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Five paintings allegedly Adolf Hitler will be auctioned on Saturday in the German city of Nuremberg, arousing the wrath that the Nazi souvenir market is alive and well.
The mayor of the city, Ulrich Maly, condemned the upcoming sale as "bad taste", addressing the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Among the items to go under the hammer, there is a view of the mountain lake with a starting price of 45 000 € (51 000 $) and a wicker chair bearing the symbol of the swastika, presumed to belong to the dictator Nazi.
A wicker chair with a swastika supposed to belong to Adolf Hitler will be auctioned on Saturday. Photo: Daniel Karmann / AFP / Getty Images
The auction house Weidler organizes the "special sale" in Nuremberg, the city in which Nazi war criminals were tried in 1945.
The auction made headlines after several works of art were withdrawn on Thursday, suspected to be false and prosecutors intervened.
Sales of alleged Hitler art – which for some time tried to make a living as an artist in his native Austria – regularly arouse indignation, as collectors are willing to pay the high price for works of art related to the Nazi past of the country.
The signature of Adolf Hitler on the painting "Prague in the fog" is represented in the auction house Weidler in Nuremberg. Photography: Christof Stache / AFP / Getty Images
"There is a long tradition of trading in devotional objects related to Nazism," said Stephan Klingen of Munich's Central Institute of Art History.
"Every time the media talks about that … and the prices they bring up are constantly increasing. Personally, it is something that annoys me a lot.
In Germany, the public display of Nazi symbols is illegal, but exceptions can be made, in educational or historical contexts for example.
To comply with the law, the auction house pixelated the swastikas on the wicker chair and a blue and white Meissen porcelain vase in the catalog photos, and covered them on the spot. None of the paintings include any of the badges.
A watercolor titled "Buschgruppe" (bush group) is supposed to be that of Hitler. Photo: Daniel Karmann / AFP / Getty Images
According to Klingen, Hitler had the style of a "moderately ambitious amateur", but his creations are not distinguishable from "hundreds of thousands" of comparable works of the time, making their authenticity particularly difficult to verify.
A batch of 26 pieces originally appearing in the catalog was removed from the sale after suspicions were raised about their nature.
The watercolors, drawings and paintings bearing the "Hitler" signatures present views of Vienna or Nuremberg, female bads and still lifes, the auction house announced. They were offered by 23 different owners.
Prosecutors gathered at Weidler's premises 63 works of art bearing the signature "A.H." or "A. Hitler ", including some not expected to go under the hammer on Saturday.
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