Painting By Hitler Fetches £103,000 At Auction

A 1914 watercolour by Adolf Hitler has sold for 130,000 euros (£103,000) at an auction in the German city of Nuremberg.

The auction house said the unnamed buyer was from the Middle East, but that there had been also been inquiries from Asia and the US.
Entitled Standesamt und Altes Rathaus Muenchen - Civil Registry Office and Old Town Hall of Munich - the picture is one of around 2,000 Hitler painted between 1905 and 1920 as a struggling young artist.

Asked if it was tasteless to sell the Nazi dictator's works, generally considered to be of limited artistic merit, auction house boss Kathrin Weidler said complaints should be addressed to the sellers - two unidentified German sisters in their 70s.

She said the pair had decided to donate around 10% of the proceeds to a charity that helps disabled children.

Hitler's Nazi party held mass rallies in Nuremberg between 1933 and 1938.

In his autobiography, Mein Kampf, he wrote that his hopes of becoming an artist had been dashed as a young man by repeated rejection by Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts.

Five other paintings by Hitler have fetched between 5,000 (£4,000) and 80,000 euros (£63,000) at auction.

Ms Weidler said the original handwritten bill of sale, dated September 1916, had come with the painting and was a rarity for Hitler's art.

She said that also explained the relatively high selling price.

But the certificate has also raised doubt among critics about the painting's provenance.

They recall how hoaxer Konrad Kujau used supposed certifications of authenticity to trick some historians in 1983 into believing bogus "Hitler Diaries" were genuine.


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