Jonas Karlsson, ‘In that hour it began’? Hitler, ‘Rienzi’, and the Trustworthiness of August Kubizek’s ‘The Young Hitler I Knew’

The story of how the adolescent Hitler attended a performance of Rienzi in Linz, which so captivated him that he is later supposed to have dated his own political calling back to that evening, has become a staple in the secondary literature, retold countless times in articles and books. The source of this uncanny anecdote is the man often identified as Hitler’s only boyhood friend, August Kubizek, who devotes an entire chapter to it in his memoirs, The Young Hitler I Knew. Kubizek narrates at length how his companion was so enthralled by the work that he could barely speak after the curtain had fallen. Struggling to come to grips with his emotions, Hitler impelled Kubizek to follow him to the nearby Freinberg mountain, where they found themselves entirely alone in the night under the starry November sky. It was here that Hitler had a vision of how his own fate had been prefigured in that of Rienzi: one day he too would become a people’s tribune and lead his country to greatness.