%0 Journal Article
%T Aus den Gemeinden von Burgenland: Revisiting the question of Adolf Hitler¡¯s paternal grandfather
%A Leonard Sax
%J Journal of European Studies
%@ 1740-2379
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0047244119837477
%X Hans Frank was Adolf Hitler¡¯s personal attorney. In Frank¡¯s memoir, published seven years after his execution in 1946 at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Frank claimed to have uncovered evidence in 1930 that Hitler¡¯s paternal grandfather was a Jewish man living in Graz, Austria, in the household where Hitler¡¯s grandmother was employed. Contemporary historians have largely dismissed Frank¡¯s claim, primarily on the grounds that there were purportedly no Jews living in Graz in 1836, when Hitler¡¯s father Alois Schicklgruber was conceived. This consensus can be traced to a single historian, Nikolaus von Preradovich, who claimed that ¡®not a single Jew¡¯ (kein einziger Jude) was living in Graz prior to 1856. No independent scholarship has confirmed Preradovich¡¯s conjecture. In this paper, evidence is presented that there was in fact eine kleine, nun angesiedelte Gemeinde ¨C ¡®a small, now settled community¡¯ ¨C of Jews living in Graz before 1850. The contemporary consensus regarding Hitler¡¯s paternal grandfather does not have a strong evidentiary basis. Other evidence, deriving from earlier sources, suggests that the contemporary consensus may be incorrect. Avenues for further research which might help to clarify the question are suggested
%K Austrian history
%K Burgenland
%K Adolf Hitler
%K Jewish history
%K Nazi Germany
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0047244119837477