Did Hitler own a dictionary?

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Timmy
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Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#1

Post by Timmy » 27 Aug 2014, 18:52

Did Hitler himself own a dictionary?

I know he did a lot reading in his Vienna years and in during his prison sentence and was just wondering whether anybody knows whether or not he himself owned a dictionary.

I'm asking since back then there was no internet and although some people use dictionaries today a lot just use the internet since its quicker to find the definition of words whereas back then the only way would be a dictionary in paperback/hardcover.

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Georges JEROME
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Re: Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#2

Post by Georges JEROME » 30 Aug 2014, 10:30

Hitler dictated Mein Kampf in prison to between others Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice. Hitler wrote just guide lines but prefer dictate in regard of his inspiration.
it is said that Bernhard Stempfle held to some rewriting of the manuscript.


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Re: Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#3

Post by Boby » 30 Aug 2014, 15:15

Hitler dictated Mein Kampf in prison to between others Rudolf Hess and Emil Maurice.
This is what all historians being repeating, but newer research by Plöckinger suggest that Hitler himself wrote alone the book (i.e, the Rudolf Hess letters from 1924 doesn't said anything of such "diktate" taking place).

Boby,

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Re: Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#4

Post by Georges JEROME » 30 Aug 2014, 19:32

The book called "Daten der Geschichte der NSDAP" was written by Dr Hans Volz published yearly since 1930 .
He was in the official Library of the NSDAP
with accordance of "Der Vorsitzende der Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission sum Schute des NS-Schrifttums
and recommanded by the Amt Schriftumpspflege bei dem Beauftragten des Führer für die gesamte geistige und weltanschauliche Erziehung der NSDAP.
Page 21 :
18 july 1925 : From work "Mein Kampf" (of which original title was "41/2 Jahre Kampf gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Freigheit") was published the 1.Band than Hitler during Fortress-way dictated to his secretary Rudolf Hess (2nd edition : 11.Dezember 1925).

Othmar Plöckinger contest in his book published in 2006 that based upon letters of Hess which don't mention that work, Hitler wrote himself. !

Who is right Dr Plöckinger with his conclusion
or Dr Volz who was in contact with Hess and Dr Rosenberg and write this information with the authorization of the NS censorship !
The book was published in 11 yearly edition (500 000 ex. in 39) .
Could you contest the writing of an graduate historian and NS propagandist who wrote a number of standard books during NS period.

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Re: Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#5

Post by Boby » 31 Aug 2014, 15:19

Hi georges!
Who is right Dr Plöckinger with his conclusion
or Dr Volz who was in contact with Hess and Dr Rosenberg and write this information with the authorization of the NS censorship !
Plöckinger uses all available evidence, primary and secondary sources (including Volz, of course). Volz must be a secondary witness, since he wasn't with Hitler in Landsberg; Hess comments in his family letters shows that Hitler worked alone in his book.

See the chapter in Plöckinger book here:
http://books.google.es/books?id=eds8Ujo ... &q&f=false
(pp. 146-153) and for Emil Maurice (pp. 141-143).

The question remains who propagated the "Diktate"-version in the 20s. Perhaps it was more in accordance with Hitler's personality.

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Re: Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#6

Post by Timmy » 02 Sep 2014, 20:27

I've just finished reading http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitlers-Private ... 0099532174, it is estimated in his library he had around 16,000 volumes of books. It is said that Hitler had started to write for a book before even dictating it to Hess.

People who knew him earlier in his life like Kubizek stated how much Hitler read and adored books.
"Books, books, always books!" August Kubizek once wrote. "I just can't imagine Adolf without books. He had them piled up around him at home. He always had a book with him wherever he went." Kubizek, Hitler's only real friend in his teenage years, recalled after the war that Hitler had been registered with three libraries in Linz, where he attended school, and had passed endless days in the baroque splendor of the Hofbibliothek, the former court library of the Hapsburgs, during his time in Vienna. "Bücher waren seine Welt," Kubizek wrote. "Books were his world."
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ry/302727/

The reason I ask about whether or not he owned a dictionary is because he read so much and the internet was not around then ahd he'd obviously come across words that he would not know the definition of. Is there any evidence of him owning a dictionary?

Hitler took reading to be a serious matter, after 1933 the door where he was reading would bear "ABSOLUTE SILENCE" when he was reading. He had special chairs and lights specifically for reading.

Marshal Keitel could even hear Hitler turn the pages of books because the walls were so thin. Quite a lot of his inner circle knew how serious Hitler took reading and recalled how he could remember exact dates, times, models, etc and even full passages from books.

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Re: Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#7

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 03 Sep 2014, 08:32

Perhaps this is more a generational issue. Back in the "Olden Days" when there were "books", any voracious reader of such ancient paper storage items of knowledge would have a dictionary and a thesaurus, if not several, including some specialized multilingual ones too, as there were no translator programs , back then either. Also the fact that he read and spoke German but was Austrian, and German having VERY ridiculously long compound words anyone would need a guide to explain some of them. Also German itself has regional variations in spelling and meaning which become more pronounced the further back you go in time and/or a wider distance between writer and reader.

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Re: Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#8

Post by Timmy » 12 Sep 2014, 18:21

ChristopherPerrien wrote:Perhaps this is more a generational issue. Back in the "Olden Days" when there were "books", any voracious reader of such ancient paper storage items of knowledge would have a dictionary and a thesaurus, if not several, including some specialized multilingual ones too, as there were no translator programs , back then either. Also the fact that he read and spoke German but was Austrian, and German having VERY ridiculously long compound words anyone would need a guide to explain some of them. Also German itself has regional variations in spelling and meaning which become more pronounced the further back you go in time and/or a wider distance between writer and reader.
I've always assumed that Hitler had a dictionary and a thesaurus for this reason - back in the day without the internet, dictionaries were the only way to get the definition of words correctly.

Hitler being an Austrian is a moot point in regards to him owning a dictionary since he was a German-speaking Austrian and the vast majority of Austrians are ethnic Germans and the German spoken in Austria is only a little different to say what is spoken in Bavaria.

Hitler in Mein Kampf expressed his Bavarian dialect not Austrian, since he lived in Passau Bavaria as a young boy due to his father's job:
The German of my youth was the dialect of Lower Bavaria, I could neither forget it nor learn the Viennese jargon.
Mein Kampf, Volume One - A Reckoning, Chapter III: General Political Considerations Based on My Vienna Period.

http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch03.html

There is a lot of references to what books Hitler read, owned, collected, etc but there is no information specifically on what dictionary and/or thesaurus he owned.

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Re: Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#9

Post by ChristopherPerrien » 12 Sep 2014, 21:20

Timmy wrote:
Hitler being an Austrian is a moot point in regards to him owning a dictionary since he was a German-speaking Austrian and the vast majority of Austrians are ethnic Germans and the German spoken in Austria is only a little different to say what is spoken in Bavaria.
:) , no, never dismiss this "moot point", Your Mein Kampf exerts bely this point further :lol: .

Hitler eventually left Austria to be a "German" citizen and soldier. Austria at time was part of the Austrian -Hungarian Empire. Hitler wanted no part of that as he considered himself a true German, which was why he dodged the draft of the A-H Empire to become a soldier of Germany. HIs childhood dialect of rather bastardized spoken German- Austrian, would have been comparable to the Southern sub-dialect of the American dialect of the English language.

His change from Austrian to German is what "defined" him and his "Pan-German" nationalism, his speech over the years reflected the same.

Hitler is well accepted as being a phenomenal speaker, in German no less, And that only serves to confirm how much he would have needed to study and know, to "bridge the gap" between born speaking Austrian German to knowing all the variations in Southern German, and also High German , to become perhaps the greatest speaker in the history of mankind.

How many dictionaries did Hitler own? would be a much better question. I venture he eventually owned/read/studied 100's to include also thesauruses and grammatical books too.

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Re: Did Hitler own a dictionary?

#10

Post by Timmy » 13 Sep 2014, 13:03

ChristopherPerrien wrote::) , no, never dismiss this "moot point", Your Mein Kampf exerts bely this point further :lol: .


It shows he did not have an Austrian dialect, this doesn't mean he was not a German.
Hitler eventually left Austria to be a "German" citizen and soldier. Austria at time was part of the Austrian -Hungarian Empire. Hitler wanted no part of that as he considered himself a true German, which was why he dodged the draft of the A-H Empire to become a soldier of Germany. HIs childhood dialect of rather bastardized spoken German- Austrian, would have been comparable to the Southern sub-dialect of the American dialect of the English language.
Even before Hitler left Austria he still thought of himself as a German. He like many other Austrian Germans thought of themselves as German first, Austrian second. The Austrian identity we know today was a lot different back in Hitler's era when many of the Austrians living outside of the German borders still considered themselves as German even if they never had German citizenship, Hitler was one of them.

Hitler did not go leave Austria to become a German citizen and soldier. Hitler left Austria because Vienna rejected him and Munich brought about some hope for his career that he wished to take then as an artist and to also avoid serving in the Austrian army. Hitler volunteered for the Bavarian-German army whilst still technically an Austrian citizen.

Hitler did not dodge the Austrian Hungarian empire to be a soldier for Germany, he left the empire May 1913 and did not sign up for the army until August 1914.

Hitler claimed he did not wish to serve for the Austrian army because of the "mixture of races" (non-Germans - Jews, Slavs, Hungarians, etc).

Hitler did not even become a German citizen until 1932... virtually 20 years after he left Austria. He was close to being deported in 1925 when released after the failed coup but the judge said they could not deport someone who "felt" as German as well as mentioning his time served in the army, Hitler became a citizen in 1932 by luck more than anything and it was only because he could not run for chancellor if he was not a German citizen so on 25 February 1932, the interior minister of Brunswick, who was a member of the NSDAP, appointed Hitler as administrator for the state's delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin, making Hitler a citizen of Brunswick, and thus of Germany.
His change from Austrian to German is what "defined" him and his "Pan-German" nationalism, his speech over the years reflected the same.

Even as an Austrian he still held pan-German nationalist views. Hitler did not see any difference between Austria and Germany, he believed that Austria and Germany should both be one country as the "Greater Germany" concept advocated, since the unification of Germany was based on ethnic origin and the German-speaking states to unify the nation-state. If history had turned out differently it would have been Austria who unified Germany and not Prussia.

A few biographies that mention his German nationalism from a very young age are Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris 1936-1945 Nemesis by Ian Kershaw, Hitler by John Toland, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock and Hitler by Joachim Fest.

Hitler used to read a lot of pan-German pamphlets in his Vienna years.
Hitler is well accepted as being a phenomenal speaker, in German no less, And that only serves to confirm how much he would have needed to study and know, to "bridge the gap" between born speaking Austrian German to knowing all the variations in Southern German, and also High German , to become perhaps the greatest speaker in the history of mankind.
Undoubtedly Hitler was a great charismatic speaker who really held the crowds with his voice alone, the Nazi party would never had made it without Hitler's (and Goebbels to an extent) oratory gift. You don't even need to understand German to know he was a great speaker, he carefully planned the speeches out and he developed them with excellence with his hand gestures etc.
How many dictionaries did Hitler own? would be a much better question. I venture he eventually owned/read/studied 100's to include also thesauruses and grammatical books too.
This is something I'm curious to find out.

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