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NAZIS

‘Hitler artwork’ pulled by German auction house over forgery fears

A German auction house on Thursday scrapped the planned sale of 26 artworks attributed to Adolf Hitler, after doubts emerged about their authenticity just days before they were due to go under the hammer.

'Hitler artwork' pulled by German auction house over forgery fears
Hitler in the Reichstag on May 4th, 1941. Photo: Deutsches Bundesarchiv/WikiCommons

Five other paintings signed “A. Hitler”, all of them watercolours, will still be auctioned off on Saturday as scheduled, according to the Weidler auction house in the southern city of Nuremberg.

SEE ALSO: Hitler paints and sketches to be auctioned in Bavaria

A vase, wicker armchair and table cloth presumed to have belonged to the late Nazi dictator also remain on offer in what Weidler has billed a “special auction”.

“Unfortunately we must inform you that some of the pictures have been dropped because of a review,” the auction house said in a statement sent to the Spiegel news weekly.

The move came after prosecutors on Wednesday collected 63 artworks from the Weidler premises bearing the signature “A.H.” or “A. Hitler”, over suspicions that the works were not created by Hitler himself.

Twenty-six of the works had been advertised for Saturday's auction, consisting of watercolours, oil paintings and sketches.

SEE ALSO: Explained: Why German police have seized 'fake' Hitler watercolours

The Nuremberg-Fürth prosecutor's office has opened an investigation against unknown persons “on suspicion of falsifying documents and attempted fraud,” chief prosecutor Antje Gabriels-Gorsolke told AFP.

Investigators will now examine the works to determine if they are fakes or originals.

“If they turn out to be fakes, we will then try to determine who knew what in the chain of ownership,” Gabriels-Gorsolke said.

The auction house had cooperated fully and had handed over the works voluntarily, she added.

Sales of alleged artworks by Hitler, who for a time tried to make a living as an artist in his native Austria, have long been controversial – and have often proved to involve fakes.

German police last month seized three watercolours presented as Hitler's works before they were due for auction in Berlin, claiming they were forged.

The Alpine and Rhenish landscapes were dated 1910 and 1911 and were signed A. Hitler and offered by auction house Kloss.

Prices start at €45,000

The five paintings remaining for Saturday's auction in Nuremberg are watercolours of landscapes, with one depicting a mountain lake view carrying the highest starting price at €45,000.

Hitler tried to enrol in the Vienna Academy of Arts as a young man but was rejected for lack of talent. He continued painting, however, and copied landscapes from postcards which he sold to tourists.

Hitler went on to head the Nazi party and became Germany's chancellor in 1933 before leading the country into World War II and seeking to exterminate Jews.

He committed suicide on April 30th, 1945, ending the Nazi reign of terror. A 2015 auction of Hitler watercolours fetched nearly €400,000.

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NAZIS

German justice contaminated by Nazis in post-war years

Germany's justice system was still filled with former Nazis well into the 1970s, as the Cold War coloured efforts to root out fascists, according a damning official inquiry presented Thursday.

Professors Friedrich Kießling and Christoph Safferling present their report
Professors Friedrich Kießling and Christoph Safferling present their report "State Security in the Cold War". Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Uwe Anspach

In the 600-page collection of findings entitled “State Security in the Cold War”, historian Friedrich Kiessling and legal scholar Christoph Safferling focused on the period from the early 1950s until 1974.

Their research found that between 1953 and 1959, around three in four top officials at the federal prosecutor’s office, which commissioned the report, had belonged to the Nazi party.

More than 80 percent had worked in Adolf Hitler’s justice apparatus, and it would take until 1972 before they were no longer in the majority.

“On the face of it they were highly competent lawyers… but that came against the backdrop of the death sentences and race laws in which they were involved,” said Margaretha Sudhof, state secretary at the justice ministry, unveiling the report.

“These are disturbing contradictions to which our country has long remained blind.”

‘Combat mission’

It was not until 1992, two years after Germany’s national reunification, that the last prosecutor with a fascist background left the office.

“There was no break, let alone a conscious break, with the Nazi past” at the federal prosecutor’s office, the authors concluded, stressing “the great and long continuity” of the functions held and “the high number” of officials involved in Hitler’s regime.

Chief federal prosecutor Peter Frank commissioned the study in 2017. The federal prosecutor’s office is one of Germany’s most powerful institutions, handling the most serious national security cases including those involving terrorism and espionage.

With more than 100 prosecutors, it is “the central actor in the fight against terror,” the report authors said, underlining its growing role in the decades since the September 11th, 2001 attacks in the United States.

The researchers were given unfettered access to hundreds of files labelled classified after the war, and found that rooting out alleged communists was often prioritised over other threats, including from the far right.

“In the 1950s the federal prosecutor’s office had a combat mission – not a legal but a political one: to pursue all the communists in the country,” the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung said in a summary of the report.

‘Recycling’ Nazis

The fact that West Germany widely used former officials from the Nazi regime in its post-war administration had long been known.

For example, Hans Globke served as chief of staff and a trusted confidant to former conservative West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer between 1953 and 1963 and was responsible for recruitment to top posts.

However, Globke had also been a senior civil servant in the Nazi-era interior ministry and was involved in the drafting of the 1935 Nuremberg race laws that imposed the first dramatic restrictions on Jews.

In recent years, systematic digging into the past of key ministries and institutions has unearthed a troubling and previously hidden degree of “recycling” of Third Reich officials in the post-war decades.

A 2016 government report revealed that in 1957, more than a decade after the war ended, around 77 percent of senior officials at the justice ministry had been members of the Nazi party. That study, also carried out by Safferling, revealed that the number of former Nazis at the ministry did not decline after the fall of the regime but actually grew in the 1950s.

Part of the justification was cynical pragmatism: the new republic needed experienced civil servants to establish the West German justice system. Furthermore, the priorities of the Allies who won the war and “liberated” the country from the Nazis were quickly turned upside down in the Cold War context.

After seeking to de-Nazify West Germany after 1945, the aim quickly shifted to building a capitalist bulwark against the communist threat. That approach often meant turning a blind eye to Germans’ previous involvement in the Third Reich.

In recent years, Germany has embarked on a twilight attempt to provide justice for concentration camp victims, placing several former guards in their 90s on trial for wartime crimes.

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