Causes and Effects: Identity and Movement

One of the main ideas we as humans - especially Americans - struggle with is identity. Who am I? Am I really the person I say I am? Do I see myself as everybody sees me? The list goes on...Who we are is very much determined by where we come from - and where we are going. What one does with his or her life is based mainly upon identity: what one enjoys doing, the living conditions in which one is willing to live, how one interacts with others, and more. How one’s personality is shaped has a lot to do with the way one is raised; if a person is taught to have morals, then more than likely, those morals will stay with him or her for the rest of his or her life and if a person is taught by his or her parents that breaking the law is okay, then more than likely that person will end up in jail. Where one comes from has an immeasurable amount of influence in determining where one is going and what kind of person someone turns out to be. One particular example of this concept of the interaction between identity (who one is) and movement (who one is becoming) is a very famous, or rather, infamous, man who migrated from his home country in Austria to change the course of history for the entire world: Adolf Hitler. From the way he was raised with a controlling father and loving mother to eventually migrating to Germany, people and places around Hitler influenced greatly who he was and came to be.

Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Braunau, Austria to a domineering father and a mother to which he was devoted (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Right off the bat, Hitler was taught to obey orders from a male superior despite his own wishes and this shaped much of his personality. His interest in art was part of a way of expressing himself outside of his father’s influence and therefore was something upon which Hitler greatly relied besides his loving and supportive mother. At this point in time, Hitler’s “self” can be described as having a rather obedient manner towards authority on the outside and a part of him that wanted to break away from this authority which was kept hidden in away and manifested through art. All artists use their skills to express themselves; this is part of what makes one an artist and while Hitler is known mostly for his unthinkable crimes against humanity in general, one cannot forget that “artist” is part of this genocidal dictator’s identity. Many people have wondered what would have happened had Hitler made it into that Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria where he moved after the death of his beloved mother. However, I’m jumping ahead of myself.

According to the “Encyclopedia of World Biography,” Hitler became rebellious after his father’s death in 1903. At this point in time, just to put some perspective around where he was in his life, Hitler is fourteen years old, a confusing and often tumultuous time in anyone’s life without any external events “upping the anti,” so to speak. With the domineering presence of his father in Hitler’s life gone, however, the young adolescent is able to outwardly express his aversion to authority and his already mediocre grades drop. Now, Hitler is seen as a rebellious teenager headed towards failure with no male influence in his life and a widowed mother, but he clings on to his identity as an artist. Hitler found comfort in his art as all artists do; it is an escape from this world and allows him to see and create everything as he wants it to be. Two years later, at the age of sixteen, the young artist leaves formal education forever, tired of listening to what someone else wants him to do (Encyclopedia of World Biography). The only person he wanted to listen to dies two years after that, leaving the now “adult” orphaned, uneducated, and out of a monthly income of money. One of these problems is solved by spending the next five years as a “starving artist,”(and a second-rate one, too, according to Russian artist Irina Valdrom) living from one sale to another in a state of depression, unable to fulfill his dream of becoming a famous artist (Hitler the painter - don’t give up the day-job!). At this point in time, living alone in the city which denied him his dream, “Hitler already show[s] traits that characterized his later life: loneliness and secretiveness, a bohemian mode of everyday existence, and hatred of cosmopolitanism and of the multinational character of Vienna” (Biography.com).

The character traits that come from living a harsh life - loneliness, distrust (which can lead to a hatred of people in general, or a particular group of people), hatred of the different, hopelessness, and rebelliousness - are all something another group of people to which Hitler can be categorized: immigrants. Now, this is not to say that all immigrants are evil, sadistic, genocidal dictators in the making, but these traits are something that all immigrants must deal with on some level or another simply because coming to a new place is frightening, which can cause people to lash out. One also does not typically move to a country unless he or she is simply unable to bear the living conditions of a homeland or there is promise in a new world. Much like the immigrants who leave their homes for the promise of work with good pay and end up barely living off of picking strawberries in the fields in California or those who, like Enrique in Nazario’s book, are depressed in their home country and need an escape, Hitler left Austria to become an immigrant in Munich, Germany. There, in a new country, Hitler’s identity is an immigrant and nothing else; he is able to be where no one knows him or really cares what he does; freedom is achieved, but the loneliness is still there.

To become a part of something, the now-twenty-four-year-old volunteers for the German army at the beginning of WWI, where he is finally able to be considered in a group. Hitler’s leadership began to shine as he found identity within the ranks of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, always in the front lines and leading his comrades with his fighting spirit. This location - this place as a soldier in Germany - is where Hitler finally feels that he belongs, free from the “frustration and aimlessness of civilian life,” finding “discipline and comradeship satisfying,” and being “confirmed in his beliefs in the heroic virtues of war” (Biography.com). With his place in life finally accepted and acknowledged by others, who can really blame Hitler for joining up with his now-unemployed comrades at the end of the war in Munich, where resentment and betrayal festered in the hearts of every discharged serviceman present? It is here that Hitler finds his location - his identity - as a respected spokesman and leader and where his beginnings as a dictator set on homeland pride (for Germany is, of course, a home to him now as his own place of birth deemed him “unfit” for service years before), and the glories of war. Hitler’s identity in Munich is a seasoned (for now he is around thirty years old) brave, patriotic, common-man-type, eloquent, fiery soldier and leader and this shapes the future of both Hitler and the world as the young dictator rises to power among his comrades within this churning country of ruin and frustration.

Throughout his life in Austria, Adolf Hitler was given a label from those around him of a failure, second-rate, and worthless; in Germany, as a nameless immigrant, he finds an identity of heroic, successful, and patriotic. Without his move to Munich, Hitler might have never become the man we identify him as today: a manipulative (albeit eloquent), genocidal, psychotic leader and dictator, showing that movement really does affect one’s identity whether one intends it or not.

Works Cited:

"Adolf Hitler." 2009. Biography.com. 3 Dec 2009. http://www.biography.com/articles/Adolf-Hitler-9340144.

“Adolf Hitler.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 3 December 2009. http://www.notablebiographies.com/He-Ho/Hitler-Adolf.html

“Hitler the painter - don’t give up the day-job!” TV-Novisti 3 December 2009. http://rt.com/Art_and_Fun/2008-04-29/Hitler_the_painter_-_dont_give_up_the_day-job.html