Hitler’s Painting Of Lover Goes On Block For $80K
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
An oil portrait believed to have been painted by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler of a little-known former lover will go under the hammer next week with an asking price of 60,000 euros ($74,000), a German auction house said on Thursday.
The painting, signed A. Hitler, 1916, depicts Charlotte Lobjoie, a Frenchwoman whom Hitler met while serving in France during World War One, according to Werner Maser, a leading Hitler scholar who died in 2007. “Portrait of a Girl” – a damaged work painted on hessian – was purchased by Flemish industrialists around 1967, auction house Weidler in Nuremberg said in a statement.
It said it had documents showing it had been exhibited at art galleries in Japan.
The painting in what appears to be a rural setting depicts a young woman with a red scarf loosely on her head that casts a heavy shadow over her face, and holding a pitchfork.
She is wearing a light-colored shirt, open from the neck down, exposing part of her breasts.
Maser, who was referred to by Weidler in its statement, wrote several books about Hitler, providing insight into the mind of the Nazi leader through a close look at his drawings, letters and notes.
Hitler painted for a living in the 1920s before rising to power and leading Germany into World War Two. With Soviet troops closing in on his headquarters in Berlin, he committed suicide in April 1945, along with his mistress Eva Braun whom he married shortly before.—Reuters
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
