Origin
Eva Braun was born in Munich in 1912, the daughter of a school teacher. She received education in a lyceum, and attended a single year of business school in a convent. After this she obtained brief employment in a medical office before taking work in the photography studio of Heinrich Hoffman, where she worked in both an administrative and modeling capacity. It was here that the 17-year-old Braun met 40-year-old Adolf Hitler.
Character Evolution
Two years later, in 1931, the pair began a more serious relationship after the suicide of Hitler's niece and alleged lover, Geli Raubal. The following year, Braun made her first suicide attempt, shooting herself in the chest. She recovered, but attempted suicide again in 1935, this time from an overdose of sleeping pills. After this second suicide attempt Hitler grew more attentive towards her, arranging for her to receive royalties from some pictures of himself that paid for a house in Munich, as well as a car, a chauffeur, and a maid. The following year she was a regular fixture at Hitler's residence near Berchtesgaden whenever he was there, and two years later she was made his primary heir.
Braun apparently held no political sway over Hitler, nor, by any accounts, did she attempt to. She does not appear to have been a member of the Nazi Party, though, while she was not allowed to be present in the same room as political discussions, she may have known something of the operations of the party. None of the general German public was aware of the relationship between Braun and Hitler. They never appeared in public together and did not marry, allegedly because Hitler feared losing the support of the general female population if he became a married man. They also had separate rooms in the Berghof. Nonetheless they were apparently very close, and Eva was able to lead a life of leisure and luxury even as Germany struggled through an increasingly difficult and costly war. Often she spent time during the war years watching foreign films, which was forbidden for most other Germans, reading romance novels, watching television, exercising and playing with her pet dogs, among other pursuits.
In April of 1945 she moved from Munich to the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin. As the Russian Red Army began to close on the city, Eva was among the few who refused to flee the bunker, choosing to remain by Hitler's side. On April 29th the pair was finally married in a small ceremony within the Fuhrerbunker. On April 30th at about 3:30 pm several people in the Fuhrerbunker heard a loud gunshot from the study to which Braun and Hitler had retired after bidding farewell to those who remained in the bunker. Two staff members found the bodies of Hitler and Braun in the room. Braun had taken a cyanide capsule, while Hitler shot himself in the head. The bodies were removed from the Fuhrerbunker and set on fire in a garden behind the Reich Chancellery. Eva Braun was 33 at the time of her death.
In Other Media
As a well-known figure in Hitler's life, Eva Braun has appeared in numerous films, television shows, books and comics about Hitler. She has been portrayed by actresses such as Denica Fairman, Cheryl Hines, Juliane Kohler, Zoe Telford, Uma Thurman and Angelika Waller.
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