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April 18, 2019 - updated June 22, 2022

The Hitler Forgery Industry

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Hans O.A. Horváth

Introduction | A short history | Seizure |
Horvath, exhumator | Horvath's (empty) grave

By Jaap van den Born and Bart FM Droog

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

Introduction: Hans O.A. Horváth

One of the 'Certificates of Authenticity' issuers to obvious forged Hitler watercolors, oil paintings, drawings and sketches is the Austrian Hans O.A. Horváth.

We've detected fraudulent certificates of authenticity (CoA) issued by him at auctions in Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The earliest CoA issued by Horváth to an alleged Hitler work we encountered is dated February 18, 1992. It surfaced at auction house Weidler in Nuremberg (Germany) in 2019.

His later CoA's usually have a photo of authenticated work attached, at the right upper corner. He usually stamps his CoA's, apparently to make them look more impressive.

He sometimes placed a print of the same stamp on the back of the work he authenticated. The text is:

    H.O.A. Horváth
            Archiv
             f. NS.
     Zeitgeschichte
             Wien

The text is, in translation, 'H.O.A. Horváth. Archiv for national socialist modern history, Vienna.

The name of his 'Archive' is misleading, as it looks very similar to the name of the respected Institüt für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. On these CoA's a non existing address is mentioned: 1020 Wien, Paxmanitengasse 19/3a. There's no such 'Gasse' (street) in Vienna. A Pazmanitengasse does exist, hower.

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Hans O.A. Horváth - an short history

Horváth, 1996.
Photographer unknown.

Hans O.A. Horváth (March 3, 1950 - February 10, 2020) entered the spotlights in 1987, when he wanted to exhume the mortal remains of Geli Raubal, Hitler's niece who had committed suicide in 1931 and was buried in Vienna. Horváth was driven by a conspiracy theory, based on concoctions of a former Nazi (see Hans O.A. Horváth - the wanna be exhumator).

He was interviewed by the German journalist Rolf Rietzler of Der Spiegel, who described Horváth in 1987 as hobby Hitlerologist, furniture restorer and amateur historian, who had refurnished part of his house as a kind of Nazi shrine, with shop-window mannequins dressed as a SS man, a SA man and as a concentration camp prisoner.

According to Der Spiegel this interior was used as location for the Der Bockerer (1981), a film by director Franz Antel situated in the Nazi period.

In 1992 he was interviewed again, this time by the American magazine Vanity Fair. Now he was described as being an art appraiser too. The most remarkable passage from the this article is this fragment:

"The dapper Horváth (...) has been pursuing Geli’s ghost for two decades with an obsessive passion that recalls the detective in Laura. Indeed, like the devotion of the homicide dick in that forties noir classic, who locks onto the unfathomable Laura after he falls in love with her portrait, Horváth's fervor has been inspired, at least in part, by the beauty embodied in a portrait of Geli—a nude painting of the young enchantress which Horváth claims was the work of his fellow devotee, Hitler himself."

One has to think of the Geli Raubal portrait that the Nuremberg auction house Weidler tried to sell in February 2019, as an authentic Hitler work. In fact it was a forgery of a Konrad Kujau forgery, accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by... Hans O.A. Horváth.

In 1996 the German (or Austrian?) magazine News reported that Horváth, after the failed attempts to exhume Geli Rabaul was now specializing in authenticating highly questionable artworks allegedly made by Hitler.

Hans O.A. Horváth is an art painter himself. Work of him was raffled in a 2009 pop art lottery in Graz. Might he be one of the forgers producing fake Hitlers? It's seems unlikely that the alleged Hitlers he authenticated are all made by the same hand. They seem to be made by several bunglers. So what is his exact role in this weird business?

Sources

Rolf Rietzel. Das Grab von Onkel Adolfs Nichte. Der Spiegel, Hamburg, 1987/24, 08-06-1987.
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13523361.html

Ron Rosenboom. Hitler's doomed angel. Vanity Fair, New York, April 1992 (published online on 03-09-2012).
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1992/04/hitlers-doomed-angel?verso=true

Atha Athanasiades. Die gefälschten Bilder des Adolf Hitler. News, #16 1996, 18-04-1996. Pages 78-80.

Thomas Søie Hansen. Hitler på auktion. Berlingske [Denmark], 28-12-2005 [About a 'Hitler with Horváth CoA on Ebay].
https://www.berlingske.dk/kultur/hitler-paa-auktion

POP ART Verlosung. Palais Trauttmansdorff, Bürhergasse 5, Graz (Austria, 04-12-2009.
https://e-dvertising.at/de/kunden/kultur/popart_verlosung/

Sonja Hasewend. Hitler-Aquarell: 13.400 Euro für Fälschung. Kleine Zeitung, Graz (Österreich), 04-10-2010.
https://www.kleinezeitung.at/kultur/4199352/HitlerAquarell_13400-Euro-fuer-Faelschung

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'Hitlers' with Horváth CoA's seized by German police

All the 'Hitlers' with Horváth CoA's that the Bavarian police found at the Weidler auction house in Nuremberg, February 2019, were seized, on suspicion of fraud.

Sources

Jaap van den Born & Bart FM Droog. Report on alleged paintingsand drawings auction by Auktionhaus Weidler, Nuremberg, Saturday February 9, 2019. Droog Magazine, February 2019.

http://www.droog-mag.nl/hitler/report-on-Hitler-Auktion-Weidler-09-02-2019.pdf
Maya Margit. German authorities seize 63 alleged Hitler paintings amid booming forgery market. The Media Line, Washington (D.C., USA), 07-02-2019.
https://themedialine.org/featured/german-authorities-seize-63-alleged-hitler-paintings-amid-booming-forgery-market/
Oliver Moody. Hitler art sale in Nuremberg flops after seizure of suspected fakes. The Times, London, 11-02-2019.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hitler-art-sale-in-nuremberg-flops-after-seizure-of-suspected-fakes-lh2znk7kb
Christopher F. Schuetze. Are these paintings really by Hitler? German authorities are investigating. The New York Times, New York, 06-03-2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/arts/design/hitler-paintings-fake.html

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Hans O.A. Horváth, the wanna be exhumator

Hans O.A. Horváth became news in 1987 when he wanted to exhume the mortal remains of Geli Raubal (1908-1931), Hitlers niece. She died in her room in Hitlers Munich apartment on September 18, 1931, where she was found the following morning.

As the young woman and her twenty years older uncle had a sort of relationship - the true nature of which has never been established - rumours and wild theories about this relationship and her death are abundant.

To name a few: Hitler murdered her; Hitler had her murdered, Eva Braun had her murdered out of jealousy; Geli committed suicide out of jealousy of Braun; she would have been made pregnant by Hitler, and so on.

One of these theories was launched by the former NSDAP prominent Otto Strasser. In his book Hitler and I (1940) he wrote this:

In November, 1939, I was in Paris, where I wrote several articles for the Journal, mentioning Gely's death and Hitler's guilt.

Three days later, the editor of the Courrier d'Autriche called on me.

'Do you know Father Pant?' he asked.

'No, not personally, but I know that he lived in Munich, and that he was the brother of the prelate and Senator Pant, the former leader of the anti-Nazi Germans in Poland.'

'Yes,' he said. 'Father Pant is now in exile, but he asks me to send you the following message, which I repeat verbatim:
"It was I who buried Angela Raubal, the little Gely of whom Otto Strasser wrote. They pretended that she committed suicide; I should never have allowed a suicide to be buried in consecrated ground. From the fact that I gave her Christian burial you can draw conclusions which I cannot communicate to you."

As far as is known this story is one of the many concoctions launched by former Nazis. According to Horváth (in 1987) a priest with the name Johann Pant had existed. Horváth claimed he had located the grave of this priest, who died in 1959, and should be buried in the Austrian village of Gaflenz.

Even if Horváth had located the grave of a priest named Johann Pant, this doesn't have to mean anything.

Anyhow: the Munich police did investigate the unnatural death of Geli Raubal and concluded it was a suicide case. This investigation took place two years before Hitler came into power. Therefore it can be assumed that Geli Raubal's death was indeed a suicide. And that we simply don't know and will never know why she ended her life, as all relevant police files were destroyed by the Nazis.

The Viennese authorities were not amused by Horváth's exhumation attempts. Permission to dig her up was not granted.

Der Mann, der Hitlers Geliebte ausgraben wollte...
Hans Horvath, jener Mann, der die falschen Expertisen erstellte, gilt als Scharlatan

Der selbsternannte Wiener Hitler-forscher und Maler Hans Horvath gilt als Scharlatan in der Historikerszene. Ähnlich Helmut Flatzelsteiner, der 1992 das Grab Mary Vetseras geöffnet hat.

Schon seit Jahren fertigt Horvath Expertisen über vermeintlich echte NS-Reliquien an. Sein wohl skurrilster Coup: 1992 wollte er Geli Raubal, die Münchner Geliebter Adolf Hitlers, exhumieren. Die Cousine Hitlers hatte 1931 aus Eifersucht auf Eva Braun Sellbstmord begangen. Horvat hingegen wollte beweisen, daß Raubal von Hitler ermordet wurde. Oder zumindest im Auftrag von Eva Braun, die sich so der Nebenbuhlerin elegant erledigt habe.

Ein erster Grabungsversuch an der Ruhestätte der Hitler-Geliebten in Linz konnte nur durch eine "Weisung" des damaligen Wiener Bürgermeisters Helmut Zilk verhindert werden. Kein Problem für Horvath: er hat sich nun auf höchst fragwürdige Kunstgutachten in Sachen Adolf Hitler spezialisiert.

Atha Athanasiades. Die gefälschten Bilder des Adolf Hitler. News, #16 1996, [Germany], 18-04-1996. Pages 78-80

Sources

Otto Strasser. Hitler and I. Translated [from the French] by Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher.Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1940. Page 203.
Original title: Hitler et moi. Grasset, Paris, [1940]. In 1948 published in German, titled Hitler und ich.
[NN]. Zum ewigen Frieden. [Article on Otto Strasser]. Der Spiegel, Hamburg, 01-09-1949.
https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-44438102.html
Rolv Heuer. Mehr "Krull als Tell". Otto Strasser - Widerstandskämpfer Nr. 1 gegen Hitler? Zeit, Hamburg, 18-04-1969.
https://www.zeit.de/1969/16/mehr-krull-als-tell/komplettansicht
Rolf Rietzel. Das Grab von Onkel Adolfs Nichte. Der Spiegel, Hamburg, 1987/24, 08-06-1987.
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13523361.html
Wolfgang Saxon. Otto Strasser, 76, Theoretician who broke with Hitler, is dead. New York Times, New York, 28-08-1974.
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/28/archives/otto-strasser-76-theqretician-who-broke-with-hitler-is-dead.html
Volker Ullrich. Adolf Hitler. Biographie. Die Jahre des Aufstiegs 1889-1939. Band 1. S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, 2013.Page 309-319.

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Horvath's grave

On the Central Cemetery Vienna (Zentralfriedhof Wien) Hans O.A. Horváth's headstone and grave can be found.

The headstone contained begin 2019 no date of death.

The above picture was made by Sebastian W. Bauer, from Wettingen Switzerland, in 2013.

Early 2022 the Polish Austrian journalist Paweł Kamiński visited the cemetry and noticed that the date of death was inscribed on the headstone: February 10, 2020.

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