‘Priest saved 4-yr-old Hitler from drowning’

[rug]

PTI | Jan 7, 2012, 04.28AM IST

LONDON: A four-year-old boy saved by a priest from drowning in the icy waters of the River Inn in Germany in 1894 could have been Adolf Hitler, say historians.

According to a newspaper report, which has surfaced in a German archive, the child was plucked from the river in Passau in January 1894. It quoted Max Tremmel that his predecessor Johann Kuehberger had rescued "the terrified Hitler".

In fact, Father Tremmel said before his death in 1980 how Father Kuehberger , almost the same age as Hitler , had seen the other boy struggling in the river and dived in to rescue him. The story was never verified by the Nazi dictator during his lifetime.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Priest-saved-4-yr-old-Hitler-from-drowning/articleshow/11395844.cms

Well, there you go.

[Scuba]

1. No good deed goes unpunished. n/t

[laconicsax]

2. I'm torn on this...

Do I make a snarky comment blaming the holocaust on the Church, or do I adulate the priest for saving a 4-year-old from drowning?

[LARED]

3. Go with snark.

It's expected.

[rug]

4. You could speculate on why he saved him.

I'm glad we're bigger than that.

[laconicsax]

6. Is there really that much to speculate?

[ZombieHorde]

5. This is why we should outlaw saving children. nt

Last edited Fri Jan 6, 2012, 10:18 PM - Edit history (1)

.

[struggle4progress]

7. It seems rather thin gruel: Indian newspapers in 2012 quoting anonymous historians as saying that

a January 1894 press report, of an unnamed 4 year old saved by another unnamed person from drowning in Passau, could refer to Schicklgruber's child

The support is apparently that Max Tremmel (1902-1980) allegedly said "his predecessor" Johann Kuehberger(?) told him he rescued the child. Now Tremmel's death predates even Anna Elisabeth Rosmus's (b. 1960) first book on Passau -- Widerstand und Verfolgung am Beispiel Passaus 1933–1939 (1983) -- and her later book (Out of Passau) which allegedly contains this story was not published until 1999

Max Tremmel received his ordination in 1927. He remained his entire career in Passau ... until his retirement in 1975
http://regiowiki.pnp.de/index.php/Max_Tremmel

<dates at which Johann Kühberger and Max Tremmel were organists at the Cathedral of St. Stephan in Passau>
1918–1927: Johann Kühberger (* 1889 in Passau, † 1957 in Passau)
1946–1952: Max Tremmel (* 1902 in Passau, † 1980 in Passau)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgeln_des_Domes_St._Stephan_%28Passau%29

I presume "Kuehberger" is actually "Kühberger." If the current speculative version is true, it would mean that Johann Kühberger at age 5 heroically rescued another child (aged 4) from drowning an icy river.

So the first print account of the current speculative version dates to a century after the news story, was written by a woman born about 65 years after the event, and seems to rely on the testimony of a man (born nearly a decade after the event and dead nearly two decades before the publication of the current speculative version) about what another man (d. 1957) told him about events in his own childhood. Note also that the original witness was dead before first-author-in-print Rosmus was even born

To reconcile the current speculative version with the 1894 newspaper account further requires that Anna Schicklgruber be living in Johann Kühberger's father's house in 1894

[rug]

8. It's extremely thin but it's a great headline.

[Igel]

9. It's thin, but the headline's still misleading.

At best, it's "Man who later became priest saved Hitler when both were children".