Long before Adolf Hitler began spitting his venom on white supremacy, his hatred of other races, and the need to drag his nation into horrific wars, he dreamed of a more peaceful destiny.
Hitler dreamed of fame as an artist in his youth.
Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist and had great confidence in his own abilities. It was a great shock for Hitler not to be admitted to the University of the Arts in Vienna, the rejection came like a thunderbolt, as Hitler recorded in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, which was published in 1925 .
Hitler was a poor student and left school at the age of 16. He, on the other hand, considered himself to have a great reputation in the field of art and moved to Vienna, which was something of a Mecca of art, culture and architecture in the early last century.
Hitler believed that fame and fortune awaited him there, but the jury at the University of the Arts was not so impressed.
His works, which are mostly buildings or natural scenes, were considered uninteresting and unoriginal and completely lacking in imagination, let alone talent.
Productive when painting
Hitler was nonetheless productive and painted over 2000 pictures during his lifetime. But there are many more works attributed to the mad dictator.
Enterprising people soon realized that there was a lot of money to be made in rather sloppy watercolor drawings of one of the greatest villains in human history.
For example, German police raided the Kloss auction house in January 2019 and confiscated three works labeled A. Hitler that were allegedly painted between 1910 and 1911.
One of Hitler’s works.
All were fake, but a choice had been made about which fake, and they came with a well-forged owner history and certificate of origin. Each of them was valued at around 4500 euros or more than 700,000 Icelandic ISK.
It’s doubtful that the auction house was complicit or that its representatives were duped, but Kloss’ representative said the forgeries were probably better than Hitler’s work. His works have no artistic value. You can walk along the Seine and it is certain that 80% of the artists who sell their works there are more talented than Hitler ever was.
However, the auction house’s reason for accepting alleged Hitler artwork was not included in the auction house’s statement.
Millions and millions
Just a month later, in February 2019, police raided another auction house, named Weidler, and confiscated no less than 63 works marked A. Hitler. Only five of them turned out to be after the dictator.
And this time, the authorities were sure enough that the auction house was involved in the scam that the case was forwarded to the prosecutor’s office.
Weidler’s auction documents indicate that minimum bids for the films ranged from a few hundred euros to over 100,000 euros, or around 15.6 million Icelandic ISK.
Hitler’s watercolors are not beautiful. But the name sells.
The British magazine Prospect further claims that from 2009 to 2018, 77 works attributed to Hitler were sold by the Mollocks auction house for 271 thousand euros, or more than 42 million ISK.
Mollocks may have said it was not possible to prove whether or not it was Hitler’s work, but he says people were still lining up in hopes of acquiring a piece of art. work of one of the worst mass murderers of all time.
For what?
Which naturally begs the question why on earth would anyone want a corny watercolor of Adolf Hitler, of all people, on their wall? Except for the occasional fanatical neo-Nazi?
For example, billionaire Billy Price bought virtually every Hitler artwork he came across in the 1980s. Not only that, but he bought most Hitler possessions he could get his hands on, even Hitler’s cutlery, a wine rack and Eva Braun’s gramophone.
Price even bought Hitler’s bed and more.
He slept in it.
And the prices are still going up
Price has sometimes stated that he was somewhat sympathetic to Nazism, noting that he also collected works by Churchill and Roosevelt, both of whom dabbled in painting in their spare time. He then sold the majority of the works.
Flowers by Hitler.
The reason for the vividness of counterfeits of Hitler’s works has nothing to do with their artistic value. Art dealers, it is above all a historical interest in horror that maintains demand.
And while it’s illegal to sell fake artwork, it’s perfectly legal to trade in non-fake artwork. Even those left behind by one of the greatest villains in human history.
And what’s more, Hitler’s works only go up in price year after year.
