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April 25, 2021; updated 22-08-2021.

The Hitler Forgery Industry

to Hitler Forgery Industry main page - to Droog Magazine

2011  |

The strange business of selling fakes, forgeries and other concoctions attributed to Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and other Nazi criminals.


10-05-2011: 2 fake Hitlers in Germany
04-12-2011: 1 fake Hitler in Slovakia

Exchange rates / value of money 2011





May 10, 2011: 2 fake Hitlers at Hermann Historica, Munich
Lots 7706 and 7707

The Munich based auction house Hermann Historica is, just like its direct predecessor Graf Klenau, one of the main suppliers of Hitleriana and other Nazi militaria. Among the objects it offers many forged and fake objects, as these two.

Lot 7706 is quite special. Not because it might be real after all, but because it originates from a forger or forgers gang that launched at least two similar forgeries.


Hermann Historica, auction 61,  Munich, May 10, 2011
Lot 7706: Peterskirche und Viktualienmarkt, München


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Description by auctioneer: "Adolf Hitler – a watercolour – Church of St. Peter. Detailed painted depiction of 'der Alte Peter' and the victuals market in Munich, with a part of the Church of the Holy Spirit visible on the right side. Signed at the lower left 'A. Hitler' and titled on the lower right 'München Viktualienmarkt u. Peterskirche'. Matted, in a gilt woooden frame, framed dimensions 46 x 53 cm. The reverse with a glued-on invoice from the Munich firm Georg Zaglmeier – Inh. Max Lottner – Gilding and framing, Fürstenstraße 7 dated 1 Ocober 1917 to Councilor of Commerce Dr. Oskar Ritter von Petri, to whom the watercolour is billed at 15.60 Reichsmarks.


As head of 'Staff Bormann' (formerly known as the 'Staff of Hitler's Deputy', then 'Staff Heß') Martin Bormann transferred more than 20 Hitler watercolours at the end of the war to Italian Minister Rodolfo Siviero, who received them from Frau Gerda Bormann in the south Tyrol. Among these was a further watercolour depicting the Peterskirche and Viktualienmarkt with nearly the same perspective and execution, which had been obtained by Staff Heß at a Munich auction in 1938 for 8,000 Reichsmarks. CF 'die Aquarelle Hitlers – Das wiedergefundene Werk zum Andenken an Rodolfo Siviero'(tr. 'Hitler's Watercolours – The rediscovered Works in Memory of Rodolfo Siviero'), Florence Catalog, Palazzo Vecchio 1984, figure 18 and pp. 76/77.


Oskar Ritter von Petri (1860-1944), engineer and general director of the Siemens-Schuckert works, was by 1927 Chairman of the Board at Siemens & Halske AG and MAN.


PROVENANCE: Hermann Historica, auction 41, 10 November 2001, lot 5626, 10994. [Condition] II, start price € 15,000."

Comment by Droog Magazine: This work is a very bad copy of Florence 18, which is a thought to be authentic Hitler. Our best guess is that it was copied from the Florence 1984 exhibition catalog.



Click to enlarge; left Florence #18, right Hermann Historica 2011,#7706

What is said about the provenance of Florence #18 is only partially true: Rodolfo Siviero in all likelihood confiscated or stole twenty "Hitlers" (twenty, not more, as Hermann Historica claimed)) from Gerda Bormann (Martin Bormann's widow), shortly after the war.  Why she had the works with her is unknown, but in all likelihood  not to hand them over to Siviero.

The authenticity of these Florence "Hitlers" is still (anno 2021) under debate. Some might be authentic, some might be commissioned NSDAP Hauptarchiv copies, and some are definitely forgeries.


What is said about the provenance of lot 7706 is mostly nonsense - except that it was auctioned before by Hermann Historica, in 2001. This fact is used as a kind of authenticity guarantee - which of course it isn't.  



left invoice on back of Hermann Historica 2011,#7706; right on back of Beek Hitler.

The glued-on invoice on it's back is probably the most interesting aspect of this work, as it links it with another Hitler forgery, a Standesamt - also a copy from a Florence work - which was auctioned in 2014 by Hermann Historica (auction 69, 12-12-2014, lot 6113) and ended up in a war museum in Beek, the Netherlands. Both have an invoice glued-on at their back sides. Both invoices were allegedly issued by the framing company "Georg Zaglmeier", owned by Max Lottner.  The invoice on the Peterskirche is dated "1917", the Standesamt "1920'".

See: the Beek Hitler (Standesamt). 




Standesamt - Florence 19. Click to enlarge.
Standesamt - Beek /Hermann Historica 2014

Both the Standesamt in Beek and the Peterskirche on this 2011 auction can probably be linked to a third forgery sold in 2009, the so called  "Schork Hitler', also a Standesamt version (auction 57, lot 6249, sold for €63,000).



Standesamt - Schork. No invoice glued on the
back, but a whole suitcase with forged
documents as "proof". Click to enlarge.
Standesamt - Schork /Hermann Historica 2009


See: the Schork Hitler (
Standesamt, in Dutch) and: http://droog-mag.nl/hitler/2019/hh-2019-4074-standesamt.pdf (pages 9-10).


The hammer price of lot 7706 is unknown.

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Lot 7707: Berglandschaft mit Kapelle (mountain landscape with church)

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Description by auctioneer:" Adolf Hitler (attributed to) – watercolour 'Berglandschaft mit Kapelle'. Watercolour on paper, signed at lower left 'A. Hitler' and numbered '3'. Mounted, framed dimensions 31.5 x 38 cm. Included is an expertise from Peter Jahn dated Vienna, 17 June 1980, in which Jahn describes this watercolour as the third example in a series of three images in which Hitler used the Salzburg countryside as his motif, as commissioned by the Munich dealer Morgenstern and related to Jahn himself in the 1930s when Jahn was tasked by the German embassy to research early Hitler watercolours.

Provenance: Keith Wilson Collection, Kansas City.

Published in 'Adolf Hitler als Maler und Zeichner' by Billy F. Price (ed.),page 115, figure 100. Exhibited in 'Prelude to a Nightmare – Art, Politics and Hitler's Early Years in Vienna 1906-1913', Williams College Museum of Art, July – October 2002, illustrated on catalogue page 6.

Although Peter Jahn – who was charged in 1937 by the NSDAP to track down Hitler's Vienna watercolours and who postwar supervised the collection of the Marquess of Bath – expertised this piece as original work by Hitler, we nonetheless note that in our opinion this attribution is questionable.'

Condition II, price €3,500.”


Comment by Droog Magazine

An obvious forgery. Hitler never made mountain scapes. Morgenstern was a Viennese dealer, not a Munich one; murdered by the Nazis in 1943. All "Hitlers" allegedly commissioned by him are obvious fakes. Peter Jahn was a repeatedly convicted swindler. He never worked for the German embassy; he was only, in 1938, for a short time hired by the NSDAP Hauptarchiv/Schulte Strathaus to search for Hitlers. At that time he was already dealing in forged Hitlers. He was soon fired, because even for the Nazis he was too unreliable.

It's not all nonsense what was stated in the auctioneer's description: Jahn was in the 1960s and 1970s the art consultant of the Marquess of Bath (which says a lot about the authenticity of the late Marquess's collection of “Hitlers”). And Keith Wilson was indeed an American collector of Hitleriana – and apparently one of many who was fooled by Jahn's lies.

And so was Deborah M. Rothschild, the curator of the 2002 exhibition and author of the 18 page exhibition catalog. 


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04-12-2011: 1 fake Hitler in Slovakia

In December 2011 the Slovakian auction house Darte in Nižný Hrušov sold an alleged Hitler titled "Das Geheimtreffen" (“Secret meeting" or Tajné stretnutie) for €10,200. The title is as curious as the work itself, on which three monks sitting at a table and three monks seated in the background are depicted. The work is signed "A. Hitler 1915."


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Combined technique, "colored pencil". 35 cm x 22 cm.

The same work was again auctioned by the same auction house in 2017, with a start price of €18,000.

Whoever made it, his name was certainly not Adolf Hitler.

The Slovak news medium HN interviewed the auctioneer shortly before the auction.

"When I look at Hitler as a painter, he was a talented boy from the beginning, he even tried to get to university without anyone paving his way to it," Jaroslav Krajňák, director of the Darte auction company, which told the auction, told HN where Hitler's work will be auctioned for the first time in Slovakia, he is organizing on Sunday. (…) There’s much intereset for the work,  also from abroad. I believe that the end price will climb high, such works have been auctioned in Austria for 50 thousand euros. We will see how it goes in our country, as there are no works of him available, "added Krajňák. "The work originates from the collection of a large collector from Slovakia, who inherited it from his parents. They probably worked in Vienna, where the work probably comes from, and now they have offered it to us for auction," Krajňák confirmed."

Yeah, sure.


Sources

Lucia Čížová. HN, Bratislava, 30-11-2011.
https://style.hnonline.sk/kultura/411527-na-slovensku-sa-bude-prvykrat-drazit-obraz-adolfa-hitlera

Auction house Darte, 2017
https://www.dartesro.sk/?act=dielo-katalog&dielo=85364
 


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Exchange rates / value of money 2011

1 euro = 
1.43 US dollar.
1 US dollar = 0.70   
1 euro = 0.88 UK pound
1 UK pound = 1.14 euro
1 euro = 1.27 Swiss francs
1 Swiss franc =0.79 euro

Wisselkoersen archief ECB, 13-05-2011.

https://wisselkoers-euro.nl/archief-wisselkoersen/2011-05-13/


CPI Inflation Calculator – for US dollars.This inflation calculator uses official records published by the U.S. Department of Labor.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/

Convertisseur franc-euro. Pouvoir d'achat de l'euro et du franc. Le convertisseur franc-euro mesure l'érosion monétaire due ŕ l'inflation.
https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/2417794


Value of the Guilder/Euro. International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.
http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/calculate.php


© Compilation Bart FM Droog, 2021.