Adolf
and Alois left Vienna for Britain around 1908
With unlimited
funding from the Bank of England, Chamberlain was able to totally
infiltrate Viennese society and everybody of prominence
made his acquaintance. The Wagner clubs were a magnet for recruiting
spies, and Hitler later based his Hitler Youth on these clubs,
with all the theatrics and marching to Wagner's music:
Over
the next years he became the leading figure of the society and
exercised a strong influence over its program and evolution.
Hard at work by that time on two books and numerous essays publicizing
Bayreuth, he was in demand as a lecturer and began to try out
his ideas on a variety of audiences, journeying, for example,
to Graz to address the society dominated by Friedrich von Hausegger
and Friedrich Hofmann, two fanatical anti-Semites and nationalists
who had completely disrupted the sedate Musikverein fur
Steiermark some years before with their political activism.
Outside the Wagner clubs he lectured to German audiences at
the Deutscher Jugendbund, the student fraternity Germania,
and the philosophical faculty of Vienna University. Fifty years
later one listener still recalled how this tall, blond man sent
"a powerful wave of excitement flooding through the hall"
and Chamberlain himself was surprised by his effectiveness as
speaker and his ability to master his nervousness."
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