Maria was born in the village of Strones in the Waldviertel region of Archduchy of Austria. She was the daughter of farmer Johannes Schicklgruber and Theresia Pfeisinger. Maria was a Catholic; what is known about her is based on church and other public records. Maria was one of eleven children, only six of whom survived infancy. Her early life was that of a poor peasant child in a rural and largely forested area, in the northwest part of Lower Austria, northwest of Vienna. In 1821, Maria's mother died when Maria was 26 years old. She received an inheritance of 74.25 gulden, which she left invested in the Orphans' Fund until 1838. By that time it had more than doubled to 165 gulden. At that time, a breeding pig cost 4 gulden, a cow 10–12 gulden and an entire inn perhaps 500 gulden. Werner Maser wrote she was a "thrifty, reserved, and exceptionally shrewd peasant woman."
In 1837, when she was 42 years old, and still unmarried, her first and only child was born. She named the boy Alois. Maser notes that she refused to reveal who the child's father was, so the priest baptized him Alois Schicklgruber and entered "illegitimate" in place of the father's name on the baptismal register. Historians have discussed three candidates for the father of Alois:
Johann Georg Hiedler, who later married Maria, and whose name was added to Alois's birth certificate later in Alois' life and who was accepted officially as the father of Alois by the Third Reich.
Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, Johann Georg's brother and Alois's step-uncle, who raised Alois through adolescence and later willed him a considerable portion of his life savings but who, if he was the real father of Alois, never found it expedient to admit it publicly.
A Jew named Leopold Frankenberger, as reported by ex-Nazi Hans Frank during the Nuremberg Trials. Historians dismiss the Frankenberger hypothesis as baseless, as there were no Jewish families in Graz at the time she became pregnant.
At the time of the birth of Alois, Maria was living with a Strones village family by the name of Trummelschlager. Mr and Mrs Trummelschlager were listed as godparents to Alois. Maria soon began residence with her father at house number 22 in Strones. After an unknown period, the three Schicklgrubers were joined by Johann Georg Hiedler, an itinerant journeyman miller. On 10 May 1842, five years after Alois was born, Maria Anna Schicklgruber married Johann Georg Hiedler in the nearby village of Döllersheim. Maria was 47 years old, her new husband was 50. Whether or not Johann Georg Hiedler was actually the biological paternal grandfather of Hitler may remain unknown as he was not recorded originally as the father on Alois's birth certificate. Illegitimacy was common in lower Austria; in some areas it reached as many as forty percent of births and as late as 1903 the rate was twenty-four percent, with the children normally legitimized at a later date. Hitler's ancestry was questioned when his opponents began spreading rumors that his paternal grandfather was Jewish, since one of Nazism's major principles was that to be considered a pure "Aryan" one had to have a documented ancestry certificate. In 1931 Hitler ordered the Schutzstaffel to investigate the alleged rumors regarding his ancestry; they found no evidence of any Jewish ancestors. Hitler then ordered a genealogist by the name of Rudolf Koppensteiner to publish a large illustrated genealogical tree showing his ancestry. This was published in the book Die Ahnentafel des Fuehrers in 1937, which concluded that Hitler's family were all Austrian Germans with no Jewish ancestry and that Hitler had an unblemished "Aryan" pedigree. As Alois himself legitimized Johann Georg Hiedler as his biological father and the priest changed the father's blank space on the birth certificate in 1876, this was considered certified proof for Hitler's ancestry, thus Hitler was considered an "Aryan".
Death and gravesite
Maria died during the sixth year of her marriage, at the age of 51 in Klein-Motten where she was living with her husband in the home of kin, the Sillip family. She died of "consumption resulting from pectoral dropsy" in 1847. She was buried in the parish church cemetery in Döllersheim. After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, a search failed to find her grave so she was given an "honour grave" next to the church wall. This grave was tended by local Hitler Youth groups whilst Döllersheim and the surrounding areas were made proving ground areas. In 1942, this area became part of an artillery training area and the local inhabitants were relocated out. Military training continued during the Soviet occupationafter the war, and also by the Austrian Army until about 1985, by which time most of the towns and villages were in ruins. The church at Döllersheim is now preserved and undergoing reconstruction. The cemetery is being tended, but there is no grave marker there now for Maria Schicklgruber.
