<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/10/i-was-hitlers-neighbour-if-hed-known-we-were-jewish-wed-have-been-sent-to-dachau>
"The odds were against Edgar Feuchtwanger reaching the age of 100. He was born
on 28 September 1924 into a time of poverty and political turmoil in post-first
world war Germany. He was also born into a Jewish family in a society that was
about to turn to National Socialism, an ideology that would ultimately be
responsible for the murder of 6 million Jews. In 1929, when Feuchtwanger was
five, something happened that made his long life even more unlikely. He got a
new neighbour: Adolf Hitler.
In October that year, Hitler moved into the grand second-floor flat at
Prinzregentenplatz 16 in Munich. His previous flat, on the other side of the
Isar, the river that divides Munich, had become too small. Munich to him was
the “Capital of the Movement”, a title he awarded the city officially in 1935.
From 1929 on he lived in nine rooms in this corner building, with its long
balconies and baroque facade. His staff moved in with him, and, soon, devotees
and high-ranking SS officers were flocking to the flats nearby. Diagonally
opposite, at Grillparzerstrasse 38, with a direct view of Hitler’s flat, lived
the Feuchtwanger family.
Edgar Feuchtwanger, whom his parents called Bürschi, grew up in a respected and
wealthy family that employed a chef and a nanny. His father, Ludwig, was a
publisher and lawyer; his mother, Erna, a pianist. Intellectuals of the early
20th century were constantly in and out of the family home: the writer Thomas
Mann; the lawyer Carl Schmitt, who later became a Nazi legal theorist and party
member. And, of course, Ludwig’s brother, and Edgar’s uncle, Lion Feuchtwanger,
the author of the novels
Jew Süss and
Success.
Hitler and the Feuchtwangers lived across the street from each other for years
– until the family emigrated to England in 1939, just before the outbreak of
the second world war. “Nowadays, I am perhaps the only living witness who saw
and experienced Hitler directly and had some kind of contact with him,” says
Feuchtwanger."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
