Adolf Hitler The dictator as a genteel man of taste
Yes, and it continues today to some extent because those stories still circulate.
Adolf Hitler is a man who is, quite rightly, infamous for many things. Decorating choices are not one of them.
However, on Aug. 20, 1939 — just 12 days before the start of the Second World War — the New York Times Magazine published a lengthy profile of the Nazi leader’s life at his mountain estate. The article noted that the Bavarian home, known as Berghof, was furnished with “unobtrusive elegance” — with “unstained sanded wainscotting” and a “patternless carpet of handwoven rugs.”
This wasn’t a one-off. Perhaps what’s more remarkable is that it wasn’t just the New York Times writing about the stylishness of the Fascist leader’s abodes. On Jan. 2, 1941, Preston Grover wrote a story for the Washington Post describing Hitler’s various wartime homes and paying particular attention to the German Fuehrer’s apparent love of good silverware.
What explains this odd fixation with Hitler’s home decor? That’s one of the questions that Despina Stratigakos, a historian at the University of Buffalo, set out to answer in her new book Hitler at Home. In it, Stratigakos examines not only how the Nazi leader decorated his residences, but how these residences were used to change public perception of Hitler’s private life.
Tell us a little about why you chose to write the book.
The book began with a baffling piece of archival evidence. As a graduate student in Berlin, I was researching the careers of women in architecture active in the early part of the 20th century. I came across the Nazi party files of Gerdy Troost, Hitler’s interior designer. What caught my eye immediately was the bizarre juxtaposition of artifacts in her files: invoices for renovations to Hitler’s homes and sketches for furniture filed together with letters from people pleading for her help, including Jews interned in concentration camps.
Why, I wondered, were they asking Hitler’s decorator for help? I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing in the files. What did Hitler’s velvet curtains have to do with the Holocaust? It took a long time for me to piece together the story and to understand how Troost had been part of a larger propaganda machine to remake Hitler’s image from tyrant to gentleman, and the power she had once possessed as part of his inner circle.
In his early years, it doesn’t seem like Adolf Hitler cared for interior design. What caused the big change?
In 1932, in the midst of a crucial election battle, Nazi publicists brought Hitler’s private life into the limelight in order to emphasize his moral and human character and thereby win over bourgeois voters and women. Given the circumstances of Hitler’s private life — a middle-aged bachelor with few family ties and no known romantic relationships — it was truly an audacious move. After he came to power, Hitler used domestic architectural makeovers to shed any vestiges of his image as rabble-rouser to emphasize his new status as statesman and diplomat.
How effective were these efforts at changing Hitler’s public image?
They were wildly successful — among the Nazi party’s most effective propaganda campaigns. A man once known as an extreme anti-Semite, convicted traitor and leader of a violent paramilitary force had, by the mid-1930s, transformed into a Bavarian gentleman who loved dogs, sunshine and gooseberry pie.
Hitler’s homes received a lot of attention in the U.S. and U.K. press. How were the Nazis able to organize this press?
I don’t think the Nazis had to organize much — there was tremendous public interest in the “private” Hitler. In 1934, the German Press Association, reporting on domestic and foreign markets for German photojournalism, stated that the most sought-after images were of Hitler at home playing with his dogs or with children. It also noted that American newspapers preferred to buy Hitler pictures with a “human interest” angle.
The rise of celebrity culture in the 1920s and ’30s undoubtedly helped to sell these stories. Rapid advances in radio and film were making famous entertainers and politicians seem both larger than life and part of the family, and the new technologies were at once creating and feeding a voracious appetite for information about the daily lives of these intimate strangers. Hitler was a dictator, but he was also a marketable celebrity.
Do you think it had a palpable effect on international opinion of Hitler? Germany’s cultivation of Hitler’s international image appears to have been quite different to that of Mussolini and Stalin. Was Hitler breaking the mould here by cultivating the image of his private life?
Hitler broke new ground in making his domestic spaces a political stage, both in terms of his image and his actions. He spent more than a third of his 12 years in power at his mountain home. Even a war did not seem reason enough to give up those comforts, and after 1939, the Berghof became a military headquarters from which he conducted battles and planned strategy. Hitler, it has been said, pioneered the work-from-home movement, and the Great Hall was at the centre of his intention to rule an empire from the comfort of his living room sofa.
Have dictators in following decades attempted to follow Nazi Germany’s strategy?
After Syrian President Bashar Assad married Asma Akhras, the couple welcomed the western media into their Damascus home.
News outlets, such as ABC News, praised the couple for their unpretentious lifestyle, especially their modest house. The couple insisted on the normality of their domestic lives.
Vogue magazine gushed that the Assad household “is run on wildly democratic principles.”
Vogue has since attempted to scrub online traces of its article, but the story — along with many others — remains proudly posted on Assad’s website.
“A man once known as an extreme anti-Semite, convicted traitor and leader of a violent paramilitary force had, by the mid-1930s, transformed into a Bavarian gentleman who loved dogs, sunshine and gooseberry pie.” DESPINA STRATIGAKOS