Braun, Ilse Ruth.

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Braun, Ilse Ruth.
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Braun, Ilse Ruth, born in 1909 in Munich,  was one of two sisters of Eva Braun.  Ilse was the oldest daughter of school teacher Friedrich “Fritz” Braun and seamstress Franziska “Fanny” Kronberger.

   

In 1939 Ilse Braun meet Adolf Hitler for the first time: “Hitler came towards me, took my hand, and raised it to his lips. His eyes were sky-blue, intense in their gaze, striking but always fixed, immobile. I was slightly disappointed, for I had imagined a more imposing man, more like the portraits that were displayed everywhere. He was always gesticulating dramatically with his hand. I examined his hands. They were very white, sensitive like those of a musician, not very masculine, but attractive…. There was no dancing. Hitler detested and consequently banned this form of amusement.”

She became the sister-in-law of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler   following his marriage to Eva on 29-04-1945, less than 48 hours before the couple committed suicide together on 30-04-1945. moved out of her parents’ home in 1929 and took a position as an assistant to Martin Levy Marx, a Jewish otolaryngologist and surgeon. She was provided with a room at the office of her employer, and left his employ only when he made preparations to emigrate to the United States in 1937 in the face of persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. Non-Aryan doctors had been excluded from payments under the national health insurance plan in April 1933, and the passing of the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour in 1937 meant Marx and Braun risked arrest on charges of “defiling the race”.Marx’s licence to practice medicine was revoked in 1938 and he was expatriated in April 1939. His doctorate was revoked in October 1939; he had already emigrated to the United States by then. Ilse Braun stated after the war that she and Eva had tried unsuccessfully to intercede on his behalf.

Eva was extremely jealous of Hitler’s other girlfriends and in 1932 she also attempted suicide by shooting herself in the neck. Doctors managed to save her life, and after this incident Hitler seemed to become more attached to Eva. The problem returned and Hitler began seeing a great deal of Renate Müller, Unity Mitford and Stephanie von Hohenlohe

.     A Hungarian national, she relocated to London after her divorce from the prince, where she is suspected of having acted as a spy for Germany during the 1930s. She developed close connections among the Nazi hierarchy, including Adolf Hitler. She also developed other influential relationships, including with Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, and promoted British support for Germany while living in London from 1932. The British, French and Americans all suspected her of being a spy for the German Government. During the 1930s, she was awarded the Golden Party Badge for her services.

Fleeing from Britain to San Francisco in 1939 after war was declared, she was put under surveillance by the US government. After the attack on Pearl Harbor she was arrested by the FBI and interned in the United States as an enemy alien. She provided information to the Office of Strategic Services which was used in a 1943 report on the personality of Adolf Hitler. In May 1945 she was released on parole and returned to Germany, where she cultivated influential connections in post-war German society.

Stephanie von Hohenlohe (born Stephany Julienne Richter; 16-09-1891 – 13-06-1972, age 80) was an Austrian princess by her marriage to the diplomat Prince Friedrich Franz von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a member of the noble Hohenlohe family. She was born a commoner, allegedly of Jewish family background.

On her twenty-third birthday, Eva Braun again tried to kill herself. Ilse Braun suspected that her sister had to some extent staged this suicide. Eva had taken only twenty tablets of vanodorm, an amount that had little chance of killing her. Eva overdosed on sleeping pills on 28-05-1935 in a suicide attempt.[a] Ilse discovered her that night, gave first aid, and called a doctor. Ilse removed the relevant pages from Eva’s diary to protect Eva’s relationship with Hitler; the diary indicated that he had failed to make adequate time for Eva. This was Braun’s second suicide attempt—she had shot herself in August 1932. Eva had taken only twenty tablets of vanodorm, an amount that had little chance of killing her. Hitler was shocked and turned up at her home asking for forgiveness. She recorded in her diary on 18-02-1935, that he promised to buy her a house: “Dear God, please let them come true and let it happen in the near future… I am infinitely happy that he loves me so much and I pray that it may always remain so. I never want it to be my fault if one day he should cease to love me.” However, in her diary on 28th May she complains: “Is this the mad love he promised me, when he doesn’t send me a single comforting line in three months?”

Hitler provided the sisters, with a three-bedroom apartment in Munich in August 1935, and the next year with a villa in Bogenhausen.

In 1936, Eva Braun moved into this house, which was bought on behalf of Hitler by Heinrich Hoffmann,

his photographer.In April 1945, the house was completely emptied by American soldiers who took the souvenirs back to their country. In 2015 the house was demolished to make way for new construction

Braun began working in the Berlin office of Albert Speer

  on 15-03-1937. Speer, Hitler favorite architect, had just been appointed General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital. Braun was one of his first employees. She left Speer’s employ and married a lawyer named Höchstetter in October that same year. Braun and  Xaver Höchstetter  (* 17-06-1912; † 15-05-1976, age 63) divorced after three years of marriage. She lived with her second husband in Heidelberg. After graduating from a journalism programme, Braun began work as an editor at Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, a conservative newspaper that folded in 1945.. She remarried in 1941 to another lawyer named Fucke-Michels, both her husbands were much older than herself and moved to Breslau, where she was employed by the Schlesische Zeitung. 

Braun had no involvement in politics. Unlike her sisters Eva and Gretl, she was not a member of Hitler’s inner circle or a regular visitor to the Berghof in Bavaria, though she fled there at the end of the war. She loved to dance, and became a European amateur champion in ballroom dancing.  As Soviet forces approached the city in January 1945 Ilse fled by train to Berlin where she was collected by car and driven to the Hotel Adlon  where Eva was staying. Over dinner she told Eva about the refugees fleeing from the east and warned her that Hitler was dragging the country into an abyss, but her sister apparently did not appreciate that disaster was imminent.

Death and burial ground of Braun, Ilse Ruth.

Ilse Braun lived with her mother in the family home in Ruhpolding in Upper Bavaria after her father’s death in 1964. She, who had no children, died of cancer in Munich on 28-06-1979, age 70, and is buried there, next to her sister Gretl and her niece, Eva “Evi” Barbara Fegelein

  (daughter of Gretl Braun and Hermann Fegelein.  on the Waldfriedhof Neue Teil, new section in Munich. She had no children.  website friend, Gerrit Kempas from Germany, found the grave side and sent me the grave photo’s. Eva Fegelein, age 29, killed herself in April 1971 after her boyfriend died in a car accident.

 

Message(s), tips or interesting graves for the webmaster:    robhopmans@outlook.com

 

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