The ‘Hitler’ artworks found in Birkirkara that are probably fake

Last August, while scavenging through a garage sale in Birkirkara, an art collector stumbled upon a box with three paintings and some silver items.

Two of the paintings depicted noble stags in a forest. One shows a stag standing tall in front of a sunset, while the other depicts the animal crossing a river stream.

Without thinking twice, the enthusiastic art collector bagged the items for €20.

Back at home, he realised the paintings were dirty, and one had a minor rip on the canvas, so he sent them to a restorer for cleaning and repair.

It was during the restoration of the 24 by 10-inch paintings that the artist’s signature was revealed.

The initials ‘A.H’ and the date ‘1905’ prompted the collector and restorers to suspect that the signature could belong to one of the most powerful and notorious dictators of the 20th century: Adolf Hitler.

Before he ascended to power as the leader of Nazi Germany, Hitler was a struggling artist.

At the age of 18, he moved to Vienna and applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts but was rejected twice. He made a living there by selling hiswatercolours of landmarks in the city, which he copied from postcards.

In his book Mein Kampf, he...