ART OF DARKNESS
Nazi blamed Jews for struggle to sell work as young man
A SCOTS historian has uncovered the hidden truth behind Hitler’s time as a failed artist.
Professor Thomas Weber, of the University of Aberdeen, has revealed testimony which sheds new light on the psyche of the Nazi leader as he blamed Jewish people for his struggle selling artwork in Munich.
He met Michelle McKane, great granddaughter of Josef and Anna Popp from whom Hitler rented a room above their Munich tailor shop in 1913.
She shared conversations Hitler had with them to ensure family testimony survives.
Prof Weber said: “There is absolutely no evidence that would support the idea that anyone other than Hitler himself was responsible for his failings. Hitler latched on to stereotypes and narratives about Jews that had been around for hundreds of years. He did so to make sense of his own failure and projected them on to the Jews whom he personally had encountered.”
According to McKane, who lives in the US, Hitler would tell her great grandfather “Jews were cheap”, said Prof Weber.
“He would complain that even though ‘he was an amazing artist’ he wasn’t selling his paintings and when Jews ‘would come up to him to try to buy them, they were wanting to pay less of a price than he wanted them to pay’.”
The new evidence is used in a University of Aberdeen online short course. Prof Weber said: “Understanding how, in the past, rational people appropriated detrimental and extremist views – and as a result engaged in harmful behaviour towards others – helps us to put into sharper focus similar processes in our own world.”