Police probe ‘fake’ Hitler paintings
POLICE IN Germany are investigating after a Berlin auction house was prevented from selling three landscapes that were supposedly signed by Hitler.
Questions have been raised over the authenticity of the paintings.
As many as 30 artworks carrying prices up to tens of thousands of euros are under suspicion, The Times reported.
The Weidler auction house is said to have sold over 100 paintings in the last five years carrying the designation “Hitler”. It describes such paintings as “signed or monogrammed by A. Hitler (prob. Adolf Hitler 1889 to 1945)”.
Kerstin Weidler, the auctioneer, said the suggestion the pictures were fake was “an unfounded claim. There are different points of view and we as an auction house must remain neutral in this whole subjectivity.”
Hundreds of artworks purportedly by Hitler have been sold since 1945.
Before the First World War, the future dictator was rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. He wrote in Mein Kampf, his autobiography, that while living in Vienna he had produced two or three paintings a day. Many were watercolour replicas of postcards.
Given that Hitler spent six years in the Austrian capital, that could amount to several thousand works — although it is possible he was exaggerating.
Nazi attempts between 1933 and 1945 to trace all his paintings only resulted in a few dozen works being catalogued.
“He didn’t have a clue about perspective and was very bad at painting people, so any painting that includes many people is very unlikely to be authentic,” investigative journalist Bart Droog said. Deutsche Welle An exhibit at the current museum