German police raid Berlin auction house suspected of selling forged Hitler paintings
German police raided Thursday an auction house in Berlin suspected of selling forged paintings by Adolf Hitler.
Three watercolor paintings signed “A. Hitler” were seized, as police continues to investigate allegations of forgery. The starting price for each painting was 4,000 euros.
The paintings of various landscapes were dated 1910 and 1911 and simply titled “Rhine landscape”, “alpine landscape” and “Niederthal, Vent,” referring to the mountain village in Tirol, Austria.
The Berlin auction house Kloss was planning to put them up for open bidding the same day.
The local newspaper Berliner Kurrier reported that the authenticity of these paintings were supposedly verified by US-based forensic handwriting expert Frank Garo, who confirmed the signature on the artworks belonged to the Nazi fuhrer.
According to the auction house’s website, the certificates were issued dated between November 2017 and April 2018. “The signature shows spontaneity, proper letter size […] and no sign of being drawn or forced,” Garo reportedly wrote.
But an anonymous tip from a private individual, received by the police on Wednesday, called these findings into question and arose suspicion that the paintings might be forged.
After an initial examination, police obtained a court warrant to seize the paintings for further investigation on suspicion of fraud and forged certification.
The paintings, labeled numbers 286, 287, 288, were also removed from the auction’s online catalog. The sellers of the paintings did not identify themselves.
A spokesman for the auction house assured they are confident that the investigation will amount to nothing.
“We have certificates and they will prove the authenticity,” he told the local newspaper.
Hitler’s failed artistic aspirations are a matter of record. In his autobiography Mein Kampf, he described how in his youth he wanted to become a professional artist, yet he was rejected twice by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Between 1909 and 1913, he made a living from selling painted postcards.
When he assumed power, the Nazi dictator ordered to collect and destroy his artworks, but hundreds survived. Most of Hitler's artworks are now in private collections in Austria, Britain, Germany and the United States, and the US Army still has four works which it confiscated during the war.
The action house estimated that five to ten paintings attributed to Hitler are auctioned off every year. In 2015, a watercolor by Hitler depicting the Bavarian castle Neuschwanstein was sold for more than 100,000 euros and shipped to China.
In April, another oil painting of a young woman bearing the signature “A. Hitler” was sold at an auction in Germany for 60,000 euros. “Portrait of a Girl” was painted during WW1 and allegedly depicted Hitler’s believed to be lover, Charlotte Lobjoie.
Experts previously questioned the authenticity of a watercolor painting allegedly signed by Adolf Hitler that was donated in 2017 to the Dutch national institute for wartime documentation.
Art historians also noted in the past that verifying the authenticity of paintings that carry the signature “A. Hitler” is particularly difficult, as Hitler never developed an artistic style of his own.
Polina Garaev is i24NEWS' Germany correspondent