Jakob Altenberg
Encyclopedia
Jakob Altenberg was an Austrian businessman. Altenberg was a business partner of the young Adolf Hitler in his Vienna period (1909-1913). In research on Hitler, Altenberg, who was a Jew, takes on a certain importance, since the good relationship which he had with Hitler offers evidence for the thesis that Hitler at this time in Vienna - unlike his later self - was no anti-Semite.

Life and significance for research on Hitler

Jakob Altenberg was born in Galicia in 1875, the son of a Jewish couple, Moses and Sarah Altenberg. As a young man Altenberg came to Vienna where he learned gilding. Later, he cast off his Jewish faith and married in 1902 a Catholic Viennese innkeeper's daughter. The marriage produced two children, daughter Adele (b. 1896) and son James Jr. (b. 1902).

In 1898, Altenberg opened his first store as a mountain frame dealers and goldsmith in the 37th Wiedner Hauptstrasse. Within a few years he became a successful operator of a small framing workshop and a thriving chain of frame shops and art, in which frames were offered for sale, pictures and small art objects (characters, etc.). In addition to its headquarters in the Wiedner Hauptstrasse Altenberg three other branches were later established, including a business Mariahilferstraße .

In the years 1909 to 1913 Altenberg was in business contact with the young Adolf Hitler, who lived at that time as a painter in Vienna. Hitler supplied Altenberg stores on a regular basis with own paintings up to his move to Germany in May 1913, which he either itself or through business partners such as Reinhold Hanisch sold or Joseph Löffner which he lived even the men's hostel in the Meldemannstrasse, at Altenberg. The future of the German dictator-made images - in the rules watercolors - were from Altenberg in part to the imagery, room decoration, but partly also as an accessory to the attractive design of the offered picture frames - which are easier with a filler sold as if they were offered empty - resold. The relationship between Hitler and Altenberg was good regardless of Altenberg's Jewish ancestry: This is not only the duration of the business contacts the two were talking to each other, but also statements by Hanisch and Hitler himself Hanisch good relationship Hitler to Altenberg confirmed in the 1939 in the American journal The Republican published memoirs, and Hitler himself later expressed exclusively in a positive way about the person Altenberg. to have heard this fact, and the later statement Altenberg, never an anti-Semitic remark from Hitler's mouth are therefore in the Hitler research often seen as confirmation that Hitler during his Vienna period, no anti-Semite - or at least not an aggressive racial anti-Semite - was, but this in the heat of or immediately after the First World War became be, for example by Brigitte Hamann in her book Hitler's Vienna. In particular, Hitler's own assertion in his 1925 book, Mein Kampf , that he was already in Vienna was a convinced anti-Semite, is against the backdrop of his relationship with Altenberg and other Viennese Jews (like the men home residents Löffner and Neumann and the dealer Morgenstern) strongly challenged. Hamann interpreted this statement as a lie as a special purpose, which Hitler had spread through political expediency, to give the impression that his anti-Semitism was a product of geradliniegen development without fractures and contradictions.

After the end of the business relationship with Hitler led Altenberg, which is due to historical research also one of the few descriptions of Hitler's appearance during his time in Vienna, , yet its business almost twenty-five years away. After the German invasion of Austria in 1938, Altenberg's business "Aryanized" and confiscated his property to a minimum pension. The two at the time of connection still had in his warehouse business remaining pictures of Hitler Altenberg 1938 for a small fee to sell the main archive of the NSDAP.

Altenberg escaped after 1942 because of his Aryan wife of deportation. He died in 1944 in Vienna. Altenberg's son Jacob (Jacques) founded the company of his father after the Second World War in a modest way (with only one shop) new.
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