Alois Hitler

Alois Hitler, Sr. (born Alois Schicklgruber; 7 June 1837 – 3 January 1903) was an Austrian civil servant and the father of dictator Adolf Hitler.

Early life

Alois Schicklgruber was born in the hamlet of Strones, parish of Döllersheim, in the Waldviertel, an area in northwest Lower Austria, to a 42-year-old unmarried peasant, Maria Schicklgruber, whose family had lived in the area for generations. At his baptism in Döllersheim, the space for his father's name on the baptismal certificate was left blank and the priest wrote "illegitimate". His mother cared for Alois in a house she shared with her elderly father, Johannes Schicklgruber.

Sometime later, Johann Georg Hiedler moved in with the Schicklgrubers; he married Maria when Alois was five. By the age of 10, Alois had been sent to live with Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, who owned a farm in the nearby village of Spital (part of Weitra). Alois attended elementary school and took lessons in shoe-making from a local cobbler. At the age of 13 he left the farm in Spital and went to Vienna as an apprentice cobbler, working there for about five years. In response to a recruitment drive by the Austrian government offering employment in the civil service to people from rural areas, Alois joined the frontier guards (customs service) of the Austrian Finance Ministry in 1855 at the age of 18.