Reputed Hitler art sells at auction

Watercolors and sketches attributed to Adolf Hitler sold for twice their estimated price at an auction Tuesday -- but the sale in a tranquil English town was interrupted by a noisy protest by two self-styled “comedy terrorists.”

The works, reputed to have been created by Hitler as he served in the German military during World War I, sold for $220,000 after security staff removed the gate-crashers -- one of whom dressed as the Nazi leader and shouted “Third Reich” after making a mock bid.

The protest exposed sensitivities over the sale of Hitler’s artwork in Lostwithiel, a sleepy tourist town in Cornwall, a county in southwestern England.

Chris Walton, a spokesman for Jefferys Auctioneers, said the 21 watercolors and two sketches, most of them landscapes, sold individually for prices from $6,100 to $19,975. The highest price was for a painting titled “The Church of Preux-au-Bois.”

The pieces were found in a farmhouse in Belgium, not far from where Hitler was stationed in Flanders.

The anonymous owners had the paper tested to determine its age, confirmed the signature and matched landmarks in the paintings to sites where Hitler was posted, Walton said.

It’s impossible to say whether the paintings are genuine. The experts who authenticated them in the 1980s are dead.