23 Nov 2014

Hitler painting auctioned for $161,000

8:00 pm on 23 November 2014

A 1914 watercolour by Adolf Hitler fetched 130,000 euros ($US161,000) at auction in the German city of Nuremberg.

Generally Hitler's artworks are considered to be of only limited artistic merit.

Generally Hitler's artworks are considered to be of only limited artistic merit. Photo: AFP

The auctioneers said the buyer was a private person from the Middle East who attended the sale in person.

The sellers were two unidentified German sisters in their 70s who the auctioneers said decided to donate around 10 percent of the proceeds to a charity that helps disabled children.

The painting, entitled "Standesamt und Altes Rathaus Muenchen" (Civil Registry Office and Old Town Hall of Munich), is one of about 2000 works that Hitler painted between about 1905 and 1920 as a struggling young artist.

Hitler's Nazi party held mass rallies in Nuremberg between 1933 and 1938. In his autobiography "Mein Kampf", he wrote that, as a young man, his hopes of becoming an artist had been dashed by repeated rejection by Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts.

Reuters reports that five other Hitler paintings have fetched between 5,000 and 80,000 euros at auction.

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