Geli Raubal - Death

Death

Raubal was in effect a prisoner, but planned to escape to Vienna to continue her singing lessons. Her mother told interrogators after the war that her daughter was hoping to marry a man from Linz, but that Hitler had forbidden the relationship. He and Raubal argued on 18 September 1931—he refused to allow her to go to Vienna. He departed for a meeting in Nuremberg, but was recalled to Munich the next day: Raubal was dead from a gunshot wound to the lung; she had shot herself in the Munich apartment with Hitler's pistol. She was 23.

Rumours immediately began in the media about physical abuse, a possible sexual relationship, and even murder. Historian Ian Kershaw contends that stories circulated at the time as to alleged "sexual deviant practices ought to be viewed as ... anti-Hitler propaganda". The police ruled out foul play; the death was ruled a suicide. Hitler was devastated and went into an intense depression. He took refuge at 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 afterward declared that Raubal was the only woman he had ever loved. Her room at the Berghoff was kept as she had left it, and he hung portraits of her at his own room there and at the Chancellery in Berlin.