Adolf Hitler
Photo: Getty Images
Hitler watercolor sold for $162,000 at auction
Painting supposedly created by Nazi dictator around 1914 features Munich's old city hall.
A watercolor of Munich's old city hall believed to have been painted by Adolf Hitler a century ago was sold for 130,000 euros ($162,000) at an auction in Germany on Saturday.
Kathrin Weidler, director of the Weider auction house in Nuremberg, said the work attracted bidders from four continents and went to a buyer from the Middle East. She declined to elaborate.
Hitler's watercolor painting (Photo: Reuters)
The auction house says the painting is one some 2,000 by Hitler and is thought to be from about 1914, when he was struggling to make a living as an artist, almost two decades before rising to power as the Nazi dictator.
The painting, which had been expected to fetch at least 50,000 euros, was sold by a pair of elderly sisters whose grandfather purchased it in 1916.
Hitler's paintings surface regularly, but the auction house said the 28-by-22 centimeter (11-by-8.5 inch) scene auctioned Saturday also includes the original bill of sale and a signed letter from Hitler's adjutant, Albert Bormann, brother of the dictator's private secretary Martin Bormann.
From the text of the undated Bormann letter, it appears the Nazi-era owner sent a photo of the painting to Hitler's office asking about its provenance. Bormann wrote that it appears to be "one of the works of the Fuehrer."
