»I Never Loved Eva Braun«

A Belated Icon of National Socialism and its Politics of History

Abstract

This article discusses a discursive phenomenon: the prominent, arbitrary use of the name and biography of Eva Braun, Adolf Hitler’s wife of his last hours before their joint suicide, as a cipher for privileged insight into the private life of the National Socialist elite. Unknown to the German public before 1945, Braun has attracted considerable attention since – as voyeuristic interest of the post-war (boulevard) press as well as as decontextualized icon of today’s popular and high cultures. In this article, Johanna Gehmacher analyzes the differences and interrelations between the seemingly contradictory use of Eva Braun as icon and cipher in public discourse, arguing that we must approach historical figures in their specific contexts if we are to understand their political functions.