His father, Alois, was born in 1837. He was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber and her unknown mate, which may have been someone from the neighborhood or a poor millworker named Johann Georg Hiedler. It is also remotely possible Adolf Hitler's grandfather was Jewish. Alois had always used the last name of his mother, Schicklgruber, and thus was always called Alois Schicklgruber. After his success in the civil service, his proud uncle from the small farm convinced him to change his last name to match his own, Hiedler, and continue the family name. However, when it came time to write the name down in the record book it was spelled as Hitler. So in 1876, at age 39, Alois Schicklgruber became Alois Hitler.
In 1885, after numerous affairs and two other marriages ended, the widowed Alois Hitler, 48, married the pregnant Klara Pölzl, 24, the granddaughter of uncle Hiedler. Klara Pölzl eventually gave birth to two boys and a girl, all of whom died. On April 20, 1889, her fourth child, Adolf was born healthy and was baptized a Roman Catholic. Hitler's father was then 52 years old. Throughout his early days, Adolf's mother feared losing him as well and lavished affection on him.
In 1896 the Hitler household consisted of Adolf, little brother Edmund, little sister Paula, older half brother Alois Jr., older half sister Angela and two parents who were home all the time. It was a crowded, noisy little farm house which apparently angered Hitler's father. The oldest boy, Alois Jr., 13, bore the brunt of his father's discontent, including harsh words and occasional beatings. A year later, at age 14, young Alois ran away from home, never to see his father again. This put young Adolf, age 7, next in line for the same treatment. Also at this time, the family moved off the farm to the town of Lambach, Austria, halfway between Linz and Salzburg. This was the first of several moves the family would make in the restless retirement of Hitler's father. For young Adolf, the move to Lambach meant an end to farm chores and more time to play. There was an old Catholic Benedictine monastery in the town. The ancient monastery was decorated with carved stones and woodwork that included several swastikas. Adolf attended school there and saw them every day. They had been put there in the 1800's by the ruling Abbot as a pun or play on words. His name essentially sounded like the German word for swastika, Hakenkreuz. Young Hitler did well in the monastery school and also took part in the boys' choir. As a young boy he idolized the priests and for two years seriously considered becoming a priest himself. At age nine, he got into schoolboy mischief. He was caught smoking a cigarette by one of the priests. In describing his boyhood, Hitler later said of himself that he was "an argumentative little ring leader who liked to stay outside and hang around with 'husky' boys."
In 1898, the Hitler family moved once again, to the village of Leonding. They settled into a small house with a garden next to a cemetery. He found school easy and got good grades with little effort. He also discovered he had considerable talent for drawing, especially sketching buildings. He had the ability to look at a building, memorize the architectural details, and accurately reproduce it on paper, entirely from memory. One day, young Hitler went rummaging through his father's book collection and came across several of a military nature, including a picture book on the War of 1870 - 1871 between the Germans and the French. By Hitler's own account, this book became an obsession.
Hitler dreamt of becoming an artist, but his father wouldn't have it. Hitler pleaded to his father to allow him to attend the classical secondary school, but his father wanted his son to follow in his own foot steps and become a civil servant. Hitler failed his first year, later claiming he did so purposefully.
Around this same time, Hitler, an Austrian living very near the German border, became very interested in German Nationalism. Many Austrians living near Germany considered themselves German-Austrians. In January, 1903, Hitler's father died suddenly of a lung hemorrhage, leaving his thirteen year old son as head of the Hitler household. Free of discipline, Hitler's grades continued to plummet and he dropped out of school in 1905, at age 16. After two years of inactivity, He decided to pursue an education in the arts and moved to Vienna. His test drawings for Academy admittance were rejected though and Hitler was bitterly disappointed.
On December 21, Adolf's mother died of natural causes. The death was a shock to Hitler; he no longer had parents. From age 18 to 24 Hitler attempted to make in Artist in Vienna but failed miserably and instead lived on the streets and in shelters. In this time Hitler grew interested in politics. He admired the Social Democrats for their ability to organize demonstrations and propaganda techniques. Like many of the middle class in Vienna and Germany at the time, the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger was an anti-semite (prejudiced against Jews). Hitler still had some Jewish friends and he did not openly practice racism but his mind was absorbing the hateful messages.
