Painting by Hitler May Have Hung in Freud's Office

Future fuhrer peddled watercolors in Vienna
By Jane Yager,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 15, 2010 8:04 AM CST
Painting by Hitler May Have Hung in Freud's Office
Handout photo from Mullock's Auctioneers of a painting, believed to be a 1910 self portrait by Adolf Hitler and identified by the initials 'A.H', written beside the figure. What the British auction house claims are a set of paintings and sketches by a young Adolf Hitler have sold at auction for 97,672...   (AP Photo / Mullock's Auctioneers, ho)

Back in 1910, when Sigmund Freud was decorating the walls of his Vienna offices, he may have bought a painting from a struggling young artist who was then peddling his work in Vienna: Adolf Hitler. The discovery of a tiny Hitler watercolor marked on the back with the name of Freud's medical practice, and the story told by the American GI who took the painting from Vienna to Italy after the war, suggest that the Jewish psychoanalyst may have even met the future Nazi dictator 100 years ago.

The story is historically plausible: Hitler and Freud were in Vienna at the same time, and the Viennese Jewish community is known to have helped Hitler sell his paintings and sketches, the Daily Telegraph reports. Almost 30 years later, the father of psychoanalysis fled the rising anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany to live the rest of his days in Britain. The painting is now being auctioned in the UK by its Italian owner.
(More Sigmund Freud stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X