Adolf Hitler was rejected by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna because his test drawing was judged unsatisfactory. The entry on his file reads: "Test drawing unsatisfactory. Few heads." He sat the exam in October 1907, at eighteen, and was refused again in 1908.
Of the 113 candidates that autumn, only 28 passed. The Academy trained painters to draw the human figure, and a sheet with few people on it gave the examiners little to judge.
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On the first days of October 1907, Hitler spent two sessions of three hours inside the Academy, drawing on themes the examiners had set. He was eighteen. He had come to Vienna in early September with a thick pile of drawings, and that pile had already carried him past the first cut.
Then his result went into the Academy's list. "Few heads" is the whole complaint. The line says nothing about whether Hitler could draw. It says his sheets held too few people.
He wanted to know why, so he asked to see the Rector of the Academy. The Rector did not simply turn him away. He sent him off with a suggestion, and Hitler, after some thought, took it as sound. Then he did nothing about it.
What were the examiners looking for?
People. The test Hitler sat in the first days of October 1907 was for the Academy's painting school, and it asked for drawings on set themes in two sessions of three hours each. The examiners wanted to see whether a candidate could put the human figure on paper.
He had already cleared one hurdle. Of the 113 candidates, 33 were turned away after the examiners looked at the drawings they had brought. Hitler had come to Vienna in early September with what he later called a thick pile of them, and he was not among the 33.
The two tests did the rest. Only 28 of the 80 who sat them passed. Hitler's result went into the Academy's list with a single line: Test drawing unsatisfactory. Few heads.
Failing was common. Fifty-two of the 80 who sat the tests did. Werner Maser, working from information the Academy gave him, recorded that a future rector of the Academy was one of them.
Who judged the drawings is less clear. The historian Brigitte Hamann, author of Hitler's Vienna, concluded that the decision fell largely to Christian Griepenkerl, professor of history painting.
Griepenkerl taught in the strict tradition of academic art. In Hitler's own account, the Rector was blunter still.
What You'll Discover
The door the Rector pointed to.
Who he kept the rejection from.
What happened the second time.
What he painted to survive.