Hitler Watercolour To Be Auctioned By Weidler In Nuremberg

Adolf Hitler

A painting by Adolf Hitler’s will be auctioned off at the Weidler auction house in Nuremberg, Germany later this month, reports the Local. The watercolour painting dates from 1914 or 1915, the titled of which is ‘The Old Town Hall’ and is a depiction of the Munich registrar’s office.

The work measures just over eight-and-half-by-11 inches; and currently belongs to a pair of sisters from Hesse, Germany. The idyllic painting was first purchased from a Munich gallery by their grandfather in 1916. The auction lot will also include proof of origin in the form of the original bill of sale, as well as a certificate of authenticity from Albert Bormann, the brother of Martin Bormann who was Hitler’s chief of staff. There has not been an official pre-sale estimate announced for the work, but with the original bill of sale the painting’s value will increase, and could easily fetch tens of thousands of dollars.

‘The Old Town Hall’ starting price will begin at €4,500 or £3,521, with the owners promising to donate ten percent of the proceeds from the sale of the infamous work to a charity for disabled children. The sisters also have plans to help renovate the city’s Nazi Party Rally Grounds, which are now a memorial.

Several paintings by the Nazi leader have come to market at Weidler over the years. The remnant of the fuhrer’s failed art career. Of the five works previously sold at the auction house, the most recent painting was purchased by an anonymous Slovakian collector in January 2012 for €32,000 or £25,000. The sale of Hitler’s artworks – considered to be collected for historical value rather than quality – of which there about 800 examples known to exist, is permitted unless a piece includes any kind of Nazi imagery.

Several Nazi-related items have come up at auction this year, including a signed photograph of Hitler as a young man. In France, the government cancelled a planned sale of Nazi memorabilia of objects that had been owned by Hitler and Hermann Göring – after protests from a number of Jewish groups. In the years since Adolf Hitler created ‘The Old Town Hall’, the painting has travelled throughout Germany, and later was smuggled out of what was then East Germany to Hesse.

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