Century-old watercolour by Hitler to go on the auction block

Art collectors have the chance to get their hands on a piece of history, with a 100-year-old watercolour by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler going on the auction block.

The painting of the old registry office in Munich is thought to have been painted by Hitler in 1914, when he would have been aged 25, and bears the signature ‘A. Hitler’ in the corner.

It is being sold by two elderly sisters, whose art dealer grandfather bought it in Munich in 1916, and it comes with the original bill of sale.

The painting is being auctioned through Weidler auction house in Nuremberg tomorrow, with a starting price of 4,500 euros (£3,573) – though dealers say it could fetch more than 10 times that amount, if the price of previous Hitler originals is anything to go by.

A set of 13 paintings, believed to be among the German dictator’s early works, sold for £95,000 in an auction at Ludlow Racecourse in Shropshire in 2009, while in 2012 one of his nighttime landscapes fetched 32,000 euros (£25,000).

Hitler was interested in art from an early age, and applied to the Vienna Academy of Art in 1908 – but was rejected.

Some have speculated that this rejection, which he believed was thanks to a Jewish professor, helped shape his character and ideology in the years to come.