September 22, 2020 - Droog Magazine periodical for investigative journalism

'Hitlers' fail to sell

to The Thies 'Hitlers' (2) | Hitler Forgery Industry main page

At the recent Andreas Thies auction in the United States, only twenty-one of the fifty-eight lots with objects attributed to Adolf Hitler were sold. The expected minimum revenue of $24,000 (€20,310) turned out to be no more than $6,615 (excluding fees and shipping costs).

The top piece, a clearly fake Hitler “from the succession of a private family in France”, with a start price of $12,000, remained unsold.

Lot 583, The French "Hitler". As Hitler made no watercolors at all in 1909, it is clearly not a "Hitler". A forger simply upgraded this work by painting "A. Hitler" on it. 

Among the “Hitlers” originating from Wolfgang Schulze von Mertschinsky, the representative of the notorious forger Konrad Kujau, were a violin and a top hat, both accompanied by Certificates of Authenticity typed on “NSDAP Reichsleitung” letters. Which is, according to Kujau expert Marc-Oliver Boger, a clear indication that these objects originate from Kujau.

Kujau didn't make the violin and top hat, of course. He simply bought these at flea markets, and upgraded them with the fake documents. The “Hitler” violin, with an actual value of no more than $50 was sold for some $500 ($400 + 26% fees); the top hat, with an actual value of about $100, was sold for nearly $ 600 ($ 475 + fees).

In June 2020 the auctioneer told Droog Magazine that he had some threehundred objects from the Mertschinsky collection in stock. Therefore it is expected that in the upcoming years more of this garbage will be auctioned by Thies USA.

See:
Report on the French "Hitler" (pdf, 0.6 MB)
Report on the Von Mertschinsky Hitlers at the September 2020 auction (pdf, 5 MB).

In this special report (pdf, 6 MB) all 47 alleged Hitlers auctioned in April 2020 are depicted and commented.

© Jaap van den Born and Bart FM Droog, 2020.
Photos of the lots - courtesy Andreas Thies.

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