How well did Lenin and Hitler knew each other? Were they some sort of friends?

score:12

Accepted answer

The picture referred to, an etching, was put up for auction in 2009, according to the New York Times,

accompanied by a 300 page dossier of evidence painstakingly compiled by Felix Edenhofer the present vendor’s father. (auction house website)

The Times article (link here) shows that there are many holes in the story. It quotes authoritative historians like Richard Evans and Richard Pipes, who judge the picture to be an obvious fake.

Richard J. Evans, regius professor of modern history at Cambridge, who wrote a three-volume history of the Third Reich, said he had little doubt that the chess match was a fiction. “No, it could not have taken place,” he said in an interview.

Problems mentioned in the article – Hitler looks too old, Lenin is supposedly wearing a disguise but in fact he never did so at this point, Lenin had given up chess and Hitler probably never played, there was no reason for them to sign the picture, there is no record of Hitler taking art lessons, etc.

It’s also suspicious that there is no documentary trace of the artist in Vienna.

Brigitte Hamann in “Hitler’s Vienna” has gone through the archival record for Hitler’s contacts at the time. In fact, he did visit the house of a cultured Jewish bourgeois family in 1908. His roommate at the time, August Kubizek, played the viola and was sometimes invited to the home of Dr. Rudolf Jahoda to fill out a string quartet at musical soirées. Once he brought Hitler along, and the 19-year-old was largely a silent observer.

There is no Lowenstamm/stramm in Hamann’s index.

More post

Search Posts

Related post