On Saturday, 14 works by Adolf Hitler fetched $446,000 at auction in Nuremberg, where the artist once made grandiloquent speeches about national art (and much else). The amount is considerable given Hitler's modest achievements as a painter. One could view the pictures as memorabilia rather than art as such, and consider the buyers to be guilty of bad taste, if not worse. But I would argue that Germany needs to hunt down as many of these works as possible and exhibit them to the public. Looking Read more [...]

BERLIN The man who persuaded a Cold War conservative leader in West Germany to save Communist East Germany from insolvency has died in Bavaria, where he fled just after the Berlin Wall came down.In 1983, Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski convinced Bavarian state premier Franz Josef Strauss, an ardent anti-communist and former Defense Minister, to lend his nearly bankrupt country a billion of West Germany's marks, prized as an enviably hard currency.As the head of East Germany's "Kommerzielle Koordierung" Read more [...]

G7 leaders try to find directions to ending poverty at the summit in Bavaria: Oxfam Germany stunt. Photo: Gawain Kripke/Oxfam America. Making sense of the G7 commitment on hunger and malnutrition In Bavaria, the G7 announced an “aim” to lift 500 million people from hunger and malnutrition by 2030.  The flurry of reaction was generally enthusiastic, although there were some dissenters. In the calmer aftermath, there’s a question about what, exactly, the G7 leaders Read more [...]

The company – which is called Bavaria because it makes Bavarian-style pilsner – aims to raise its profile as a family-owned and run operation. Managing director Rob Page told OLN: “We have been in the UK since 1985 but we haven’t ever really talked to consumers about the history of the Swinkels family. It’s important that we are a genuinely imported beer and we have provenance and heritage.  “Consumers are looking for things with provenance and history and something slightly different. Read more [...]

FLOODING MENACE 5. Flood control master plan to address Metro flooding - Palace To prepare for the rainy season, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) are working on flood control and drainage improvement projects in Metro Manila, Malacañang said on Sunday, June 21. Preparations include the rehabilitation of 15 major pumping stations, dredging and declogging of drainage channels, and raising the height of roads and Read more [...]

A Chinese art collector was among the buyers of 14 watercolour paintings and drawings by Adolf  Hitler from about a century ago that were sold at auction in Germany at the weekend for nearly €400,000 (US$450,000). The most expensive painting, of King Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria - now a popular tourist attraction - went to a buyer from China for €100,000, the Nuremberg-based Weidler auctioneers said. Other paintings sold at the auction included a view of Prague in the Read more [...]

Experts consider Hitler’s paintings to be mediocre at best, but that doesn’t mean anonymous bidders won’t pay big money at an auction for them – leaving many in Germany queasy at the thought of profiting from the Nazi leader. According to the New York Times, there were 14 paintings in a recent auction collection that went for $440,000. The most expensive, a watercolor of Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, sold for $113,000 (€100,000) to an unidentified buyer from China. A still-life of some Read more [...]

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Writer and musician Hinemoana Baker hopes to further explore her German whakapapa connections during her Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer’s Residency. She says her mother’s ancestors were from Oberammergau in Bavaria. She will work on a new collection of poetry and attend poetry events in Poland and Belarus. Baker also wants to finish writing the book she started last year as Writer in Residence at Victoria University about her father's experiences at Sunnybank children's home and her own Read more [...]

A collection of watercolor paintings made by Adolf Hitler fetched $450,000 dollars at a German auction over the weekend and saw the highest price paid for one of the Nazi leader’s paintings to date, according to the Independent. The most expensive painting, which sold for about $113,000, depicted the famed Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, Germany, a 19th-century palace that was the inspiration for Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle. It was signed “A. Hitler” and was dated 1910. The Read more [...]