BERLIN: Five paintings attributed to Adolf Hitler will be auctioned off Saturday in the German city of Nuremberg, sparking anger that the Nazi memorabilia market is alive and well.
Nuremberg’s mayor Ulrich Maly has condemned the upcoming sale as being “in bad taste,” speaking to Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
Among the items to go under the hammer are a mountain lake view with a starting price of 45,000 euros ($51,000) and a wicker armchair with a swastika symbol presumed to have belonged to the late Nazi dictator.
The Weidler auction house is holding the “special sale” in Nuremberg, the city in which Nazi war criminals were tried in 1945.
The auction made headlines days before its start after several artworks were withdrawn Thursday on suspicion they were fakes and prosecutors stepped in.
Sales of alleged artworks by Hitler — who for a time tried to make a living as an artist in his native Austria — regularly spark outrage that collectors are willing to pay high prices for art linked to the country’s Nazi past.
“There’s a long tradition of this trade in devotional objects linked to Nazism,” Stephan Klingen of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich told AFP.
“Every time there’s a media buzz about it… and the prices they’re bringing in have been rising constantly. Personally, that’s something that quite annoys me.”
