Orange man selling Hitler's parents' portraits

The Orange County Register: Orange man selling Hitler's parents' portraits
ORANGE – An Orange resident is auctioning off oil-paint portraits of Adolf Hitler's parents that once hung in one of the Nazi dictator's mountain homes.

Ken Biggs, 72, says he acquired the portraits of Alois and Klara Hitler in France in the early 1970s from his wife's cousin, who was "terrified" to have the paintings and intended to cut up the relics.

The cousin's husband, the story goes, was a French soldier in World War II and took the artwork as war souvenirs from somewhere near the Austrian-German border during the Allied occupation after Nazi forces were defeated.

The soldier cut them out of their frames and rolled them up – along with five other paintings Adolf Hitler owned – and put them into some type of weapon to take home. They sat in a burlap sack at the soldier's home for more than two decades. The soldier's wife was never fond of having them, and she told Biggs she seriously was considering destroying them.

But Biggs talked her into letting him take possession of the artwork for their historical value and so he could sell them to help the cousin, who has experienced financial hardship since the death of her spouse in the 1950s.

"I thought they should take their place in history," he said of the paintings.

Biggs had to promise his wife's cousin that he would never reveal who gave him the paintings, which is why he asked the Register not to disclose his French wife's first or maiden names.

"Anything to do with Hitler still puts a lot of fear in many Europeans who lived through the war," Biggs said.

Biggs said he will keep some of the proceeds to reimburse himself for the money he put into the effort but most of the proceeds will go to his wife's cousin.

The five other paintings that Biggs acquired include depictions of a bridge in Amberg, two separate bunkers, Roman ruins and an eagle in the Alps.

All seven paintings owned by Hitler are up for auction Sept. 1-17 at cgmauctions.com by Craig Gottlieb Militaria, but the two pictures of Hitler's parents are clearly getting the most attention.

"These portraits are very famous images from the Third Reich period, having appeared on postcards, on Klara Hitler's gravestone, as well as in a period-catalog of art owned by Hitler," stated the auctioneer. "Until recently, the whereabouts of these portraits were unknown."

Gottleib says black-and-white photographs of the two portraits held in the "Katalog der Privat-Gallerie Adolf Hitler" listing at the Library of Congress depict the exact two works of art, "down to every last brush stroke." Another photograph from the era shows the set of portraits hanging in one of Hitler's rooms at Berghof, one of Hitler's residences in the Bavarian Alps of Germany, he said.

Due to improper storage, the paintings suffered minor damage and were professionally restored by a company that performs work for major museums worldwide, Gottleib said. He estimates the pair of portraits of Hitler's parents, which will be auctioned together, will fetch at least $100,000.