Klarinet Archive - Posting 001024.txt from 1998/09

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] The clarinet in literature
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 20:18:47 -0400

Regarding Dan Leeson's mention of the clarinet-playing Hitler clone in "The
Boys From Brazil" (both Ira Levin's novel and the film version), I speculated
that this scene might be a sly reference to Hitler having Jewish blood, since
at the time, the stereotypical klezmer musician was an itenerant clarinetist.

Dan Leeson replied,
>This is way off topic but I had to state that there is no evidence to support
the conjecture about Hitler's genealogy. Lelia, where did you get such
information? What is the source of it?>

I got the information in the California public school system and so did my
husband. We were born in 1948. During our school years, Hitler's Jewish
ancestry was common knowledge, or at least talk of it was common and we
accepted it as knowledge. Our teachers, with vivid memories of World War II,
often used the story that one of Hitler's grandfathers was Jewish, and that
Hitler knew it, as an illustration of the meaning and implicatons of
hypocrisy. I had never done independent research on the subject before, but
after seeing Dan Leeson's message, I did a bit of reading and learned that
although there is evidence, he's right: It won't do.

Robert G. L. Waite describes the controversy in his biography of Hitler, _The
Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler_ . (New York, Basic Books, 1977. See
especially p. 146 ff, under the heading, "A Jewish Grandfather?") As best I
can tell, my teachers' information must have come, probably by way of
secondary sources, from the memoirs of Hans Frank, Hitler's lawyer (known as
"The Butcher of Poland"). Early historians of the Third Reich and biographers
of Hitler often quoted or paraphrased Frank's report, a confession written
after his conversion to Catholicism while he awaited execution for war crimes.
According to Frank, in 1930, a relative of Hitler attempted blackmail by
threatening to reveal that Hitler's maternal grandfather was Jewish. The
blackmailer claimed that Hitler's grandmother, Maria Anna Schickelgruber (who
was Catholic) worked as a domestic servant for a Jewish family named
Frankenberger (or Frankenreiter, as Hitler's step-nephew gave it) in Graz.
The head of the household fathered her illegitimate son, Hitler's father,
Alois. Frankenberger than paid for the child's support. The blackmailer
produced old family correspondence, which subsequently disappeared, as proof.

It's certainly true, and verifiable, that Hitler's father was illegitimate.
There's also evidence that Frank wrote a truthful account of how he
investigated the Jewish grandfather story, believed it and helped Hitler try
to squelch it, with a cover-up and vigorous denials. But was the paternity
story true?

Hitler sent his armies to tear up Graz and the surrounding area pretty
thoroughly and, Waite argues, vindictively. A lot of local records
disappeared. Historian Nikolaus Preradovic searched the meager surviving
documentation (court and parish registries, and so forth) and published his
findings in _Paris Soir_ in 1939. Preradovic found no Jewish records from the
time period around Alois Hitler's birth. He found no Frankenbergers. The
only Frankenreiter he found was probably Catholic. He found no evidence that
Jews lived in that area at all then (they were expelled in the late 15th
century and not formally permitted to return until 1856, twenty years after
Hitler's father's birth), and couldn't find enough facts to prove or disprove
the story as a whole. Of course it's nearly impossible to prove a case with
negative evidence. The fact that Preradovic couldn't find conclusive data
under wartime circumstances certainly doesn't prove that no such data had ever
existed. More recently, Nazi-hunter Simon Weisenthal also did primary source
research. He, too, could neither prove nor disprove the "Jewish grandfather"
story. (Weisenthal published his findings in a letter to the editor of _Der
Spiegel_ No. 23, August 7, 1967.) Preradovic and Weisenthal independently
concluded that the limited evidence they did find descredited enough important
elements of the "Jewish grandfather" story to throw great doubt on it.

As Waite puts it (p. 147), "We do not know, and we probably never will know
whether in fact Hitler had a Jewish grandfather. The more important question
is a different one: Did Hitler think he might have Jewish blood? The answer
to this question is yes, he did. Rightly or wrongly, throughout his life
Hitler lived with the awful suspicion . . . that he himself was 'poisoned' by
Jewish blood. That suspicion constituted psychic reality for Hitler. It
helped to shape his personality and to determine public policy." While the
jargon of Waite's understanding of abnormal psychology sounds dated today, he
goes on to argue persuasively that there's an apprehensive, defensive quality
to Hitler's voluminous rantings on the subject of Aryan purity and "tainted"
blood.

Dan Leeson is right to criticize my categorical assertion about the facts of
Hitler's parentage in my previous message. However, I think the wide credence
given to this story (whether it's really true or false) supports my theory
that perhaps Ira Levin put the klezmer instrument in the hands of a Hitler
clone as a reference to the "Jewish grandfather," if any. The real Hitler
couldn't play the clarinet, although he imagined himself an authority on
classical music.

Lelia
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"One evening during the war, Hitler was whistling a classical air. When a
secretary had the temerity to suggest that he had made a mistake in the
melody, the Fuhrer was furious . . . shouting angrily, 'I don't have it wrong.
It is the composer who made a mistake in this passage.'"
-- Quoted in Waite, p. 48.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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