Geli Raubal

Maria Angela “Geli” Raubal ( Linz , 4 as June as 1908 - Munich , 18 September as as 1931 ) was the niece of dictator Adolf Hitler , known for the close emotional relationship he had with him, which ended with his suicide.

Biography

Angela Maria “Geli” Raubal was born Linz , ¹ city ​​where she would spend her first years with her brother, Leo , and her sister, Elfriede. Her father died at the age of 31, when Geli had only two.

Relationship with Hitler

Geli and Elfriede accompanied their mother when she became Hitler’s housekeeper in 1925; Raubal was then 17 and for the next six years he was in close contact with his half-uncle Hitler, ² who was 19 years his senior. In 1928 his mother became the housekeeper of the Berghof , the village Hitler had near Berchtesgaden . ³ The following year, moved into the apartment Geli Hitler in Munich in the Prinzregentenstrasse , time also where he began studying medicine at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität . However, he would never complete his medical studies. ^One was from this time that Geli entered the inner circle of Hitler, and got to deal directly with many of his friends and acquaintances. ⁴ For her there was an important change in living directly with her uncle, while his mother was in charge of the Berghof, spending more and more time both. ⁵ Some party officials and people from the circle close to Hitler began to criticize the Nazi party leader for spending more and more time with his niece, neglecting political issues. ⁵

While he was one of Germany’s leading political leaders at the time, Hitler was increasingly dominant and possessive of Geli, maintaining strict control over her. ⁶ When she discovered that her niece was having a relationship with her driver, Emil Maurice , Hitler forced her to end the flight and dismissed Maurice from his service. ^{1 7} After this, his uncle did not let it again relate freely with friends, and made sure that he himself or someone of trust was beside Geli at all times, whether accompanying her on shopping trips, movies, Or the opera. ⁶ Geli, in the middle of adolescence, was then under enormous pressure. Nazi leader Otto Strasser would later comment that Geli, during a meeting in 1931, had told him that Hitler was asking him to “do things that are simply disgusting,” to which his fuss was bound by his uncle’s enormous possessive jealousy towards her. ⁸ Strasser added that, according to Geli, she had to undergo sexual perversions to the satisfaction of Hitler. ⁹ Unlike other published versions, for some researchers the version offered by Strasser has signs of truthfulness. ¹⁰

Some members close to Hitler, like Ernst Hanfstaengl , had a bad opinion of Geli Raubal, whom they considered an “opportunistic calculator” that manipulated to Hitler. ¹¹ In fact, according to Hanfstaengl, in spite of Hitler’s obsession with his niece, he betrayed him sexually with members close to an intimate circle, as was his own chauffeur, Maurice. ¹¹ The daughter of Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann , regarded Geli as “rude, provocative and somewhat fierce,” though an “irresistible charm” for Hitler, a circumstance her niece took advantage of. ¹²

Death and circumstances

Raubal became a prisoner to all intents and purposes, though she thought of fleeing to Vienna to continue her singing lessons. ² Many years later, after the war, his mother told investigators that her daughter allies hoped to marry a man of Linz, but that Hitler had forbidden that relationship. On September 18, 1931, Geli and his uncle held a discussion, since Hitler refused to allow him to travel to Vienna. That same afternoon Adolf Hitler left for Nuremberg to attend a meeting, but the next day he had to return to Munich. Raubal had appeared dead with a shot wound in the lung; ¹ apparently Geli had shot herself in Hitler’s apartment with the gun Walther from his uncle. ⁷ I was 23 years old.

Rumors began to circulate in the press about physical abuse, a possible sexual relationship or even murder. ^{1 13} Otto Strasser , a political opponent of the Nazi Hitler and Geli Raubal well acquainted before his death rows, was the main source of some of these stories. ¹⁴ The journalist Konrad Heiden spread the version of Hitler’s sexual perversion towards his niece. ¹⁴ The historian Ian Kershaw maintains that “whether it was actively sexual or not, Hitler’s behavior towards Geli has all the features of a strong, or at least latent, sexual dependency.” ⁶ The police soon dismissed the murder; Death was classified as suicide. ¹⁵ However, according to years later, the daughter of Geli’s sister, Elfriede, both her sister and her mother believed that Geli had not actually committed suicide. ¹⁶ Hitler was devastated by this event and fell into a deep depression . He took refuge in a house on the shores of Lake Tegernsee , and did not attend the funeral in Vienna on 23 September. Three days later, however, he would visit his tomb at the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. ¹⁷ Later, he overcame his depression and returned to politics. ¹³

Hitler would later declare to his acquaintances that Geli Raubal had been the only woman he had ever loved. Geli’s room in the Berghof was kept as she had left it, and Hitler hung portraits of Geli both in the town and in the Chancellery in Berlin. ¹⁸

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