‘Hitler paintings’ fail to sell at Nuremberg auction

FIVE paintings attributed to Adolf Hitler failed to find buyers at an auction Saturday held amid anger at the sale of Nazi memorabilia.

High star ting prices of between € 19,000 and € 45,000 ($21,000 and $50,000) and lingering suspicions about the authenticity of the artworks were thought to have scared off potential buyers.

The Weidler auction house did not comment on the reasons for the failure but said the paintings could yet be sold at a later date.

Nuremberg’s mayor Ulrich Maly had earlier condemned the sale as being “in bad taste”.

Among the items that failed to sell were a mountain lake view and a painting of a wicker armchair with a swastika symbol presumed to have belonged to the late Nazi dictator.

The Weidler auction house held the “special sale” in Nuremberg, the city in which Nazi war criminals were tried in 1945.

Days before the sale a number of the artworks were withdrawn on suspicion they were fakes with prosecutors stepping in.

Sales of alleged artworks by Hitler – who for a time tried to make a living as an artist in his nat ive Aust r ia – reg u la rly spark outrage that collectors are willing to pay high prices for art linked to the countr y’s Nazi past.

“There’s a long tradition of this trade in devotional objects linked to Nazism,” said Stephan Klingen of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich.

“Every time there’s a media buzz about it … and the prices they’re bringing in have been rising constantly. Personally, that’s something that quite annoys me.”

In Germany, public displays of Nazi symbols are illegal but exceptions can be made, in educational or historic contexts for instance.

To comply with the law, the auction house pi xellated t he swastikas on the wicker chair a nd a blue-a nd-white Meissen porcela i n vase i n catalog ue photos a nd covered them up on-site.

But none of the paintings included any of the totalitarian party’s insignias.

According to Klingen, Hitler had the st yle of “a moderately a mbitious a mateur” but his creat ions did not sta nd out f rom “hu nd re d s of t housands” of comparable works f rom t he per iod – ma k i ng t heir aut henticit y especia lly hard to verif y.

The watercolours, drawings and paintings bearing “Hitler” signatures featured views of V ien na or Nuremberg, fema le nudes a nd st i l l l i fe works, the auction house said. They were offered by 23 different owners.

Prosecutors on Wednesday collected 63 artworks from the Weidler premises bearing the signature “A.H.” or “A. Hitler”, including some not slated to go under the hammer.

Nuremberg-Fuerth prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation against persons unknown “on suspicion of falsifying documents and attempted fraud”, chief prosecutor Antje Gabriels-Gorsolke said.

“If they turn out to be fakes, we will then try to determine who knew what in the chain of ownership,” she said.

Weidler said in a statement that the paintings’ withdrawa l f rom sa le did “not automat ic a l l y mea n t he y a r e fa kes”.