FRANKFURT – A pair of watercolors signed "Adolf Hitler" and depicting farm scenes fetched a combined total of euro32,000, or about $42,000, at an auction in Germany on Saturday, an auction house official aid.
Kathrin Weidler, a manager at the Weidler Auction House in Nuremberg, declined to identify the new owner of the two paintings -- "Farmstead" and "Farm Buildings on the River."
The minimum bidding price for each painting was euro3,500.
The two watercolors, listed in the catalog as "signed and dated 1914," did not show evidence of a "good painting style," Weidler said.
Still, they attracted a few bidders at the auction house and seven telephone bidders, some from abroad, in an auction that lasted only a few minutes.
The paintings found their way to Russia after World War II and were sold at Saturday's auction on behalf of a Polish owner who lives in Nuremberg, Weidler said. She would not say whether the new owner, who bid by telephone, was from Germany or abroad.
As a young man, Hitler sought to earn his living as an artist. He is believed to have painted hundreds of works, several of which have come up for sale over the years.
Weidler Auction House owner Herbert Weidler has said he sold one four years ago for euro11,000, or about $14,000
In England on Thursday, what a British auction house says was a set of 15 paintings and sketches by the young Hitler sold for the equivalent of nearly $150,000.
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