In 1910, a young twenty-one year old named Adolf Hitler wandered through the wild and romantic Šumava countryside around Modrava with his sketchbook and painting supplies. The later Nazi leader and mass murderer, who sparked the war’s greatest conflict, reached Kvilda by night, where he stayed at the local Beim Strobl inn – U Stroblů. In the morning he signed the guest book and left. After that, no one remembered the foreign youth.
In the 1930s, another man – a Jewish business traveler from Příbram – was passing through Kvilda’s Šumava neighborhood. He visits a mountain village to get a job for his boss. Towards evening he went to stay at one of the local inns – again in Strobls. To pass the time, the visitor curiously flips through the guest book, until suddenly his eye falls on one of the many faded autographs – Adolf Hitler!
Therefore, the Jewish merchant rushed to the innkeeper to share his discoveries with him. Of course, he didn’t keep the news to himself either, so an emissary was urgently sent from Kvilda to the German leader. He confirms the signature. And because the admiration of the large number of Czech Germans living in Šumava for Hitler was not limited to the 1930s, after the memorial was opened, things started to move.
The innkeeper had the text with the leader’s signature framed, hung it in the most prominent place of his establishment, and has since been venerated there as a relic by local Germans. And the forester Robert Steun, who is not German and doesn’t even live in Kvilda, knows about him, but he often lives there. He knew the villagers very well since the twenties, when he served as a forest assistant at Zdíkov’s former estate in the districts of Pláná, Kvilda and Bučina. At that time, he patiently listened to the stories and rumors of local people that he recorded.
While processing this text, we drew with permission from the publication of 100 interesting things from the old Šumava III., published by Pilsen publishing house Old bridge.
Understandably, Hitler’s signature remained on the wall of the Kvilda Inn until the end of World War II. It is said that during liberation, an American army officer came there and took it as a souvenir. During the post-war relocation, all framed autograph witnesses also disappeared from Kvilda.
In 1949, Robert Steun moved with his family from the border areas of West Bohemia as the first Czech settlers to the nearby settlement of Zlatá Studna (Goldbrunn). And he continues to willingly tell his listeners what he himself heard in the past from local witnesses. At the same time, Rudolf Kalčík, a graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague, was doing basic military service with the local Border Guard. The soldier soon befriended an eyewitness who told him interesting stories about old Šumava.
Rudolf Kalčík later became the bestselling author of The King of Šumava. In the 1950s, he contributed to a number of magazines, where he also wrote what he learned from the aged Robert Steun. So he decided to publish the article “Hitler on Kvilda” in Květy magazine in 1958. Coincidentally, fifty-three year old Robert Steun had died the year before. This is how the public learned for the first time about the unusual visit to Kvilda, originally meant to be forgotten. The former inn of U Stroblů in addition, Rudolf Kalčík fell in love with Kvilda and it is no coincidence that today it is called Chata U Krále Šumava. And today we can only speculate whether the story is true or fiction.
Adolf Hitler’s head silhouetted by an eagle with outstretched wings facing downwards from a three-part ceramic relief, located right next to the entrance of the Česká spořitelna building on the main square in Sušice since 1936. On the existence of the odd depiction of Hitler…
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