Adolf was good in school but also unmanageable as he had troublesome friends (the skreets). His father worked at the post and wanted him to be a goverment official in his footsteps. Adolf first resisted the idea of being a government official at 12. He later presented his idea of pursuing painting as a career to his father which his father rejected. Adolf showed his resistance by only studying and achieving score only in subjects he was inetrested in or would help him later as a painter. His favourite subjects were Geography and General history.
He loved history because of his History professor Doctor Leopold Poetsch. In high school they were dosed with politics and nationalism where they, the German Austrians, would resist teachings by non Germans that were like propaganda and would sing German anthem instead of Austrian anthem even if they were penalised. Adolf became a young revolutionary due to his history teacher whom ‘transported them to the past’.
Vienna was becoming more aligned with Czechs and it was becoming a non German city where the Germans were seen as foreign.
At 13, his father died. And his mother held his father’s opinion on what adolf has to pursue as a career. And adolf still rejected the idea. 2 years later, his mother died from a long sickness.
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"On the morning of Saturday, January 3, 1903, Alois Hitler, 65, went out for a walk, stopping at a favorite inn where he sat down and asked for a glass of wine. He collapsed before the wine was brought to him and died within minutes from a lung hemorrhage. It was not the first one he had suffered.
Young Adolf, now 13, broke down and cried when he saw his father's body laid out."
Adolf suffered from lung problems, which he used as an excuse to avoid a career in civil service — a job that often required physical robustness and long working hours in rigid environments.
In 1907, before his mother’s death. He applied to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, hoping to study painting. He passed the initial exam but was rejected in the second round because his drawings lacked human figures and were judged insufficient for an art career. They told him his paintings were not suitable for painting but for architectural designs. The path to becoming an architect wasnt easy because he neglected certain subjects in highschool. Joining the technical building school was also a prerequisite which required a highschool certificate that he didnt have.
He returned to Linz briefly after the rejection and then went back to Vienna in 1908, this time permanently, after his mother had died.
He reapplied to the art academy in 1908 and was rejected again. He earned a small income by painting postcards and watercolors of Vienna buildings.
This period also shaped many of his early political ideas, including his growing antisemitism and anti-Marxist views.
“The five years I spent in this town [Vienna] taught me the essential principles which I have made the guiding principles of my life.”
His friends when he was living with his family were also from the bourgeois class so he had no clue of social struggles or manual labor. Circumstances now put him down to a lower class as a laborer. And in vienna, one of the most backward cities in Europe, the homeless lived in canals and there was no better German city to study social problems.
Adolf was willing to do any job to afford bread without choosing any skill but as a laborer just like the immigrants and some kind of work was always available. But it could easily be lost as well.
A man in vienna who comes from the rural areas would get an easy job which he would then lose in the winter, he becomes hungry and cold. And he sells his stuff and look like the homeless. He then gets a job and loses it again till he becomes indifferent to insecurity. This makes him careless and join strikes without worrying about his job and whether he cares about the strike or not.