Career
He was considered the officially accepted paternal grandfather of Adolf Hitler by the Third Reich. Whether Johann Georg was in fact Hitler"s biological paternal grandfather is disputed by modern historians. He was from Spital (part of Weitra), Austria, and made his living as a wandering journeyman miller.
In 1877, twenty years after the death of Johann Georg and almost thirty years after the death of Maria, Alois was legally declared to have been Johann Georg"s son.
Accordingly, Johann Georg Hiedler is one of three people most cited by modern historians as having possibly been the actual paternal grandfather of Adolf Hitler. The other two are Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, the younger brother of Johann Georg, and a Graz Jew by the name of Leopold Frankenberger.
In the 1950s, this third possibility was popular among historians, but modern historians now have debunked the third possibility as Jews were expelled from Graz in the fifteenth century and were not permitted to return until the 1860s, several decades after Alois was born.