FRANKFURT — Two watercolors signed “Adolf Hitler” and depicting farm scenes fetched a combined total of $42,000 at an auction in Germany on Saturday, an auction house official said.
Kathrin Weidler, a manager at the Weidler Auction House in Nuremberg, declined to identify the new owner of the two paintings — “Farmstead,” which went for 18,000 euros, and “Farm Buildings on the River,” which sold for 14,000 euros.
The two watercolors, listed in the catalog as “signed and dated 1914,” did not show evidence of a “good painting style,” Weidler said.
Still, they attracted a few bidders at the auction house and seven telephone bidders, some from abroad, in an auction that lasted only a few minutes.
“I don’t think they’re fakes,” said Richard Westwood- Brookes, historical documents expert at auction house Mullocks, which carried out the sale. He said he did not believe anyone would have the nerve to fake the pictures, given the global publicity they have received.
The paintings found their way to Russia after World War II and were sold at Saturday’s auction on behalf of a Polish owner who lives in Nuremberg, Weidler said. She would not say whether the new owner, who bid by telephone, was from Germany or abroad.
As a young man, Hitler sought to earn his living as an artist. He is thought to have painted hundreds of works, several of which have come up for sale over the years.
Weidler Auction House owner Herbert Weidler has said he sold one four years ago for 11,000 euros.
In England on Thursday, what a British auction house says was a set of 15 paintings and sketches by the young Hitler sold for $143,358.
