When 21 paintings “attributed to Adolf Hitler” were auctioned in Cornwall, south-west Britain on Tuesday, TV crews from all over the world were there, interviewing bluff auctioneer Ian Morris and filming the atmospheric premises of his company, Jefferys, reached through an ancient-looking stone archway and crowded with musty furniture and stuffed birds.
Bidders from Japan, Russia, New Zealand and South Africa turned up to try to pick up a Hitler for their living room walls.
And if the scene wasn’t bizarre enough, “comedy terrorist” Aaron Barshak, who gatecrashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party, briefly evaded the bouncers to get into the auction room and bid ?6 million for a painting before being dragged away.
What a shame this peach of an art news story is based on nothing more than a forger’s clumsy attempt to copy the dreary style of one of the world’s worst artists. Even if the paintings sold were authentic Hitlers, the media’s interest would be an example of our unthinking intoxication with fame and infamy.
But that did not seem to put off the bidders who turned up in force to Lostwithiel. The collection sold for ?118,000, more than double the estimate. The most expensive lot went for ?10,500, a watercolor of the Church of Preux-au-Bois.
But just who was buying the sketches is unclear. One buyer, who identified himself as Carlo from Estonia, said he was working for an east European businessman, whom he would not name. “I had a budget to bid for anything that has Hitler’s signature. I have something to take back.”
A pencil sketch of a chateau was snapped up by a British businessman, who again preferred to remain anonymous, for ?3,800. Another sketch went for ?2,600, the buyer explaining: “I bought these on a whim; I hadn’t intended to bid.
The auctioneers are covering themselves by saying the works are only “attributed,” but to my eye, these are crude and obvious forgeries; it would be amazing if they were anything else. People have been faking Hitler’s paintings since he became chancellor of Germany in 1933.
In fact, there is a link between the paintings on sale tomorrow — apparently done by the young Hitler to earn a little money when he was unemployed before 1914 — and one of the most notorious frauds of modern times.
In 1983, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper found himself in a bank vault in Germany inspecting a set of notebooks claimed to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler. What convinced him of their authenticity, he said, was the accompanying documents supposedly rescued along with Hitler’s diaries from a plane crash in 1945. The diaries were quickly exposed as a con; what is less well-known is that forged paintings were crucial to that con. Trevor-Roper admitted he was especially swayed by the signature on the paintings — “above all, signed paintings and drawings by Hitler.’’ Like the diaries, that too was the work of the forger Konrad Kujau.
Despite Kujau’s confession, some of these pictures have stayed in the mainstream of historical documents. In a book published as recently as 2004 about cultural politics in Nazi Germany, the author gets very excited about the significance of light in Nazi mythology, and illustrates his argument with a drawing by Hitler of a fist holding a blazing torch. But this is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of “Hitler” art works forged by Kujau. This image is credited to a man who provides a link with the sale in Cornwall.
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