Brigitte Hamann

Brigitte Hamann (née Deitert; 26 July 1940 – 4 October 2016) was a German-Austrian¹ author and historian based in Vienna.

Biography

Born in Essen, Germany, Hamann studied history in Münster and Vienna. She worked as a journalist in Essen for some time. In 1965, she married historian Günther Hamann (1924–1994),² moved to Vienna and obtained Austrian citizenship in addition to her German.³ The couple had three children; one of them is journalist and feminist Sibylle Hamann. Brigitte Hamann worked with her husband at the University of Vienna and in 1978 obtained a doctor's degree on the basis of a thesis on the life of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria. The thesis was published as a book the same year. She described her working method as follows: "(Coming from Germany) I had a different view of Austria, and I began to write with a certain detachment".³

The success of her first book led to further books, notably on Empress Elisabeth of Austria,² Adolf Hitler, and Winifred Wagner.

Hamann's 1996 book Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship⁴ examined how societal attitudes at the time shaped Hitler's anti-Semitic views during his time in Vienna between 1908 and 1913, and the effects of his inordinate fear of both infection and women. Following the publication of The Hidden Hitler by historian and professor , Hamann investigated claims about and appears in the 2004 documentary film, , by American documentarians and .