Hitler dreamt of a career as an artist. His father had rejected the idea but after he died in 1903 Hitler would try to make his dream a reality.
He applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts but was promptly rejected in October 1907. Shortly after, Hitler's beloved mother died. He moved to Vienna and scratched out a precarious bohemian existence sleeping in hostels and painting postcards. Here he began to develop many of the views which would later characterise his ideology and desire to unite Germany and Austria. The anti-Semitic politics of Vienna's mayor, Karl Lueger, were particularly influential.