By Beatriz Esquivel
Adolf Hitler's past as a failed artist has been the subject of many articles and papers that have tried to figure out what could have made him turn into such a dark figure.
To learn about this part of his life, we can go to the source itself: his own words in My Struggle. After finishing his secondary education, he tried to enter the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, once in 1907, and again in 1908, but he failed both times, and his professors suggested that he could go into architecture, but in order to do that, he first needed to finish his middle education.
But his failure to enter the Academy didn't stop him from keeping up with his paintings; all of these paintings were confiscated after World War IIby the United States, and all of them have been hidden away so nobody can exhibit them. But some of the paintings remained in the hands of private collectors, and some of these have been sold, mainly because there are some people who find appealing the idea to own the work of a mass murderer, but there has been an exception: a painting depicting the Neutor (new gate) of the old Vienna fortifications, signed “A. Hitler.”
It was painted between 1908 and 1913, and for years, it was in the hands of an anonymous lady who inherited it. According to a report by The Express, the painting got to her family when her father bought it for less than a pound at a flea market, but only found out when he got home that the painting was signed by Hitler.
Years later, she tried to get rid of it and sell it, because it was "burning her hands," but she could not find any auction house interested in it, so she decided to donate it to the Dutch Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), which, after a thorough examination, said it had indeed been painted by Hitler himself.
This institute is the current owner of the painting, but even they don't want it, and they have loaned it several times for exhibitions as long as no one profits from it. Also, according to the Institute's director, they have ensured that it is kept out of the circuit of art collectors that deal with Nazi parafernalia.
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For more about world history, click on these links:
The Nazi Persecution Of The Disabled, Homosexuals And Others During WWII
6 Paintings Stolen By The Nazis That We Might Never See Again
The Strange Story Of The Hidden Surreal Wonderland In The Middle Of The Jungle
