Linz · AT
Dark History: Hitler's Linz & the Führerstadt
From a boy's sketchbook to the balcony of 1938: walk the streets Hitler called home, and remember those his regime destroyed.
De quoi parle cette balade ?
Welcome to a sober and necessary walk through the city Adolf Hitler called his home town. Linz is where he went to school, where he lived with his mother until her death in December 1907, and where he dreamed of becoming an artist. On 12 March 1938 he returned in triumph, spoke from the balcony of the Old Town Hall and decided, that very night, on the full annexation of Austria. Later he planned to rebuild Linz as his Führerstadt, a monumental capital of art and industry of which only the Nibelungenbrücke and its two bridgehead buildings were ever completed. On this walk we follow that arc from a boy's sketchbook to the plans of a dictator, and we remember the people his regime destroyed: the Jewish community of Linz, the prisoners of the Gestapo, the forced labourers of the Hermann-Göring-Werke and the dead of nearby Mauthausen. This is a walk of remembrance, not entertainment. Please keep a respectful demeanor at the memorial sites along the route.
Ce que vous verrez
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1
Humboldtstraße 31, Hitler's Boyhood Home
Residence
An unmarked residential block where the teenage Adolf Hitler lived with his widowed mother from 1905 to 1907. Behind the third floor windows, an idle school dropout sketched fantasy plans to rebuild Linz.
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2
Former Gestapo Headquarters, Langgasse 13
Memorial
Behind the clean modernist facade of the Kolpinghaus, the Gestapo ran its Upper Austrian headquarters from 1938 to 1945, torturing thousands in the cells below. A modest copper plaque now remembers the victims.
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3
Bischofshof, Herrenstraße 19
Building
The baroque residence of the bishops of Linz, where in January 1933 Bishop Johannes Maria Gföllner wrote the pastoral letter declaring that no one could be both a good Catholic and a true National Socialist. Five years later the Gestapo came for the men who worked inside.
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4
Former Realschule, Steingasse 6, Hitler's School
building
The former state Realschule where Adolf Hitler was a failing pupil from 1900 to 1904, and where the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein studied under the same roof a few classes away.
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5
Landestheater, the Rienzi Night
Theatre
The 1803 theatre on the Promenade where a jobless teenage Hitler stood in the cheap standing room night after night, met August Kubizek and, after a performance of Wagner's Rienzi in 1906, climbed the Freinberg to proclaim a mission. Decades later he called that evening the moment 'it began'.
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6
Landstraße 12, Practice of Dr. Eduard Bloch
Building
Behind the atlantes of this baroque palais, the Jewish doctor Eduard Bloch treated Klara Hitler's cancer in 1907 and was thanked by her son forever. In 1938 that gratitude bought him a Gestapo guard while every other Jew in Linz was driven out or murdered.
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7
Linz Synagogue, Bethlehemstraße 26
Synagogue
On the night of 9 to 10 November 1938 the SA set the 1877 synagogue of Linz ablaze while the fire brigade was only allowed to protect the neighbouring houses. The modern synagogue that stands here today was built on the ruins in 1968.
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8
Old Cathedral (Alter Dom), Hitler's Confirmation
Church
The baroque Jesuit church that served as Linz Cathedral from 1785 to 1909, where a sullen fifteen year old Adolf Hitler was confirmed on Whit Sunday 1904. Its organ loft is where Anton Bruckner, later exploited as the regime's house composer, played for thirteen years.
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9
Hauptplatz & Old Town Hall Balcony, 12 March 1938
Square
The small wrought iron balcony of the Old Town Hall is where Hitler, on the evening of 12 March 1938, told a roaring crowd of tens of thousands that Providence had sent him to bring his homeland into the Reich. The cheering in this square convinced him to annex Austria completely, and the city has kept the balcony silent ever since.
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10
Nibelungenbrücke & Bridgehead Buildings, Führerstadt Linz
Bridge
The Danube bridge and its two stone bridgehead buildings are the only part of Hitler's megalomaniac Führerstadt plan that was ever built. Their granite came from the quarries of Mauthausen, and forced labourers raised them.
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11
Urfahr Bridgehead & Ars Electronica Center, the Unbuilt Gau Forum
square
The northern end of the Nibelungenbrücke, where Hitler's architects planned a Gau festival hall for 30,000, a parade ground for 100,000 and a 162 metre bell tower with a crypt for his parents. Today a glass museum of the future and the city's town hall stand on the ground reserved for that monument.
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12
Blütenstraße 9, Urfahr, the Death of Klara Hitler
Residence
A quiet late historicist apartment house in old Urfahr where Klara Hitler died of cancer at two in the morning on 21 December 1907, her son Adolf at her bedside. It is the place where the private grief ends and the public catastrophe begins.
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