On the Berghof terrace, Eva Braun (third from right) with her best friend Herta Schneider (second from right). Also in the picture are other friends and Herta’s daughter Uschi.
Hitler’s mistress from 1932 and his wife during the last few hours of his life. She was a daughter of a school teacher.
Background
Eva Anna Paula Braun was born on February 6, 1912, in Munich, Germany, to a school teacher and seamstress. Braun was the middle child of three daughters in a middle-class family and seemed to be the typical teenager, with a major interest in clothes, boys and makeup. She enjoyed outdoor activities and wasn't too interested in her studies, earning average grades.
Education
She attended a convent school, but left upon realizing that it wasn't a good fit.
Career
Of middle-class Catholic background, she first met Hitler in the studio of his photographer friend, Heinrich Hoffmann. in 1929, describing him to her sister. Use, as ‘a gentleman of a certain age with a funny mustache and carrying a big felt hat’. At that time Eva Braun still worked for Hoffmann as an office assistant, later becoming a photo labora¬tory worker, helping to process pictures of Hitler.
After the death of Geli Raubal, Hitler's niece, she became his mistress, living in his Munich flat, in spite of the opposition of her father who disliked the association on political and personal grounds. In 1935, after an abortive suicide attempt. Hitler bought her a villa in a Munich suburb, near to his own home, providing her with a Mercedes and a chauffeur for personal use. In his first will of 2 May 1938 he put her at the top of his personal bequests - in the event of his death she was to receive the equivalent of £600 a year for the rest of her life.
In 1936 she moved to Hitler’s Berghof at Berchtesgaden where she acted as his hostess. They rarely appeared in public together and few Germans even knew' of her existence. Even the Fuhrer’s closest associates were not certain of the exact nature of their relationship since Hitler preferred to avoid suggestions of intimacy and was never wholly relaxed in her company. Eva Braun spent most of her time exercising, brooding, reading cheap novelettes, watching romantic films or concerning herself with her own appearance. Her loyalty to Hitler never flagged. After he survived the July 1944 plot she wrote Hitler an emotional letter, ending: ‘From our first meeting I swore to follow you anywhere - even unto death - I live only for your love.’
In April 1945 she joined Hitler in the Führerbunker, as the Russians closed in on Berlin. She declined to leave in spite of his orders, claiming to others that she was the only person still loyal to him to the bitter end. ‘Better that ten thousand others die than he is lost to Germany’, she would constantly repeat to friends. On 29 April 1945 Hitler and Eva Braun were finally married. The next day she committed suicide by swallowing poison, two minutes before Hitler took his own life. On Hitler's orders, both bodies were cremated with petrol in the Reich Chancellery garden above the bunker. Her charred corpse was later discovered by the Russians.
Politics
Braun was reserved, indifferent to politics and keeping her distance from most of the Fuhrer’s intimates. She led a completely isolated life in the Fuhrer's Alpine retreat and later in Berlin.
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
She was a fresh-faced, slim blonde, had an athletic body constitution.
Quotes from others about the person
German film historian and artist Lutz Becker, who'd lived through the horrors of Berlin as a child during the war's final days, eventually discovered a collection of films that Braun had created. She had recorded 16-millimeter home movie footage in color during her time at Berghof, with some of the imagery standing in stark contrast to the Nazi propaganda machine.
Other images, in the form of photographs that were held by the U.S. National Archives and unearthed by Reinhard Schulz, have surfaced of Braun as well. The pictures range from family and school portraiture to snapshots with friends, to Braun in blackface imitating Al Jolson.
Interests
Sport & Clubs
skiing, mountain climbing and gymnastics as well as dancing
Connections
The rest of Eva Braun's family survived the war. Her mother, Franziska, who lived in an old farmhouse in Ruhpolding. Bavaria, died at the age of ninety-six, in January 1976.