Braun met Hitler in Munich when she was a year-old assistant and model for his personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. She began seeing Hitler often about two years later. She attempted suicide twice during their early relationship. She became a significant figure within Hitler's inner social circle, but did not attend public events with him until mid, when her sister Gretl married Hermann Fegelein , the SS liaison officer on his staff.
As Red Army troops fought their way into the centre government district, on 29 April , Braun married Hitler during a brief civil ceremony; she was 33 and he was Less than 40 hours later, they died by suicide in a sitting room of the bunker: Braun by biting and swallowing a capsule of cyanide , and Hitler by a gunshot to the head. The German public was unaware of Braun's relationship with Hitler until after their deaths. Many of the surviving colour photographs and films of Hitler were taken by Braun.
Eva Braun was born in Munich and was the second daughter of school teacher Friedrich "Fritz" Braun — [ 1 ] and Franziska "Fanny" Kronberger — ; [ 2 ] her mother had worked as a seamstress before her marriage.
Her father was a Lutheran and her mother a Catholic. Braun's parents divorced in April but remarried in November , probably for financial reasons; hyperinflation was plaguing the German economy at the time. At age 17, Braun took a job working for Heinrich Hoffmann , the official photographer for the Nazi Party. Hitler was introduced to her as "Herr Wolff". The women rented a flat together for a time. Gretl often accompanied Eva on her subsequent trips with Hitler to Obersalzberg.
Hitler lived with his half-niece, Geli Raubal , in an apartment at Prinzregentenplatz 16 in Munich from until her death. Hitler was in Nuremberg at the time. His relationship with Raubal—likely the most intense of his life—had been important to him. Braun herself attempted suicide on 10 or 11 August by shooting herself in the chest with her father's pistol. According to a fragment of her diary and the account of biographer Nerin Gun, Braun's second suicide attempt occurred in May She took an overdose of sleeping pills when Hitler failed to make time for her in his life.
