Hiedler, Huttler, Hitler

Adolf Hitler, Nazi Führer of Germany from 1933 to 1945, was never known as Adolf Schicklgrüber - despite the popular belief that he was. Hitler's father, Alois, was the illegitimate son of a servant girl called Maria Schicklgrüber. Five years after the birth of Alois, she married one Johann Georg Hiedler, but took no steps to legitimize the boy, who used his mother's name until he was nearly 40. Then his step-father’s brother, Johann Huttler, persuaded the local priest to amend the parish register to show that Hiedler acknowledged his paternity of Alois, though Huttler himself may well have been his father. From then on, Alois called himself Hitler. The variations in the spelling of the family name seem to have been due to the illeteracy that was then common in rural communities. The amendment took place 12 years before Adolf's birth. The name Schicklgrüber had long been forgotten until his political opponents tried to discredit him by revealing his father's illegitimacy.