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EVERYWHERE I lecture on Rizal, one question never fail to arise in the open forum—"Is it true that Adolf Hitler is the son of Rizal?

This is absolutely absurd, but since some fairly educated people actually want to believe it, I write this column.The argument is that Rizal had a German connection, he studied in Heildelberg, and being the Pinoy Don Juan he probably sired a son (why not a Daughter?) who later turned out to Adolf Hitler. Hitler was born 1889, and Rizal left Germany in 1887. Unless Hitler was a delayed baby, that is highly improbable.

Although there is no resemblance between the two, it is argued that unlike the tall, blond and blue-eyed Germans, Hitler wanted to propagate into the "master race,’ Hitler himself was small of stature had dark hair and dark eyes. I would counter this argument by explaining that, contrary to popular belief, Hitler was Austrian not a German.

But then Rizal visited in Austria in May 1887 and according to Rizal’s traveling companion, Max Viola, he did spend a night with an unknown Austrian woman. Viola remembers that they were billeted in the Hotel Metropole, Vienna and Rizal "…encountered the figure of a temptress in the form of Viennese woman, of the family of the Camelliasor Margarite of extraordinary beauty and irresistible attraction, who seemingly had been expressly invited to offer for a moment the cup of mundane pleasure to the apostle of the Philippine freedom who until the had enjoyed among his intimates the fame worthy of his glorious namesake, St. Joseph. With the exception of this case I knew of no other slip of Rizal during more than six months of our living together."

Amazing, what yarns can be pulled off a one-night stand with a Viennese prostitute.

Here is the craziest thing I’ve heard (and I’ve heard it more than once, at parties): Adolf Hitler was really the illegitimate son of Jose Rizal. Here is the second craziest thing I’ve heard: Mao Zedong was actually Rizal’s illegitimate son. Two variations, I suppose, on the idea that "Yes, the Filipino Can!"

Sadly, I found the two theories so funny that I never thought of asking the people who told them to me to explain on what grounds they based their claim about Der Fuehrer and the Great Helmsman. A dentistry student friend from UE has also heard these fanciful theories, but it also did not occur to him to ask on what evidence these fanciful claims were based. So I did a little research to find out how people could make up such a story.

The claim that Adolf Hitler was Rizal’s progeny must be based on the following facts:

• Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 (that means he could have been conceived sometime in August 1888), in the little village of Braunau, near the German- Austrian border.
• He was born an Austrian and remained one until the 1930s.
• The name of Hitler mother was Klara Polz.
• At one time she was a maid in Vienna.
• Hitler always considers a town Linz, in Austria, as his hometown (in his Political Testament he referred to " my hometown of Linz on the Danube").
• Hitler's oldest brother, Gustav born on May 17, 1885, and his sister Ida, born in 1886, both died before he was born.
• Bavaria was considered the "cradle" of Nazism.
• The Nazis made Japan one of the Axis powers. At one point they tried to prove that the Japanese were Aryans, to make the Japanese members of the "master race."

Now combine the above information with the following, culled from the life of Rizal:

• On February 1, 1886, he left Paris for Germany. He went to Heidelberg, Wilhelmsfeld, Munich (in Bavaria), all somewhat near a German–Austrian border; on August 9, 1886 he left for Leipzig ("visiting various German cities along the way," one book says), arriving there on August 14. In October he went to Dresden and then to Berlin.
• In Berlin he finished Noli Me Tangere. One of the book’s characters is named Maria Clara.
• On May 11, 1887, Rizal began his Grand Tour of Europe. He went to Dresden, Teschen (now Decin in the former Czechoslovakia), Prague, and then Brunn (where he lost a diamond stickpin), and Vienna (where he got back his diamond stickpin, which was found by maid in the hotel he stayed in Brunn) in Austria.
• On May 24, 1887, he left Vienna by riverboat to see sights on the Danube River (on the boat he saw paper napkins for the first time). His voyage ended at Linz.
• From Linz he went to Munich (where Hitler attempted a putsch in 1923) and Nuremberg (site of the Nazi Party rallies and the War Crimes trials), and other German cities.
• Rizal was in the German Empire, sometimes past the German-Austrian border, from February 1886 until he went to Switzerland in early June 1887.
• Rizal was again in Europe from May 24, 1888, until October 18, 1891. He was in London, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Biarritz, Ghent. He was in Europe during the time Hitler was conceived and when he was born.
• Rizal in 1888 had an affair with a Japanese woman, Seiko Usui, when he visited Japan. She had an only daughter, Yuriko, by a foreign husband some years after her encounter with Rizal. Yuriko later married the son of a Japanese politician.

Put all these information together and you may be able to conclude the following: Hitler was conceived either in 1887 when Rizal passed through Linz or other towns (such as Brunn - How do you think he lost the diamond stickpin? And who was the "maid" who found it later and gave it to Blumentritt who forwarded it to Vienna?) near the Austrian border. In which case Hitler’s older siblings were fictitious, to cover up his mother’s being pregnant with him. In other words, Hitler was actually born before 1889.

Or he was conceived in August 1888, when Rizal was supposedly in London. Or perhaps in September 1888, when Rizal went to Paris for a week (to have a rendezvous with Klara?). Maybe he went to Paris in 1889 so he could communicate more easily with the now-expecting Klara? Klara Polzl’s affair with Rizal may have centered around Linz, which is why the Hitler family moved there later (so Mama Hitler could live where she had An affair to Remember), which would explain Hitler’s fondness for the town.

Finally, Seiko Usui’s only daughter was not really fathered by her husband, Alfred Charlton. He was simply a front. Yuriko, you see, was Rizal’s daughter! And Hitler knew she was his half-sister. She used her influence on her brother Adolf to persuade him to enter into an alliance with Japan (making it one of the Axis powers). Which is why Japan invaded the Philippines!

Yuriko made it clear to Hirohito that Hitler would appreciate it if his ally were to take over his father’s homeland. And of course the reason why Hitler wanted to become dictator of Germany was because his natural father had spent some of the most interesting years of his life there!

That, I think, is the rationale behind such a fantastic claim based on information that can be gathered from any high school textbook on Rizal and any good biography of Adolf Hitler. Naturally, this can only be done through selective use of the evidence, but it does make for an amusing piece of historical fiction.

Now, as to the idea that Mao Zedong was also Rizal’s son. Unfortunately this claim cannot be supported by even the most spurious evidence. Mao Zedong was born in 1893, in Hunan Province, which you could say is kind of near Hong Kong. But at that time (1893), Rizal was in exile in Dapitan. Now it would have been possible for Rizal to scamper around Europe and get Klara pregnant without anybody noticing, but he couldn’t possibly have jumped into a boat and rowed to Hongkong without being caught. He did pass through Hong Kong in 1888 and 1891 but he never seems to have visited other parts of China (unless you count Xiamen and Macao). So there are no details that can be manipulated.

These exercises in foolishness prove how creative Filipinos can be. What other people would be able to make the bogus claim that one of their heroes fathered the man who almost turned Europe into a "howling wilderness" (to borrow from the instructions for the extermination of Samar by American forces at the turn of the century). That would have been poetic justice, I suppose. The brown man strikes back and all that sort of thing.