Hitler paintings sell for over EUR 100,000 in Britain

LONDON – A series of watercolours by Adolf Hitler were sold at a British auction house on Thursday for over EUR 100,000.

The 13 paintings, most of them landscapes and found in a garage earlier this year by the seller, went for GBP 95,589 (EUR 107,000, CHF 161,000) at auctioneers Mullock’s.

An apparent self-portrait showing a man with a side-parting sitting on a stone bridge, and signed with the initials AH, sold for GBP 10,000 at the auction at Ludlow in western England.

Richard Westwood-Brookes of the auctioneers – who had earlier said the pictures "are hardly Picasso" – said the final price, which included buyer’s premium, was a surprise.

"I am very pleased. I thought they would go for between five and six thousand," he said.

The paintings date back to between 1908 and about 1914, when the former German leader was a young man trying to earn a living as an artist in Vienna.

"Unfortunately for the world, he was not accepted into the Vienna Academy, which was where he wanted to be," Westwood-Brookes said.

"Of course, if he had been accepted, then we would have known him today as an artist and not as an evil tyrant."

Westwood-Brookes said the seller bought them from someone who found them in 1945.

Many of the works are signed with the initials "A H" The sale also included a collection of official Nazi magazines for schoolboys and women, featuring knitting patterns and recipes.

In 2006, 21 of Hitler’s works were sold in Britain for GBP 118,000.

AFP / Expatica