August Kubizek - Later Life, Imprisonment and Memoirs

Later Life, Imprisonment and Memoirs

In December 1945, Kubizek gathered the collection of postcards and other keepsakes given to him by Hitler during their youth and concealed them carefully in the basement of his house in Eferding. He was arrested shortly afterwards and held at Glasenbach, where he was imprisoned and interrogated by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command for 16 months. His home was searched, but the Hitler correspondence and drawings were not found. He was released on 8 April 1947.

In 1951, Kubizek, who had rejected other post-war offers for his memoirs, agreed to publish "Adolf Hitler, mein Jugendfreund" ("Adolf Hitler, My Childhood Friend") through the Leopold Stocker Verlag. The original manuscript was 293 pages long and included several pictures, many of which showed postcards and sketches given to the author by the young Hitler between the years 1906 and 1908. The book is divided into three parts and consists of a prologue, 24 chapters and an epilogue.

It caused a stir when it was released in 1953 and was later translated into several languages. In the epilogue Kubizek wrote, "Even though I, a fundamentally unpolitical individual, had always kept aloof from the political events of the period which ended forever in 1945, nevertheless no power on earth could compel me to deny my friendship with Adolf Hitler."

Kubizek's second wife and widow Pauline (1906–2001) was credited with having provided the Stocker Verlag with additional photographs for the book's fourth edition in 1975.

On 8 January 1956 Kubizek was named the first honorary member of the Musikverein in Eferding. He died on 23 October 1956, aged 68, in Linz and is buried in Eferding, Upper Austria.