A desk and chair that belonged to Adolf Hitler when he signed the ill-fated 1938 Munich agreement have been put up for sale. The private sale this month is tipped to fetch up to a million dollars (780,000 euros) for the anonymous US collector who owns them, said British art dealer Minas Katchadorian. It is a fine quality, modest bourgeois piece of German furniture of that period, which has been in obscurity for decades. The furniture, which included a desk, a bookshelf, a table, and chairs, was manufactured by the former Bavarian court furniture maker, M Ballin.
The rectangular desk has a leather writing surface in its center and a drawer on each side with each latch bearing the Ballin company name. Below the drawers are cupboards and in the left-hand one there is an iron plate bolted to the base – it is thought possible, for a safe. Little is known about how the desk and chair found their way to America but the US government held a sale of wartime confiscated artifacts during the early 1970s. It is possible that this was when the furniture was sold into private hands. Separately, 21 watercolors and sketches believed to be Hitler’s work will also be sold on September 26, after spending 70 years at the bottom of a suitcase in an attic in Belgium.
Adolf Hitler- The avatar of fascism posed the century’s greatest threat to democracy and redefined the meaning of evil forever. Wonder who is going to cough up a million $ for this man’s personal effects. It may well find itself in a museum or a university collection if it is not bought by another private buyer.
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