Of all the possessions of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler snuck out of Germany by troops, few are considered as rare as a bottle of Bordeaux from his Berghof wine cellar.
One, a 1934 St. Emilion, has emerged, and World War II collectors are readying their bids for the bottle set for an online auction Wednesday at Alexander Historical Auctions of Elkton, Maryland.
Alexander President Bill Panagopulos called the relic “an impossibly rare item to obtain, a bottle of wine from Adolf Hitler’s personal wine cellar at his mountain retreat, the Berghof.”
Over nearly two decades, Secrets has covered the historically important auctions held by Panagopulos. They have often featured items slipped out of the Berghof by soldiers sent to the Bavarian Alps to destroy the resort. He has described very few as “impossibly rare.”
Even before the auction opened for the bottle that he valued at $5,000 to $7,000, one bidder offered $2,500, even though the wine was described as undrinkable due to a damaged cork.
Other items once owned by the madman included in the auction are also drawing the interest of collectors, including a gold pen and pencil set that already has a bid of $4,250.
Panagopulos said that for some bidders, the links to history are important. But others like to collect the artifacts of “bad guys” he has featured, including Charles Manson and Al Capone. The Wednesday auction features Capone’s teacup, expected to sell for up to $3,000.
“Personally-owned possessions of ‘bad guys,’ like those of heroes, have always been sought by collectors. They don’t get treated like icons, but more like a museum relic of the original owner, good or bad,” Panagopulos said.
Bidders, he added, also chase items with air-tight provenance and a good story, and the bottle of Hitler’s St. Emilion has both.
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Here’s how the Alexander website described the wine:
An impossibly rare item to obtain, a bottle of wine from Adolf Hitler’s personal wine cellar at his mountain retreat, the Berghof. The bottle, now but half-full (and certainly not drinkable), is a 1934 St. Emilion bearing a paper label so stating, with an image of the churchy at St. Emilion and indicating that the wine came from ‘Frankenreich,’ or German-occupied France. The bottle is held by a wire cage holding it at a slight tilt, which may have been added later. This item was purchased by one of America’s most noted collectors of German military documents and Lincolniana from militaria dealers Mohawk Arms, who have over fifty years experience. Provenance, available to potential bidders, includes a copy of Mohawk’s 1975 catalog listing which describes their ten-year search for accredited Hitler-owned items, of which this bottle is one, illustrated, and noting that it came from the Berghof. They state: ‘…In 1945 a team of U.S. Army demolition experts were dispatched to the Berghof to completely destroy the Hitler summer residence. One of the G.I.s placed one of the bottles from the cellar in his jacket before the entire building was completely destroyed (with its contents). He then smuggled the bottle home…’. Accreditation mentioned in the description has been lost, but present is a copy of Mohawk’s 1975 letter to the purchaser, invoice, and a copy of the catalog listing. As there was slight leakage, the bottle has been re-corked but remnants of the original cork are included. Unique!
