A Hitler Painting from Austria, offered for sale, asking price $20,000 (offer of $15,000 rejected)

HITLER PAINTING, oil on card, 7 inches by 11 inches; the bottom right quarter of the painting carries the remains of a layer of varnish. The painting was located in Bad Aussee, Austria, and brought to England , where it presently is. A window cut through the mounting card on the back reveals a handwritten note in Gothic script: "Zur Erinnerung von unserem Führer" - a memento from (or by) our Führer. The close-up shows the characteristic signature, bottom right: "A. Hitler". The owner can produce high-resolution transparencies for further inspection. [Click thumbnail image to inspect]  [Inquire]

 Provenance (History of the painting):

THE present (2004) owner, R., went to Lake Töplitz (in Steiermark, Austria) a few years ago to study some of the myths about this region of late WWII fame. R. learned of an elderly local lady, Edith Hauer-Frischmuth, who had been a resistance fighter at the end of the war, and brought a small camera team to interview her. Together they visited a number of locations in and around Bad Aussee. R. learned of Otto Skorzeny, Adolf Eichmann, Wilhelm Höttl, and other SS figures who haunted Bad Aussee area in 1945.

After leaving Austria R. received further invitations from the lady, who had lived in Alt Aussee since the 1940s. R. returned, did a series of photographs, and learned of her legal battles to sell a villa belonging to her in Vienna; she had instructed Salzburg lawyer Dr. Schubeck.

R. offered to pay Schubeck's fees. She undertook to repay him after the case was over and her Vienna real estate was sold. Frau Hauer could not however get the tenants out, under old Austrian 'protection laws'. The villa's full value could not therefore be realised. The legal costs mounted. Frau Hauer therefore offered this Hitler painting as compensation. She signed ownership over to R., "as compensation for paid legal costs," on October 6, 2003.

This document states that Frau Hauer received the painting 55 years ago from one Magda Scholz. This year (2004) R. learned that Frau Hauer had died at the age of ninety.  [Inquire]

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