Geli Raubal relative William Patrick Stuart-Houston
Death
Raubal was living in Hitler's Munich apartment, and he maintained strict control over her actions. She was in effect a prisoner, and planned to escape to Vienna to continue her singing lessons. Her mother told interrogators after the war that Hitler had forbidden her daughter to continue her relationship with a man from Linz whom she was hoping to marry. Hitler and Raubal argued on 18 September 1931 when he refused to allow her to go to Vienna. He departed for a meeting in Nuremberg but was recalled to Munich the next day with the news that Raubal was dead from a gunshot wound to the lung; she had apparently shot herself in Hitler's Munich apartment with Hitler's Walther pistol. She was 23.
Rumours immediately began in the media about physical abuse, a possible sexual relationship, an infatuation by Raubal for her uncle, and even murder. The Münchener Post reported that the dead woman had a fractured nose. Otto Strasser, a political opponent of Hitler, was the source of some of the more sensational stories. The historian Ian Kershaw maintains that "whether actively sexual or not, Hitler's behaviour towards Geli has all the traits of a strong, latent at least, sexual dependence." The police ruled out foul play and the death was ruled a suicide. Hitler was devastated and went into an intense depression. He moved to a house on the shores of Tegernsee lake and did not attend the funeral in Vienna on 24 September. He visited her grave at Vienna's Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) two days later. Thereafter, he overcame his depression and refocused on politics.Hitler later declared that Raubal was the only woman he had ever loved. Her room at Haus Wachenfeld was kept as she had left it, and he hung portraits of her in his own room there and at the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.In a 1992 Vanity Fair article, Ron Rosenbaum examines several theories, including speculation that Hitler intentionally or accidentally shot and killed Raubal during an argument, or that she was killed on his orders. According to William Stuart-Houston, Hitler's nephew through his half-brother, Alois, "When I visited Berlin in 1931, the family was in trouble. ... Everyone knew that Hitler and she had long been intimate and that she had been expecting a child – a fact that enraged Hitler."
kin family member kinsman kinswoman relation by marriage