Andreas Albrecht, an art dealer from Zinnowitz, said the masks were recently found by the daughter of the man who made them.

Sculptor Georg Halbritter made the masks of the three notorious RAF figures just hours after they had killed themselves in prison in 1977.

They went missing not long afterwards – until Halbritter’s daughter recently went through her dead father’s things and found them in a cardboard box marked “the three criminals.”

Albrecht told Focus magazine, “Most people are shocked or disgusted when I show them the masks.” He said he wants to give them to a museum, “so they do not fall into the hands of admirers.”

Baader, Ensslin and Raspe killed themselves after hearing that the hijacking of a plane, carried out to put pressure on the authorities to free 11 RAF prisoners, had ended in failure.