2214508
Eva Braun
Eva Braun writes to her sister Ilse
regarding arrangements for Christmas
Eva Anna Paula Braun Hitler, 1912–1945. Mistress and wife of Adolf Hitler. Autograph letter signed, Eva, one page, on a 4⅛” x 5¾” postcard, Munich, [Germany], postmark date illegible [circa 1930s]. In German, with translation. Together with Braun’s calling card and an unused envelope from her personal stationery.
The autograph material of Braun, Adolf Hitler’s mistress from the early 1930s until she became his wife just hours before they committed suicide together, is very scarce, if not rare. Our research has found only a handful of her letters, often, like this one, written on postcards, that have been offered at auction since 1975. This is the first Braun letter that we have ever offered.
Here, Braun writes to her sister Ilse about arrangements for the family Christmas celebration. In full: “Dear Ilse: Momma said that you got everything from Tölz for the Christmas meal, including roast. Answer me whether you then still need ‘my goose.’ A Christmas package follows. Send it to Franzl so that he can then build it up for you. Therefore, please do not open it. It contains some surprises. Have you received the 10– [Marks]? Again, many thanks for the travel provisions. / Sincerely / Eva” Above the text, she adds, “Greet Franzl,” who was Ilse’s husband.
Braun met Hitler in 1929 while working in the Munich studio of Heinrich Hoffmann, the official Nazi party photographer who also became Hitler’s personal photographer. Hoffmann’s studio was located at 50 Schellingstraße in Munich, where the Nazi party also had its headquarters for six years, 1925–1931. Hoffmann wrote of her relationship with Hitler in his memoirs. See Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler Was My Friend: The Memoirs of Hitler’s Photographer 160–64 (R.H. Stevens trans. & Roger Moorhouse intro., 2011).
Braun has written and signed this card in jet black fountain pen. The card has a 6-pfennig Deutsches Reich stamp bearing the image of Paul von Hindenburg with a Munich postmark that refers to the Nazi movement with the legend Hauptstadt der Bewegung, or Capital of the Movement. The postmark spans the edge of the stamp, which makes the postmark date illegible, but our research shows that the stamp was used 1934–1940. Since Braun mailed the postcard in Munich, it most likely predates the commencement of World War II on September 1, 1939.
This postcard is in fine condition. There is a small bend in the upper left corner on the writing side and a bit of surface paper loss at the lower left corner of the image side. There is a bit of smudging of the postmark ink to the right of the postmark, a small smudge that could be a fingerprint above a line in the address, and some stray postmark ink spots on the image side.
The postcard comes with two other Braun items,
one of her light tan personal calling cards and an ivory envelope from her
personal stationery, both imprinted with her name in small sans serif type.
Neither has ever been used. The glue on the inside of the envelope
flap is still intact. Both the calling card and the envelope are in
extra fine condition.
We reject Nazism and all that it represented.
Yet the German Third Reich and the Holocaust that it systematically carried
out played an undeniable role in 20th
Century history. Since we believe that to decline to
offer Third Reich material, although it is offensive, would aid those who
want to sweep the Third Reich under the rug and deny that the Holocaust
occurred, we offer this material because the world must never forget what
happened, lest it happen again. As Winston Churchill said,
paraphrasing the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, those who fail to
learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Click here to
read more about these thoughts in our Blog posts of January 8 and February
26, 2010.
Unframed.
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