Gretl Braun

Margarete Berta "Gretl" Braun (; 31 August 1915 – 10 October 1987) was one of the two sisters of Eva Braun. She was a member of the inner social circle of Adolf Hitler at the Berghof. Gretl became the sister-in-law of Hitler following his marriage to Eva, less than 40 hours before the couple killed themselves. Braun married SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, a liaison officer on Hitler's staff, on 3 June 1944. In the closing days of World War II, Fegelein was shot for desertion. Despite Gretl's ties to the Nazi regime, she managed to survive the war nearly completely unscathed. She changed her name, remarried, and lived a quiet life until her death in 1987. Early life Braun was the youngest of three daughters of school teacher Friedrich "Fritz" Braun and seamstress Franziska "Fanny" Kronberger. After dropping out of secondary school at the age of 16, she worked as a clerk for the photography company of Heinrich Hoffmann, the official photographer for the Nazi Party, who also employed her sister Eva. Hitler provided the sisters with a three-bedroom apartment in Munich in August 1935, and the next year with a villa in Bogenhausen. Their father was not pleased with this arrangement and wrote to Hitler to protest about it. The sisters were keen photographers; in 1943 Gretl attended the Bavarian State School of Photography.