Hitler Artworks Expected To Fetch High Prices At British auction

If only he had been an artist. But alas, he was not, at least not a full-time artist who was too busy to practice politics. As a result, we are stuck with his artwork all over the world, though by now, following the Hitler Diaries farce, which torpedoed so many fine reputations, how one can tell a real from a fake is way beyond simple me.

"Adolf Hitler never made it as an artist [to put it bluntly], but his drawings and paintings have garnered increasingly high bids at auction," according to this article.

"Apparently it's not neo-Nazis who are buying, but history buffs and art collectors." What a relief!

So how much does de Fuhrer's artwork fetch on the open market? Well, his drawings and water colors "sell for prices in the tens of thousands," though if this has to do with his artistic mastery or dark place in history is anybody's guess.

Here's one enlightened guess:

"These prices are clearly much too high when considered just in terms of the works' artistic value," curator for 20th-century art Stephan Diederich told Deutsche Welle. "I would guess that - for whatever reasons - the buyers are less interested in art and more interested in pieces that recall Hitler." For whatever reasons.......

Many people assume that buyers are Nazi sympathizers or Neo-Nazis. That is far from true, said Richard Westwood-Brookes of the Mullock's auction house.

"Our buyers last year were interested either from a historical or from an artistic point of view - and in the latter case, I mean they were interested in acquiring the work of such a well-known failed artist," he explained

Other objects like a car once belonging to Hitler have also brought high bids.

A Mercedes and boat belonging to Hermann Goring were found rotting in a Russian barn and the Red Sea (see stories, on this site) respectively and obviously. Perhaps this more than anything else preserves the relative powers of their offices in the Third Reich.