Eva Braun. Il mio diario. Rome: Faro 1948; The Private Life of Adolf Hitler. The Intimate Notes and Diary of Eva Braun. London: Aldus Publications [1949]; Eva Braun: Het intieme dagboek. The Hague: Confidentia [1949].
  24. ↑ a b c cit. n. Leni Riefenstahl: Memoirs. Cologne 2000, p. 461.
  25. ↑ s. the 10-part series of articles by Ernst Jaeger: How Leni Riefenstahl became Hitler's Girlfriend. In: Hollywood Tribune, April 28 - July 17, 1939; Budd Schulberg: Nazi pin up girl ; in: Saturday Evening Post of March 30, 1946.
  26. ↑ Maria Freiin von Wallersee Countess Larisch: My past. Berlin 1913.
  27. ↑ cit. n. Leni Riefenstahl: Trenker and the diary of Eva Braun. In: Dies .: Memoirs. Cologne 2000, p. 458.
  28. ↑ cit. n. Brigitte Sokop: That Countess Larisch. Marie Louise Countess Larisch-Wallersee, confidante of the Empress - ostracized after Mayerling. Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 1985, 4th edition 2006, p. 520.
  29. ↑ last: The Diary of Eva Braun. With a commentary by Alan Bartlett. Bristol: Spectrum International, Rev. Ed. 2000.
  30. ↑ RP: The Secret of Gaston Oulman. In: Construction No. 33 from August 13, 1948, p. 6. ( facsimile ).
  31. ↑ Gaston in all streets . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1948, pp. 21 ( online ). Hans Bausch: Broadcasting Policy after 1945. First part: 1945–1962. Munich 1980, p. 152 f.
  32. ↑ Steffi Illinger: Walking a fine line. The steep path of Luis Trenker. Documentary: BR 2009.
  33. ↑ So Guido Knopp on ZDF, August 15, 2010 .
  34. ^ Albert Wallner: Monk Story. Hitler's escape from Berlin and his parachute jump over Tibet. Horn 1968.
  35. ↑ Harry Mulisch: Siegfried. A black idyll. Munich 2001.
  36. ↑ Review overview on perlentaucher.de
  37. ↑ The diaries of Eva Braun. In: Emma September 1992 ( part 1 ) u. October 1992 ( part 2 ).
  38. ↑ Hans Holzhaider: A dream in deer leather. Did Luis Trenker write Eva Braun's diaries? A rumor turns into terrific film material. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 7, 2014, p. 35.
  39. ↑ Luis Trenker - The Thin Line of Truth in the Internet Movie Database (English)