Geli Raubal
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Angela "Geli" Raubal (June 4, 1908 - September 18, 1931) was the daughter of Adolf Hitler's half sister, Angela Raubal.
Hitler kept a tight rein over his niece by not allowing her to associate with friends freely and by attempting to have himself or someone he trusted near her at all times. Despite Hitler's efforts to control Geli, she turned out to be a free-spirited young woman who often did as she pleased whenever and wherever possible. Earlier, she even had an affair with Emil Maurice, a founding member of the SS and at the time Hitler's chauffeur, who was dismissed as a result (but later rehired and promoted).
She was found dead from a gunshot wound to the heart in Hitler's Munich apartment on September 18, 1931, at the age of twenty-three. The official cause of death was given as suicide but at the time Hitler already had some influence with the Munich police so it cannot be known if they were being objective. There were many rumours, including one that Hitler shot her (or had her shot) for infidelity, since she was killed by a bullet fired from his gun. By all accounts they argued intensely in the days leading to her death.
Nobody knows what really happened. After her death, Hitler threatened to commit suicide himself (he had made similar threats during past moments of personal crisis or defeat, most notably after the failed Beer Hall Putsch). Historians have written that Hitler was deeply in love with her, that she was the love of his life and that after her death he was a changed man for the worse. His diet was mostly vegetarian after 1931 (he reportedly remarked that meat reminded him of her corpse, although Hitler's constant worries about his health are known to have influenced his insistence on a vegetarian diet). Hitler had early ambitions to make his way as an artist and continued to draw sporadically after he entered politics. The many sketches of his which survived the war included some ordinary nudes and at least one of these depicted Raubal.
Even before Raubal's death, however, Hitler was also seeing nineteen year old Eva Braun, whom he had known for two years (and who would attempt suicide at least twice before marrying and committing suicide with him in the space of a day and a night fourteen years later). Most historians surmise Raubal was distraught over her relationship with Hitler, could not escape it and killed herself as a result.
Fiction
Author Ron Hansen's 1995 historical fiction novel Hitler's Niece follows Hitler and Raubal's relationship from the time of her birth throughout her life, with most of the story happening during Hitler's rise to power in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
External link
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