Writer Finds Hitler's Art in Monastery

A Czech publisher and writer has uncovered a chunk of Adolf Hitler's art collection in a Czech monastery north of Prague, AFP reports. Jiri Kuchar announced his seven-painting find yesterday, valuing it at roughly $2.7 million. "They're part of Hitler's collection of about 45 paintings, about 30 statues, a writing table and some gifts, which was declared former Czechoslovakia's war booty," says Kuchar.

Americans had already picked over the paintings left in the monastery, taking the Mannheimer collection (purchased by Hitler in 1941) and the Rothschild collection (confiscated from Vienna in 1938). Among the paintings they left behind: the 1943 "Memory of Stalingrad" by Franz Eichhorts, "Hitler's ace painter," says Kuchar. Over the past five years he has tracked down several paintings and statues belonging to Hitler, some of which later turned up in German or British auction houses. "To put it delicately, let's say they disappeared." (More Adolf Hitler stories.)