Did they meet? That is always the question when we read about two famous people who were sharing some sort of geographical proximity at one time or another.
Adolf Hitler and the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (“the limits of my language are the limits of my world”) went to the same school in Linz. Anton Czekhov and Oscar Wilde spent the same winter in Nice, in pensions near the train station that were – and are – separated by no more than a single block. James Joyce and Lenin sat out WWI in Zurich, as did the Dadaist poet Tristan Tzara, and a wonderfully funny play is based on the various possibilities of one encountering one of the others (Tom Stoppard’s Travesties).
Most intriguing of all, however, is the case of Hitler and Stalin in Vienna. Here are the facts.
Hitler came to Vienna in 1908 and initially shared a flat in Stumpergasse 31 in the Mariahilf district (the sixth Stadtbezirk) with his childhood friend August Kubizek. Soon, however, Hitler’s money ran out – he had funded his move to Vienna with a small family inheritance – and he was forced to abandon the flat.
For the following five years, Hitler bounced back and forth between the semi-respectability of cheap rented accommodation (mainly a public dormitory for men at Meldemannstraße 27) and downright destitution.
In the direst of straits, Hitler used to sleep at the homeless shelter in the district of Meidling which is a 30-minute walk away from Schönbrunn Palace, and we know that he went to the park quite frequently – not least because this was probably the only entertainment that he could afford.
For two months in early 1913, Stalin also lived near Schönbrunn Park. Lenin had sent him there to study the way in which the Austrian Empire dealt with the problem of having such a large number of different nationalities under its control.
It is an interesting question how Lenin imagined Stalin to proceed in his studies, since he must have been aware that Stalin did not speak a word of German. We do not know much about the ways in which Stalin eventually passed his days in Vienna, but one thing we do know for sure: that he often went walking through the park for some distraction. In fact, we know that he did so nearly every day.
Would Hitler and Stalin have met on a walk in the park? They were certainly never physically closer. History knows of no official meeting between the two: not even when the infamous non-aggression pact of 1939 was negotiated and signed. Hitler and Stalin in Vienna met in Schönbrunn Park or not at all.
Tracing the paths of Hitler and Stalin in Vienna
We start our walk in Meidling subway station (direction Siebenhirten from central Vienna). Walk out of the station to the main road, called Wienerbergstrasse, and then turn left for about a quarter mile until you reach Kastanienallee on your left.
A short walk away from the corner, at no. 2, you will find what was then – and still is – Vienna’s shelter for the homeless. This is where Hitler must have spent some of the darkest days and hours of his early life.
Now retrace your steps to Wienerbergstrasse and walk back in the direction of Meidling station. In the early 20th century, Meidling was – much as it is today – a working-class district, and its streets would have been lined by large tenement buildings.
Many of today’s buildings were constructed in the years after WWI by Vienna’s left-wing municipal administration that established the city’s long and continuing tradition for high-quality, airy and often surprisingly beautiful housing estates.
Cross the intersection with Breitenfurter Straße and continue straight into Ruckergasse at the end of which you should turn left into Schönbrunner Schloßstraße.
In the house on no. 30, today the home of the “Pension Schönbrunn“, Stalin lived as the house guests of the Troyanovskys, a wealthy and aristocratic Russian family with Bolshevik sympathies. (His host, Alexander Troyanovsky, would later become the first Soviet ambassador in Washington.)
A little side note: in a house just around the corner from here, on Schönbrunnerstraße 255, Stalin met Trotsky in January 1913 …
… but they met hardly as equals. Where Stalin was uncultivated and deeply provincial, in essence a peasant from rural Georgia, Trotsky was a man of the world who had lived in Vienna for seven years and was a local celebrity in the Cafe Central.
Trotsky loved Vienna (where anti-Czarist Russians were always welcome), and his children, all of whom were later murdered on the behest of a vengeful Stalin, grew up speaking German with a strong Viennese accent. Trotsky only left Vienna when WWI broke out (for Switzerland), to avoid being thrown into an internment camp as an enemy alien.
When in Vienna, Trotsky was almost constantly on the move, leaving behind so many addresses that one could construct an entire “Trotsky Trail” out of them (from his first flat on Hüttelbergstrasse 55 where his second son was born to the last on the corner of Weinberggasse and Rodlergasse where the family stayed the longest). But we shall leave this for, perhaps, another day.
From the Pension Schönbrunn it is only a brief stroll to the gates of the park.
Schönbrunn Palace, the real McCoy of baroque splendour in a city which is full of 19th century imitations, was extended to its present size by the Empress Maria Theresia (the one with the 16 children) in the 1750s. The Habsburgs lived in the Palace until the end of their reign, but the gardens were converted into a public park as early as in 1779.
Take your time to discover the park. There is a lot on show that would undoubtedly have impressed the provincial visitor from rural Austria or Russian Georgia …
… and many things would have warmed the cockles of the budding dictators’ hearts.
Stalin would eventually become one of the world’s champions of neo-classical architectural bombast, and Vienna may well have served as an inspiration for some of his construction projects.
Hitler would have delighted in the repetitiveness of the facades as well as the statues’ poses …
… and in the regularity of the garden ornaments: nature – as well-disciplined as a bunch of storm troopers – bending to the Triumph Of The Will.
But he also had an eye for the picturesque – and perhaps found the inspiration here for some of his picture post cards.
For today’s easy hikers, Schönbrunn Gardens provide space enough for a long walk …
… between the opposite poles of the park, the main palace and the gloriette on the far end …
… and time enough to ponder the question: where could Hitler and Stalin in Vienna have met?
Is it too far-fetched to assume that they may have been sharing a park bench? It’s improbable but not altogether impossible. Think about it the next time when you see a homeless young man and a penniless foreign student on the same bench in your local municipal park: perhaps you are looking at two key figures of 21st century history. It may have happened before.
