Did Freud Own a Hitler Painting?

LONDON (Feb. 15) -- Since 1945, psychologists have pored over the paintings Adolf Hitler created as a struggling artist in the years before World War I, looking for insight into the murderous Nazi leader's young mind. Now a British auction firm is selling an early Hitler watercolor, which it says may have hung in Sigmund Freud's Vienna office.

But some Freud experts dispute the suggestion that the Jewish father of modern psychology had a firsthand opportunity to study the soul of the warmongering despot.

The painting, due to be sold by Mullock's Specialist Auctioneers in central England next month, depicts a church and mountains, and is signed in one corner "A. Hitler - 1910." The back of the 8-by-4-inch watercolor is inscribed with a line of Italian reading, "Studio Medico Sigmund Freud Vienne," the name of the psychologist's medical practice in Vienna. (Several of Freud's patients and employees are known to have spoken Italian.)

So is it possible that as Hitler was mooching around the Austrian city between 1907 and 1913, selling his third-rate daubs to tourists and locals, Freud or someone he knew might have bought one from the Führer-to-be?

"This painting is exactly the sort of cheap piece of art you'd see hanging on the walls of dental surgeries and hospital waiting rooms across Europe at the time," says Mullock's auctioneer Richard Westwood-Brookes. "It's not too far beyond the realms of possibility that this little struggling artist, who was selling his paintings on the street, would have sold this work to one of Freud's assistants or perhaps to Freud himself."

The auction house acquired the work from a respected Italian collector, who in turn claims he bought it from an American soldier who grabbed the painting from Freud's abandoned practice at Berggasse 19 after the Allies captured Vienna in 1945.

However, Freud experts have doubts about the watercolor's alleged provenance. Peter Nömaier, spokesman for the Freud Museum in Vienna, which now occupies Berggasse 19, notes that the psychologist took almost all of his possessions with him when he fled the city for London in 1938. He says any works of art left behind -- especially those signed by Adolf Hitler -- would almost certainly have been seized by the Austrian authorities when Freud left the building. Because the psychologist catalogued his extensive collection of ancient Roman, Greek and Egyptian antiquities, Freud would have recorded this painting in his diaries or letters, Nömaier believes.

Ivan Ward, education director at London's Freud Museum, says that while it's possible Freud sold the painting before going into exile, he believes it's more probable that the work -- if it was snatched from Berggasse 19 -- was owned by another of the property's residents. Following the psychologist's departure, the apartment block was used to house Jews on their way to death camps, and then in 1942 it was handed over to several Austrian families, including those of high-ranking Nazis.

"So it's possible that the painting could have come from Freud's apartment," says Ward, "but it might have been owned by one of the later tenants."

Westwood-Brookes accepts that the painting may have belonged to one of the Nazi residents. "A lot of the items 'liberated' by Allied servicemen toward the end of the war more often than not came from the homes of influential party members," he says. "And these high-ranking Nazis would have been the sort of people who'd want to have one of these paintings hanging in their lounge."

However, he jokes that if Freud had been forced to choose what possessions to pack when he left Vienna, "he definitely would not have taken a painting by the man responsible for driving him out of the country. An Adolf Hitler watercolor wouldn't have had pride of place in his new London home."

Despite questions over the Freud link, Mullock's says the watercolor is likely a genuine Hitler. "It's consistent with the sort of subjects Hitler was painting in those days," says Westwood-Brookes. "He tended to do four types of studies. There were landscapes and animal studies, which he sold to tourists. A bit later he did architectural drawings, which were not that bad. And he did these views of churches; he was obsessed with churches."

A continuing fascination with all things Third Reich means that however dubious the Freud connection, the watercolor is still expected to sell for about $12,500. It's possible to speculate that if the young Hitler had found a few more buyers for his mostly mediocre works, the horrors of World War II may have been avoided.

"One of the ironies of history is that Hitler wanted to be a proper artist," says Westwood-Brookes. "He was turned down by the Vienna Academy of Art on three occasions, because they said he wasn't good enough. If they'd have accepted him, who knows? The world might be very different today."