/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

In early 1908, after the death of his mother, 18-year-old Adolf Hitler left his provincial hometown of Linz and moved to Vienna, the glamorous capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Leaving behind his late father’s ambitions for him to become a civil servant, Hitler saw Vienna as the ideal place to pursue his own youthful dream—to become an artist.

But while Hitler’s childhood friend and new roommate, August Kubizek, was immediately accepted to a conservatory to study music, Hitler spent his first months in Vienna sleeping late, sketching and reading piles of books.