La Cieca has just about given up on the New York Times so far as accuracy goes, but it still rankles when a thoroughly disproven urban legend is casually quoted as factual truth. In a review of a novel called Winnie and Wolf, critic Patrick McGrath repeats the canard that Winifred Wagner supplied the paper upon which Hitler wrote Mein Kampf.  This tale is approximately as apocryphal as the “bouncing Tosca” myth and even less entertaining.

UPDATE: A member of the cher public writes this morning that the “canard” is not so cut-and-dried as La Cieca insisted:

As far as I can tell, the story is absolutely true! Winifred herself later testified that she sent Hitler a quantity of paper around Christmas 1923, although she denied that she was in any way responsible for what Hitler wrote on it. In the Syberberg film she says: “Na ja, und ich hatte gefragt, was er [Hitler] brauchte, und da hat er gesagt, ja, Schreibpapier wäre ihm so wichtig, und da hab ich ihm massenhaft Schreibpapier.” Brigitte Hamamm, in her excellent biography of Winifred, has no problem with the tale, which is backed up by a couple of other witnesses. Friedelind Wagner writes in her memoir: “At the stationer’s on Bayreuth’s main street [Mother] bought quantities of paper: typewriting paper, carbon paper, pencils, pens, ink, erasers. We helped her tie them up and they look as gay as a collection of Christmas packages. We didn’t know that Hitler had literary aspirations but it was on her paper that he wrote the first volume of Mein Kampf.”

Latest on Parterre

Comments