Lot 314
STOOL FROM ADOLF HITLER'S QUARTERS IN THE FUHRER BUNKER
A very rare relic from Adolf Hitler's Berlin bunker, the site of the Third Reich's "last stand", a four-legged stool present in Hitler's personal quarters, when he and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide on April 30, 1945. The 40 x 40 x 50 cm. stool bears four square legs with cross braces three-quarters up from the ends of the legs which are finished in a dark oak varnish which remains but for a few chips in very good condition. The top of the stool is upholstered in a rust-brown finely woven fabric bearing a repeating designed in a darker thread of four oak leaves with their bases meeting at a central point, reminiscent of a Maltese Cross. The fabric has faded a bit, bears some tears at the corners and has been re-tacked in a few places, but is otherwise completely intact.
On April 30, 1945 Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in Hitler's private quarters in the underground Fuhrerbunker beside the Reichs Chancellery building in Berlin. Over the following two days, those who remained attempted to "break out" from the besieged center of the city, including Martin Bormann, Traudl Junge and her fellow secretaries, SS officers and guards, etc., rather than face the retribution of the oncoming Russians. By 3:00 AM on May 2, only radio officer Rochus Misch and engineer Johannes Hentschel remained in the bunker. Misch is believed to have left shortly after 3:00 AM, but Hentschel remained on the scene to maintain generators providing electricity to the on-site hospital. At about 5:00 AM on May 2, a civilian woman "Wally Muller", accompanied by her friends, an Italian cook and a Volksturm member, crept into the bunker in search of food. Word of Hitler's death had already been made unofficially public, and the Volksturm fighter, who had participated in the construction of the bunker, suggested they go there to search for rations. The story of the group's exploits was recorded by our consignor, to whom Muller recounted the history on many occasions over a period of fifteen years. His German transcript, included, offers a very detailed account of the group's exploits, describing the group's decision to go to the bunker, interrogation by soldiers as to their actions, lulls in artillery allowing their travel, entry into the bunker and Hitler's quarters, lack of food and decision to find items to sell on the black market, items looted (including a photo of Hitler's dog Blondi), encounters with thieving Russians, and so on. Concerning Hitler's personal quarters, Muller related: "...We went down the stairs, through a hallway and then to the right. Paule led us...I was very disappointed that we didn't find any food in Hitler's anteroom or in his living room...it smelled terribly like a toilet...everything was dirty and wet and smelled burned...I took two nice stools with a brocade, one from the anteroom and one from the living room...". Almost all of the items looted came from Hitler's quarters, including a total of two stools, the photo of Blondi, a vase, a cuckoo clock, a cooking pot, albums of stamps and coins, and even a wooden door to fix a hole in their roof. Upon Muller's death, she left the stools and some other relics to our consignor, a historian and her close friend, who has included his own letter of provenance. Our example is the footstool from Hitler's anteroom. An identical stool with the same fabric, as well as a smaller footstool also bearing the identical fabric is visible in photographs of Hitler's ruined quarters published in Der Spiegel in 2004, with copies available from Getty Images. This stool was also displayed in the Berliner Unterwelten ("Berlin Underground") museum for three years. Sold with the consignor's multiple statements of provenance, a copy of a photo of Wally Muller, images from Der Spiegel showing similar stools, museum correspondence, etc. Relics recovered from Hitler's Berlin bunker is rare - items from his personal apartment are virtually impossible to locate.
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