Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler is a largely offstage but decisive presence in the novel: an object of admiration in elite company and the voice of a political transformation that turns Viktor Landauer’s Jewish identity from a fact of family life into a threat imposed by the state. The contrast between casual name-dropping and the consequences of Nazi rule gives Hitler’s appearances their force: first a celebrated acquaintance, then the distant authority whose expanding power makes home feel unsafe.

Public Figure and Private Acquaintance

At a dinner around the circular table in the Landauer House, Fritz Mandl presents Hitler as one of the powerful men he knows personally. Mandl groups him with Benito Mussolini, Joseph Goebbels, and Hermann Göring, and says that the Führer and his circle took a fancy to his wife, Eva Mandl. This account places Hitler within a network of political and industrial influence, filtered through Mandl’s boastful ease rather than through direct access to Hitler himself.

Mandl also describes Hitler as a family man who loves babies and dogs. The remark gives Hitler a disquietingly ordinary public image, set against the growing danger his politics represent. Eva’s response complicates the convivial account: she says she likes Magda Goebbels, but her smile seems to hold tears rather than laughter, and she looks toward Hana as her voice trails away. At the table, where guests cannot be hidden from one another, admiration and unease occupy the same social space.

The Voice Announcing Anschluss

After German troops enter Austria, rumors of resistance, deaths, and street fighting circulate alongside official denials. The following morning, the Landauers hear Austrian radio from the Glass Room. Through the crowd’s roar at Vienna’s Heldenplatz, drums, and bands, Hitler’s crackling voice announces Anschluss. Austria ceases to be an independent republic and becomes an eastern province of the German Reich, its name recast from Österreich to Ostmark.

The scene makes political conquest audible inside the calm of the family home. Hitler does not appear in person; his voice crosses the distance between Vienna and the Glass Room, carrying news that renders the borders around the Landauers newly uncertain. Viktor wonders where Kata is, then paces with a copy of Lidové Noviny and insists that the annexation is illegal, invoking the treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain. His appeal to agreements that now seem remote and powerless registers the collapse of confidence in legal protection.

Persecution and Viktor’s Recognition

Liesel initially distinguishes the danger in Germany from their own situation. Viktor rejects that reassurance. He says that he is a Jew and that their children, Ottilie and Martin, are Jews—or, in the regime’s language, people of mixed ancestry. The classification is not a matter of personal choice: the authorities decide what they are and what rights they may retain.

Viktor names the restrictions already imposed on Jews in Germany: exclusion from professional work and business ownership, additional taxes, prohibitions on marriage with non-Jews, limits on visiting non-Jewish homes, and arrest or imprisonment on almost any pretext. He fears that such measures could reach Austria and asks what might follow, including compulsory divorce in mixed marriages, exclusion of Jewish children from schools, and expulsion from their homes. Hitler’s rule is therefore present not only in the radio announcement but in the sequence of possible losses Viktor can already foresee.

Home Under Threat

Viktor locates the danger close to the Landauers. The Nazis, he tells Liesel, are only fifty kilometres away, while the border territories between them are already German. As he looks through the great windows, the children continue playing, the city remains in place, and smoke hangs in the air; outwardly, nothing has changed, yet everything has. Hitler’s significance in the novel lies in that reversal: the stable home and ordinary surroundings persist even as the political order that makes them feel secure is disappearing.