Angela Hammitzsch, born
Angela Hitler (
July 28, 1883 -
October 30, 1949), first married to
Leo Raubal, Sr., was the elder half-sister of
Adolf Hitler.
She was born in
Braunau, Austria, the second child of
Alois Hitler and his second wife, Franziska Matzelberger. Her mother died the next year. She and her brother
Alois Hitler, Jr. were raised by their father and his third wife
Klara Pölzl. Her half-brother Adolf Hitler was born six years after her and they grew very close. She is the only one of his siblings mentioned in
Mein Kampf.
Her father died in
1903 and her stepmother died in
1907 leaving a small inheritance. By this time she had married Leo Raubal, a junior tax inspector, and in
1906 had given birth to a son (also named Leo). In
1908 she gave birth to
Geli and in
1910 to a second daughter, Elfriede.
Her husband Leo Raubal died on
August 10 1910. According to an
OSS profile of the Hitler family, Angela moved to
Vienna and after
World War I became manager of Mensa Academia Judaica, a boarding house for
Jewish students where she once defended her charges against
anti-Semitic rioters.
Angela had heard nothing from Adolf for a decade when he re-established contact with her in
1919. In
1928 she and Geli moved to
Obersalzberg where she became his housekeeper and was later put in charge of the household at Hitler's expanded retreat in
Berchtesgaden.
Adolf Hitler began a relationship with her daughter
Geli who committed suicide in
1931. Meanwhile Angela strongly disapproved of Hitler's relationship with
Eva Braun (while some report she tried to warn
Eva Braun of the dangers of getting involved with Adolf; her motives for this are not clear). She eventually left
Berchtesgaden as a result and moved to
Dresden. Adolf Hitler broke off relations with her and did not attend her wedding to Prof.
Martin Hammitzsch. It seems, however, that he re-established contact with her during the war, because she remained his intermediary to the rest of the family with whom he did not want contact. In
1941, she sold her memories of her years with
Adolf Hitler to the Eher Verlag, which brought her 20,000
Reichsmark (Hitler himself earned millions for
Mein Kampf).
In spring
1945 - after the destruction of
Dresden in the massive bomb attack of
February 13/14 -he got her moved to
Berchtesgaden, to avoid her being captured by the Russians. Also he let her and her younger sister
Paula hand over 100,000
Reichsmark for further life. In his testament she was guaranteed a pension of 1,000
Reichsmark monthly. It is quite uncertain if she ever received a penny of this amount. Nevertheless, she spoke very highly of him even after the war and claimed that neither her brother nor she herself had known anything about what was going on in the concentration camps. She declared that if Adolf had known about these things, he would have stopped them.
Hitler, Angela
Hitler, Angela
Hitler, Angela