Eva Braun

Independent activity 1912–1945 ✕ Suicide

Photographer who was Hitler's hidden companion and, for their last day, his wife

When Henriette von Schirach suggested she should go into hiding after the war, she replied: "Do you think I would let him die alone? I will stay with him up until the last moment."

Born in Munich to a schoolteacher's family, at 17 she went to work in the studio of Heinrich Hoffmann, the Nazi Party's photographer, where she met Hitler in 1929. She became his lover around 1932 and from 1936 was part of his household at the Berghof, but Hitler kept the relationship from the public, and most Germans learned of it only after their deaths. She was not a member of the Nazi Party and had little political influence; her photographs and 16mm colour films of Hitler's inner circle survive as a record of its private life. Her sister Gretl's marriage to Hermann Fegelein in 1944 let her appear at official functions. She came to Berlin in March 1945, stayed in the Führerbunker despite her family's pleas, married Hitler on 29 April and the next day killed herself with cyanide as he shot himself.

Also known as: Eva Hitler · Eva Anna Paula Braun