Raubal, Angela Maria “Geli”.

Raubal, Angela born 04-06-1908 in Linz, Austria, was Adolf Hitler’s (see Hitler parents)  half niece. She was the second child and eldest daughter of Leo Raubal Sr. and Hitler’s half-sister, Angela Raubal, who died age 66, on 30-10-1949, in Hanover.  Geli’s brother Leo Rudolf Raubal Jr. was born on 01-10-1906 and worked in Salzburg as a teacher of chemistry. He visited his mother sporadically while she was living in Berchtesgaden. Like his younger cousin Heinz Hitler

    but unlike cousin William Patrick Hitler-Stuart Houston, Leo Raubal was a “favorite nephew of the leader”, and Hitler liked to spend his time with him. However, according to William Patrick Hitler, Leo did not like his uncle Adolf and blamed the latter for the death of his sister Geli. This, however, cannot be confirmed, with Leo saying in 1967 that Hitler was “absolutely innocent”. Leo Jr. lived and worked in Linz as a teacher. He died during a vacation in Spain. He was buried on 07-09-1977 in Linz. Leo Raubal Jr. had a son Peter (born in 1931) who is (along with Elfriede’s [Leo Jr.’s sister] son, Heiner Hochegger, and William Patrick Hitler’s three sons) the closest living relative to Adolf Hitler. Peter Raubal is a retired engineer who lives in Linz, Austria. Leo and Geli had a younger sister Elfriede Maria Raubal born 10-01-1910 and their father Leo Sr, died 10-08-1910, only 31 years old. Geli went to the Gymnasium in Linz where Alfred Maleta became a good friend which her aunt didn’t liked. Alfred Maleta, who after the war became President of the Nationalrat, was first of all imprisoned in a concentration camp and later witnessed forced recruitment drives in Ukraine while serving as a Wehrmacht driver. He died old age 84 on 16-01-1990, in Mödling. Geli wasn’t a very enthusiastic student, she preferred Music, singing and playing tennis and in 1921 her aunt Maria Raubal, a teacher, retired from her school, moved to Linz, Dinghoferstrasse where Geli lived and became her personal teacher. Geli and Elfriede accompanied their mother when she became Hitler’s housekeeper in 1925; Raubal was 17 at the time and spent the next six years in close contact with her half-uncle, who was 19 years her senior. Her mother was given a position as housekeeper at the Berghof villa near Berchtesgaden in 1928. Raubal moved into Hitler’s Munich, Prinzregentenplatz apartment in 1929 when she enrolled in medicine at Ludwig Maximillian University. She did not complete her medical studies was rumored to be Adolf Hitler’s   (did you know) lover. Hermann Göring (did you know) (see Göring Peter)    would later tell attorneys at the Nuremberg trials that Raubal’s death had devastated Hitler to such an extent that it changed his views and relationships with all other people.  After World War I, her first cousin, William Patrick Hitler,

   he died of a car accident age 76, on 14-07-1987, described his impression of Geli when he met her in Obersalzberg: Geli looks more like a child than a girl.

     You couldn’t call her pretty exactly, but she had great natural charm. She usually went without a hat and wore very plain clothes, pleated skirts and white blouses. No jewelry except a gold swastika given to her by Uncle Adolf, whom she called “Uncle Alf”.   As he rose to power as leader of the Nazi Party, Hitler kept a tight rein over Geli, and did not allow her to associate with friends freely and attempted to have himself or someone he trusted near her at all times, accompanying her on window shopping excursions, to the movies, and to the opera. Despite Hitler’s efforts to control her,

  Geli did not seem to return his feelings and became linked to SS Oberführer, Emil Maurice, dismissed him as a founding member of the SS and Hitler’s driver at that time, but Hitler later rehired and promoted him.

Maurice later claimed that he “…loved her, but it was a strange affection that did not dare show itself.” If any hard feelings arose on Hitler’s part, they did not last, and he and Maurice were reconciled: during the last two days of Hitler’s life, according to reports, he displayed two photographs on his dresser: one of his mother and one of Maurice. Before Geli Raubal’s death, however, Hitler was also seeing other women, including 19-year-old Eva Braun  (Braun parents), whom he had known for two years, and Erna Hanfstaengl.

   However, many historians believe Hitler was deeply in love with Raubal and that after she died he changed for the worse. Even his close associates were puzzled by his relationship with Geli and did not know its exact nature. During the two years she lived in Hitler’s flat, Geli entered medical school, dropped out and then took up singing lessons, which she also abandoned. She was religious and attended Mass regularly. Most contemporary accounts by those who knew her are favorable, with the exception of that of propagandist Ernst Hanfstaengl, Erna’s younger brother, Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl

  he died age 88, on 06-11-1975 in Munich, Bogenhausen, who called her an “empty-headed little slut, with the coarse sort of bloom of a servant girl with no brains or character. She was perfectly content to preen herself in her fine clothes, and certainly never gave any impression of reciprocating Hitler’s twisted tenderness.”

Death and burial ground of Raubal, Angela Maria ” Geli”.

On the morning of 19-09-1931, members of Hitler’s staff found Geli Raubal dead from a gunshot wound to the lung in her room in Hitler’s Munich apartment, Prinzregentenplatz 16 second floor. She was 23 and the official cause of death was listed as suicide. The finding of suicide was based on the fact that her door had been locked from the inside. No autopsy was conducted, although a doctor estimated that her death had occurred the previous day, September 18. There were many rumors, since she was killed by a bullet fired from his pistol, a Walther , it was rumored that Hitler had shot her, or had ordered her to be shot, for infidelity or other reasons. As these rumours circulated, Hitler (see Hitler Paula)   himself released a statement to the Münchener Post: It is untrue that I and my niece had a quarrel on Friday 18 September; it is untrue that I was violently opposed to my niece going to Vienna; it is untrue that my niece was engaged to someone in Vienna and I forbade it. Geli’s death occurred on a night when the entire Hitler household staff, the couple Georg and Anna Winter, Anna Kirmair and Maria Reichert were off duty except for a deaf worker, Frau Dachs, and it is said that it was a rare occurrence for Hitler to leave behind his pistol. The police Chief Constables Sauer and Forster came to the apartment and later also Constable Dr. Müller and they were received by the NSDAP official Franz Xaver Schwarz who was already informed and instructed by Hitler.

  Schwarz died 02-12-1947, age 72, in an Allied internment camp near Regensburg, due to recurring gastric troubles. By all accounts, they had argued intensely in the days leading to her death. Her brother Leo said that she had been happy at Berchtesgaden in the days preceding the beginning of her visit to Munich, on September 17. She left a note behind, addressed to a friend in Vienna that read: “When I come to Vienna, hopefully very soon, we’ll drive to Semmering, an…” The note was left unfinished. Hanfstaengl maintained that Raubal killed herself following a “flaming row” with Hitler, who had discovered that she was pregnant by a Jewish art teacher in Linz. Other reports claim that Raubal had requested permission to continue her voice studies in Vienna and that Hitler, (see Alois)

 had

refused to allow her to go, causing their fight of September 18. Hitler had left town the previous afternoon for a speaking tour and returned from Nuremberg on hearing the news of Raubal’s death. Hitler would later threaten to commit suicide while in seclusion at Tegern Lake. He had made similar threats during past moments of personal crisis or defeat, most notably after the failed Beer Hall Putsch. The pathologist Maria Fischbaur then arrived and the body was transferred to the East Cemetery of Munich, the cemetery where later the bodies of the Nuremberg condemned were cremated. Geli’s mother Angela wanted her to be buried on the Zentral Cemetery in Vienna and only she, Geli’s brother Leo, sister Elfriede and Hitler’s sister Paula were present on 23-09-1931. Hitler who didn’t ask permission to cross the border visited the grave three days later on 26-09-1931 and Emil Maurice drove him in the Meredes IIA 19357 and he stayed for 25 minutes on the cemetery. The Austrian customs officers looked the other way as he passed the border. Hitler then drove to the hotel “Goldenes Lamm” were he met the family. Back in Munich he personal ordered his adjutant SS Obergruppenführer, Julius Schaub

to destroy all letters, documents and files about Geli, but the secretary, Christa Schroeder  succeeded to grab some Geli souvenirs, a few letters. Hitler would keep a bust or portrait of Raubal, and ordered Ferdinand Liebermann, a sculptor, to complete two busts, one in each of his bedrooms,

     and a painting of Geli made by Adolf Ziegler. His entourage was instructed not to say her name. Official Nazi photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann

  said of Raubal’s death “That was when the seeds of inhumanity began to grow inside Hitler.” Hitler later declared that Raubal was the only woman he had ever loved. Her room at the Berghof was kept as she had left it, and he hung portraits of her in his own room there and at the Chancellery in Berlin. Eight women, all the same types, that are thought, possibly, to have been intimate with Hitler, attempted suicide: Maria “Mimi” Reiter  tried to hang herself 1928, Geli Raubal died of a gun-shot with Hitler’s Walter pistol, 1931, Eva Braun (Braun parents) tried suicide in 1932 with a gun too and in 1935 with medicine, before succeeding in 1945, Frau Inge Ley, Renate Müller, and Suzi Liptauer were all successful suicides, and Unity Midford

attempted suicide in 1939. The body of Geli Raubal, was still temporary buried in a vault on the Zentral Cemetery of Vienna, but as her mother Angela Raubal-Hammitzsch did not react on the cemetery letters. In his 1940 memoir, Otto Strasser  a German politician and high member of the Nazi Party, together with his brother Gregor Strasser an influential and important figure in the young Nazi Party, recalled a message he had received from a priest named Father Pant. The Raubal-family confessor when Geli and her mother lived in Vienna, Pant remained a faithful family friend after they moved to Munich. According to Strasser, Father Pant confided to him in 1939 that he had helped ease the way for Geli’s burial in consecrated ground. And then, Strasser says, the priest made this remarkable statement: “I never would have permitted a suicide to be buried in consecrated ground.” Otto Strasser survived the war scarcely and died age 76 on 27-08-1974 in Munich, his brother Gregor

  was killed in the Night of the Long Knives, 30-06-1934, age 42, as Hitler eliminated the SA organization. Gregor was shot once in his main artery from behind in his cell, but did not die immediately. On the orders of SS general Reinhard Heydrich,

Strasser was left to bleed to death which took almost an hour.

The Zentral cemetery  management removed her remains after the entry of the German Army on 12-03-1938, reburied her in plot 23 E, row 2, grave 73, to see on her marker, but the gravestone was soon destroyed and the area around is meanwhile equalized now and not recognizable without a map. Adolf Hitler visited her grave three times. On this cemetery is also buried the flyer ace General der Flieger, Kommandeur ./JG 54, JG 101, “Nowi” or “Tiger of Wolchowstroj”, Walther Nowotny

. Carlos D’Anna from Argentina sent me kindly the cemetery plan with the right spot of Geli’s grave. Since recently there is a new gravestone on her grave. The grave is quiet, the gravestone unremarkable–that is, save for the blank stare on its cold face, with but a lone cross.

Erik Joling from Holland visited the graveyard and found the gravestone now with the name words, “Alag Christian Alarm” inscriptionon and kindly and with thanks. sent me the picturus.

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