Maria Schicklgruber - The Birth of Alois

The Birth of Alois

In 1837 she was 42 years old, and still single, when her first and only child was born. She named the boy Alois. Maser notes that she refused to reveal who the child's father was, so the priest baptized him Alois Schicklgruber and entered "illegitimate" in place of the father's name on the baptismal register. Historians have discussed three candidates for the father of Alois:

1. Johann Georg Hiedler, he was put on Alois's birth certificate later in his life and who was officially accepted as the father of Alois (paternal grandfather of Adolf Hitler) by the Third Reich.
2. Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, Georg's brother and Alois's step-uncle, who raised Alois through adolescence and later willed him a considerable portion of his life savings but who, if he was the real father of Alois he never found it expedient to admit it publicly.
3. And a Jew named Leopold Frankenberger, rumoured by ex-Nazi Hans Frank during the Nuremberg Trials. Historians dismiss the Frankenberger hypothesis (which had only Frank's speculation to support it) as baseless.

At the time of his birth, she was living with a Strones village family by the name of Trummelschlager. Herr and Frau Trummelschlager were listed as godparents to Alois.

Maria soon took up residence with her father at house #22 in Strones. After an unknown period, the three Schicklgrubers were joined by Johann Georg Hiedler, an itinerant journeyman miller. On 10 May 1842, five years after Alois was born, Maria Anna Schicklgruber married Johann Georg Hiedler in the nearby village of Döllersheim. Maria was 47, her new husband was 50.

Whether or not Johann Georg Hiedler was actually the biological paternal grandfather of Hitler will remain unknown as he was not put as the father on Alois's birth certificate. Hitler's ancestry came into question when his opponents began spreading rumours that his paternal grandfather was Jewish since one of Nazism's major principles was that to be considered a pure "Aryan" one had to have a documented ancestry certificate (Ahnenpass).

In 1931 Hitler ordered the Schutzstaffel (SS) to investigate the alleged rumours regarding his ancestry, they found no evidence of any Jewish ancestors. Hitler then ordered a genealogist by the name of Rudolf Koppensteiner to publish a large illustrated genealogical tree showing his ancestry, this was published in the book "Die Ahnentafel des Fuehrers" (The pedigree of the leader) in 1937, which concluded that Hitler's family were all German-Austrians with no Jewish ancestry and that Hitler had an unblemished "Aryan" pedigree. As Alois himself legitimised Johann Georg Hielder as his father and the priest changed this on his birth certificate in 1876 this was considered certified proof for Hitler's lineage, thus Hitler was considered an Aryan.

Maria died during the sixth year of her marriage, at the age of 52 in Klein-Motten where she was living with her husband in the home of kin, the Sillip family. She died of "consumption resulting from pectoral (thoracic) dropsy" in 1847. She was buried at the parish church in Döllersheim.

After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, a search failed to find her grave so she was given an "Honor Grave" next to the church wall. This grave was tended by local Hitler Youth groups whilst Döllersheim and the surrounding areas were made proving ground areas. In 1942, this area became part of an artillery training area and the local inhabitants were moved out. Military training continued under the Soviets after 1945, and also under the Austrian Army until about 1985, by which time most of the towns and villages were in ruins. The church at Döllersheim is now preserved and undergoing reconstruction. The cemetery is being tended, but there is no grave marker there now for Maria Schicklgruber.

Some Schicklgrubers remain in Waldviertel. One of this extended clan, "Aloisia V" aged 49, died in 1940, in a Nazi gas chamber in Austria.