Adolf Hitler painting of Bavarian castle among works fetching €391,000 at auction

The chocolate box scene was bought for €100,000 (£71,500) at a controversial auction in Nuremberg on Saturday by an unknown buyer. It carries the inscription: "To the 80th birthday of Kommerzienrat (councillor of commerce) Otto von Steinbeis".

Of the 14 works sold most are signed “A Hitler” and were produced between 1904 and 1922 long before the Nazi dictator took power. They include drawings of flowers, buildings in Vienna and Prague as well as a female nude.

Weidler auction house revealed that the bidders were from China, France, Brazil, Germany and the United Arab Emirates. “These collectors do not specialise in this painter, but have a general interest in high-value art,” auctioneer Kathrin Weidler told DPA news.

Most of the paintings auctioned carry the signature ‘A. Hitler’ Hitler spent much of his late teens and early twenties trying, and failing, to make it as an artist. He is believed to have produced around 700 pictures and his work is generally acknowledged by art critics to be of limited merit – but they continue to fetch thousands at auction each year.

Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that his hopes of becoming an artist were crushed by repeated rejections from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.

Weidler auction house last year facilitated the record-breaking purchase of a Hitler painting depicting Munich’s civil registry office for €130,000, nearly three times its estimate of €48,000, by an unknown Middle Eastern buyer in November.

The auctioneers told press on Friday that any complaints should be addressed to the sellers.

Although it is perfectly legal to sell artwork by Hitler – so long as it doesn’t feature Nazi symbols, that is – to appease critics Weidler has said it will donate a percentage of its commission on the sale to charity.

The watercolour painting ‘Karlskirche in Wien’ (St. Charles church in Vienna) by Hitler That will be no consolation, however, to the families of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust and to others who feel uneasy at the trade in Hitler’s name that seems to be so healthy in the art world.

Also, quite which charity Weidler will donate the proceeds to is unclear considering the fact that when it made a similar pledge concerning the Munich painting last November no institution, not even the Altstadtfreunde Nürnberg (Friends of the old city of Nuremberg) society, would accept its money.

15 Facts You Didn't Know About Hitler

Despite his being rejected from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts at least twice, Birgit Schwarz, author of Genius Delusions: Hitler and Art, claims the Nazi leader remained convinced of his extraordinary artistic talent until he committed suicide in his Berlin bunker in 1945.

"The extent to which Hitler considered himself an artistic genius has been, underestimated," Ms Schwarz said in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine. "Many of his actions were driven by this self-perception and his overheated artist’s ego. His love of art led to the heart of evil."

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