Hitler's Niece

Angela thought she ought to know that name; she glanced anxiously at Geli. Lincoln?

Without shifting her fond gaze from Putzi, Geli said, “A president of the United States.”

“I was just thinking that,” Angela said.

But that was only the beginning of Angela’s being left out. Geli flirted with him outrageously, giggling at the faintest humor, finding reasons to touch his hands, flattering him with awe.

“I first met your uncle at the Kindl Keller beer hall,” Putzi said. “While I had some misgivings about him and his program, I was utterly conquered by his oratory. And I recalled something that Teddy Roosevelt told me long ago when I visited him at his Sag-amore Hill estate. The former president told me it was wise in my business to buy only the finest art, but I ought to remember that in politics the choice is often the lesser of two evils. And so I became a member of the party.”

“The lesser of two evils,” Angela said. “High praise.”

But Hanfstaengl was too focused on Geli to hear her. Confessing that he and his wife, Helene, had taken Hitler on as their joint project, Putzi told how they’d spruced up her famous uncle, found him a tuxedo and a good tailor, taught him the graces of the dining table, and forbade him from adding four teaspoons of sugar to one of Prinz Metternich’s finest Gewürztraminer wines. “I haven’t yet got him to change that postage stamp of a mustache, though. He looks like a fourth-form schoolteacher or a bank clerk who lives with his mother.” Putzi told them he’d offered Hitler their parlor for his afternoon reading, invited him to parties with their wealthy friends, cheered him up by banging out Wagner preludes on the piano “with Lisztian fioriture and a fine romantic swing.”

The headwaiter refilled his coffee cup and then he continued, “While in the first days of his remand at Landsberg, Hitler followed the Sinn Fein of Ireland in trying a hunger strike. Roder, his counsel, got in touch with my wife, and Helene forthwith sent a message to Adolf saying she hadn’t prevented his suicide in Uffing just so he could starve to death in the fortress. Wasn’t that exactly what his enemies wanted? Well, Hitler has such a great admiration for my wife that her advice turned the scale, and he’s far fitter now.”

“You have our thanks,” Geli said.

Putzi tilted forward in a bow while saying, “And you have my admiration.”

“Will you be staying in Wien long?” Angela asked.

Geli glared, as if she’d heedlessly thrown cold water on a cake.

“Oh no,” he said. “Who can work here?” And he offered his observations on the gaiety and frivolity of Wien, falling into French to say, “Elle danse, mais elle ne marche pas.”

It was left to Angela’s fifteen-year-old daughter to translate: “The city dances, but it never gets anything done.” And then in the way o

f teenaged girls with their mothers, Geli added, “French.” She smiled at Putzi. “I want to hear you speak English.”

Hanfstaengl gave it some thought before saying in English, “You are quite the saucy morsel.”

Geli grinned in fascinated ignorance at Angela. “Did you understand him?”

Angela shook her head.

Hanfstaengl said, “I told her she was not unattractive.”

Angela stared glumly at Geli and said, “Yes, it’s true, isn’t it.”

Only then did he turn to the older woman. “You often hear gossip in high society about Herr Hitler and glamorous women, that he fancies this one, that he’s marrying another, but I assure you, Frau Raubal, there’s absolutely no substance to it.”

Angela grimly asked, “Why are people always assuring me that my family has no love life?”

Geli sighed loudly, then fluttered her eyes at Putzi in apology.

“Well,” he said. “We’re having such a lovely time I hate to have it end. Shall I try to get us seats at the opera?”

Geli nearly shrieked, she was so thrilled. “Oh, could you?”

Putzi stood up from the dining table and said, “The concierge of the Sacher Hotel is famous for finding tickets when none are available.”

Angela watched him lumber through the dining room to the hotel lobby, then she frostily said to her daughter, “You shock me, Angelika!”

She smiled. “Only because I have such an electric personality.”

“Carrying on with a married man.”

“We were just talking, Mother!”