Painting by Hitler Up for Auction
Bidding on the 1912 watercolor still life starts at $30,000
March 24, 2015
1912 watercolor by Adolf Hitler. (Nate D. Sanders Gallery)
Call it springtime for Hitler. The genocidal Führer’s penchant for painting didn’t bear much fruit during his lifetime—he was rejected several times from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and later sold scenic postcards with middling success—but his pre-war work has seen what you might call a posthumous surge.
The Nate D. Sanders auction house in Los Angeles—which last year sold two signed copies of Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf—has on offer a signed 1912 watercolor by the Nazi leader. Bidding starts at $30,000.
The painting also bears the stamp of Samuel Morgenstern, a Jewish art dealer in Vienna who bought several paintings from the Fürher-to-be in the early 1900s. After Hitler grew out of his artistic phase and started systematically murdering Jews, Morgenstern’s gallery was seized and he was sent to the Lodz Ghetto, where he was killed.
The auction ends Thursday night.
Previous: Two Signed Copies of ‘Mein Kampf’ For Sale
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Stephanie Butnick is chief strategy officer of Tablet Magazine, co-founder of Tablet Studios, and a host of the Unorthodox podcast.
