No Bids for Hitler Paintings at Auction

TRIESTE, Italy —  Twenty paintings by Adolf Hitler went unsold at auction Friday after they failed to draw a single bidder.

“There were more journalists and photographers than customers,” said Franco Deboni, owner of the Stadion auction house.

Deboni said he did not think the paintings, offered in a single lot valued at up to $400,000, would be auctioned again.

They were being sold by Imelde Siviero, sister of Rodolfo Siviero, a collector who campaigned for the return of Italian art stolen by the Nazis. He was given the watercolors by the wife of Hitler’s personal secretary after the end of World War II.

The watercolors, painted in the years before World War I, are stark views of churches and buildings in Vienna and Munich. They include the Hofbrau Haus, a brewery that was to play a leading role in the formation of Hitler’s Nazi Party.