Eva Braun Biography

Eva Braun is best known as the wife of Hitler who also served as an official photographer for Hiter’s party. Her full name is Eva Anna Paula Hitler. She is one of the major contributors to the photographs of Hitler, which were later used as proof of Adolf Hitler’s personal life and political affairs. Since she was the wife and companion of Hitler she believed in the Nazi ideologies of Hiter and his party. She committed suicide along with Hitler after the loss of Germany in the second world war. She died merely after 40 hours of her marriage with Hitler, she committed suicide on April 30, 1945.

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Image of Eva Braun

Early Life and Family of Eva Braun

Eva Braun was born on February 6, 1912, in Munich, Germany. She was given the name of Eva Anna Paula Braun. Friedrich Braun and Franziska Kronberger were the parents of Braun. Her father Friedrich Braun, was commonly known as Fritz. He was a teacher at school in Nazi Germany, while her mother Franziska Kronberger worked as a seamstress prior to her marriage. She was commonly called Fanny by her family and friends.

Eva had two siblings, she had an elder sister named Ilse and a younger sister named Margarete. The younger sister is often mentioned as Gretel in the books written by historical biographers on Hitler and his companions. Eva Braun attended a Catholic lyceum in Munich. After completing her primary education there she attended one year at a business school in the Convent of the English Sisters in Simbach am Inn. She was considered an average student and she was known to have good athletic skills. 

Eva was brought up in a middle-class family, not much is known about her upbringing and ideologies, while there are no documents that suggested her political inclination it was rather clear and is believed by many that she was a supporter and firm believer of the ideologies of Hitler. Not much is known about her childhood.

Career as a Photographer

Hitler and Eva met while she was working for Heinrich Hoffmann, who was the official photographer for the Nazi Party (NSDAP) at that time. She was only 17 when she took up the job. She was the assistant of the official photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. She soon took up the skill of photography and was promoted as the official photographer for the National Socialist German Workers Party. Eva Braun sisters were also workers for the party, her sister Gretel also served as a secretary to the Hoffmann from 1932 onward. Gretel remained in close association with her sister, it was later discovered through some of the footage and videos created by Eva that Gretel accompanied her sister on her later trips with Hitler to the Obersalzberg.

It is important to note that Eva Braun was not an active party member and there is no record of her statement or involvement in the party politics or world war II strategy planning but needless she was one of the important members of Hitler’s inner circle. Most of the work and stills were destroyed by the order of Hitler upon the advancement of the second world war. It was only that Lutz Becker, German film historian and artist, who'd lived through the horrors of Berlin as a child during the war's final days, eventually discovered a collection of films that Braun had created. Some of her works are recreated and saved in the archives of the U.S Military by Reinhard Schulz. The photographs ranged from family and school portraiture to snapshots with friends, to Braun in blackface imitating Al Jolson.

An important thing to note is that her work, photos and videos represented the inner circle of the dictator, it also presented a contradictory image to the manifesto of Hitler, which was based on the illusion of a chaste hero; complete sacrifice of one personal life for the country. There are not enough records of her work or her ideologies or even her relationships as most of them were distorted by Hitler, the only documentation available were the fragmented pieces of her diary and some of the photos and videos that were later resurfaced.

Marriage and Family

Eva Braun is best known as Adolf Hitler wife, she was married to Hiter on April 29, 1945, in Berlin at the Führerbunker. Although the couple met early in their life they were not publicly seen very often, the only time Hitler and Eva were seen together is during the 1936 Winter Olympics. The German people were unaware of Braun's relationship with Hitler until after the war as it was important for Hitler to maintain his public image. There is no record of Eva Braun children, she did not have any children.  

The family of Eva, her mother, father and sisters survived the war and lived there till old age. Her elder sister was the only siblings who were not a member of the inner circle of Hitler, her younger sister Gretel married  SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, who served as Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's liaison officer on Hitler's staff. During the late days of the war, he tried escaping Germany and was shot dead on the order of Hitler for desertion in the garden of the Reich Chancellery on 28 April 1945. An interesting point is that none of the family was labelled as war criminals or prisoners, although they (specifically Gretel) remained in the closed circle of Hitler none of them were active politicians or was involved in politics.