Failure of an auction of five paintings attributed to Adolf Hitler

The auction held this Saturday in Germany with five fabrics awarded to Adolf Hitler failed because they were not interested in acquiring the paintings.

The Weidler auction house did not specify the reasons for the failure of the auction, although the high order values and the doubts about the authenticity tissue certainly had an influence.

However, the auction house managed to sell two objects that would have belonged to Hitler: a Meissen porcelain jug, for 5,500 euros (6,200 dollars) and a tablecloth for the minimum price of 630 euros (about 700 dollars).

Among the objects, a wicker chair carrying a swastika at the initial price of 6,500 euros had no interest.

The five fabrics that remained without buyers – which had initial prices of between 19,000 and 45,000 euros, between 21,000 and 51,000 dollars– They show bucolic landscapes, but the auction has been surrounded by a heated controversy.

"Bad taste"
Ulrich May, mayor of Nuremberg, former Reich stronghold and auction location, denounced a "bad taste" initiative in the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

On Wednesday, the auction catalog included 26 other paintings. These had to be removed after the German justice seized them, with 37 other works signed "A. H." or "A. Hitler", for doubts about its authenticity.

The paintings and objects came from 23 different owners, according to the auction house, which denies any irregularity and says cooperate with the police and justice.

"We are investigating in the Nuremberg Prosecutor's Office on alleged fraud and attempted fraud"he stressed at the AFP Attorney General Antje Gabriels-Gorsolke.

"If it is shown that they are false, we will check who knew something in the chain of custody," he added. Some works are accompanied by certificates of authenticity, but they could also be false.

The Weidler house has stated that the fact that 63 works were the subject of an investigation by the police "does not automatically mean that they are false".

Controversies, doubts and price increases
The auctions of Hitlerite works of art are regularly controversial in Germany, a country that has made the penance of Nazism a central element of its identity.

Sales Research meet the demand of collectors, often outsiders, willing to spend considerable sums of money to own an artifact of the dictator or other regime figures who exterminated six million Jews during the Second World War.

The Weidler house has already sold several paintings attributed to Hitler, including two watercolors for 32,000 euros in 2009.

But there are also many false or doubtful works circulating. On January 24, the police seized three watercolors attributed to Hitler that were going to be auctioned in Berlin the same day, also in this case because of doubts as to its authenticity.

Experts consider that Hitler's paintings, which suspended his entrance exam at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, are hard to authenticate, both because there is no accurate catalog and because of its poor quality. And the graphological study of the company is considered as insufficient evidence.

However, "there is a long tradition for this profession of devotion to Nazism," he says. AFP Stephan Klingen, of the Central Institute of Art History Munich.

"Every time […] there is noise in the media […] and the prices they are rising are rising continuously, "he said. That's what bothers me, "added Klingen.

(With information from AFP)