Geli Raubal
Angela "Geli" Raubal (June 4, 1908 – September 18, 1931) was the daughter of Adolf Hitler's half sister, Angela Raubal.
Hitler kept a tight rein over his niece by not allowing her to associate with friends freely and by attempting to have himself or one of his men around her at all times. Despite Hitler's efforts to control Geli, she turned out to be a free-spirited young woman who did whatever she pleased whenever and wherever possible. Earlier, she even had an affair with Emil Maurice, a founding member of the SS and at the time Hitler's chauffeur, who was dismissed as a result (but later rehired and promoted).
She was found dead from a gunshot wound to the heart in Hitler's Munich apartment on September 18, 1931, at the age of twenty-three. The official cause of death was given as suicide but at the time Hitler already had some influence with the Munich police so it cannot be known if they were being objective. There were many rumours, including one that Hitler shot her (or had her shot) for infidelity, since she was killed by a bullet fired from his gun. By all accounts they argued intensely in the days leading to her death. Nobody knows what really happened. After her death, Hitler threatened to commit suicide himself (he had made similar threats during past moments of personal crisis or defeat, most notably after the failed Beer Hall Putsch). Historians have written that Hitler was deeply in love with her, that she was the love of his life and that after her death he was a changed man for the worse. For example, his diet was mostly vegetarian after 1931; he claimed that meat reminded him of her corpse. Hitler's declining health also played a major role in him adopting a vegetarian diet.
Even before Raubal's death, however, Hitler was also seeing nineteen year old Eva Braun, whom he had known for two years (and who would attempt suicide at least twice before marrying and commiting suicide with him in the space of a day and a night fourteen years later). Most historians believe Raubal was distraught over her relationship with Hitler, could not escape it and killed herself as a result.
Author Ron Hansen's 1995 historical fiction novel Hitler's Niece concerns Hitler and Raubal's relationship from the time she was born until her death, with most of the story happening during Hitler's rise to power in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
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Categories: 1908 births | 1931 deaths | Hitler family | Suicides