Artist Hitler Failed the Art Exam and The Rise Of Adolf Hitler


Hitler had developed a big interest in architecture. He could draw detailed pictures from memory of a building he had seen only once. He also liked to ponder how to improve existing buildings, making them grander, and streamlined city layouts. In Vienna, he stood for hours gazing at grand buildings such as the opera house and the Parliament building, and looking at Ring Boulevard.

As a young boy he had shown natural talent for drawing. His gift for drawing had also been recognized by his high school instructors. But things had gone poorly for him in high school. He was a lazy and uncooperative student, who essentially flunked out. To escape the reality of that failure and avoid the dreaded reality of a workaday existence, Hitler put all his hope in the dream of achieving greatness as an artist.


He decided to attend the prestigious Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. In October 1907, at age eighteen, he withdrew his inheritance money from the bank and went to live and study in Vienna. Hitler's mother was by now suffering from breast cancer and had been unsuccessfully operated on in January. But Hitler's driving ambition to be a great artist overcame his reluctance to leave her.


He took the two day entrance exam for the academy's school of painting. Confident and self assured, he awaited the result, quite sure he would get in. But failure struck him like a bolt of lightning. His test drawings were judged unsatisfactory and he was not admitted. Hitler was badly shaken by this rejection. He went back to the academy to get an explanation and was told his drawings showed a lack of talent for artistic painting, notably a lack of appreciation of the human form. He was told, however, that he had some ability for the field of architecture.


But without the required high school diploma, going to the building school and after that, the academy's architectural school, seemed doubtful. Hitler resolved to take the painting school entrance exam again next year. Now, feeling quite depressed, Hitler left Vienna and returned home where his beloved mother was now dying from cancer, making matters even worse.

                                                                                EXAMPLES OF  HITLER'S PAINTINGS

1.This 1914 painting is titled: “The Courtyard of the Old Residency in Munich.”


2.This painting, also from 1914, is titled “Ruins of a Cloister in Messines.”


3.This one is titled “Shelter in Fournes.”


4.The title of this undated painting: “House with a White Fence.”


5.This painting from 1917 is titled “Ardoye in Flanders.”