SA: Hitler vases to go under auctioneer s hammer tomorrow

AAP General News (Australia)
04-29-1999
SA: Hitler vases to go under auctioneer s hammer tomorrow

ADELAIDE, April 29 AAP - Two Hungarian porcelain vases from a dinner service owned by Adolf
Hitler will be sold by an Australian auctioneer tomorrow - the 54th anniversary of Hitler's
death.

Between six and 10 bidders, mostly from Europe and the United States, are expected to vie
for the 12.5cm high vases, which are the only surviving pieces of a 48-setting dinner service
commissioned by Admiral Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, for Hitler.

Expected to fetch more than $240,000, the vases were souvenired by American soldier Dan
Conte after Hitler's Bavarian Alps summer residence Berghof was bombed in April 1945.

When US soldiers raised the American flag at the ruins of the mountain mansion, Lieutenant
Conte picked up the vases and took them home to America, where he presented them to his sister
Mary Claire as a wedding present in 1947.

For the next 40 years, they sat on a cabinet shelf in Mary Claire's New York home until,
after her death in 1986 and Dan's death in 1989, her family closely examined the wedding gift.

Stamps on the bases - including the German Eagle with outspread wings gripping a wreathed
swastika in its talons and the arms of Horthy - revealed their significance.

The vases will remain in a bank vault in Florida while the auction is conducted over the
Internet by Adelaide-based Bruce's Auction Gallery at 12 noon tomorrow, 54 years to the day
since Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun committed suicide.

Auctioneer David Kabbani said the vases had attracted widespread interest from Australia
and overseas.

"We still don't know where they will end up, we will have to wait and see," he said.

AAP sn/bm

KEYWORD: VASES

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