Earlier today, I posted the following: https://chessdailynews.com/hitler-vs-lenin-in-chess-in-1909/. Now another article has just been published. Did they or didn’t they?
Did Lenin and Hitler face off at a chess board?
03 September, 2009, 19:49
Back in 1909, Adolph Hitler was a jobbing artist in Vienna and Lenin was in exile. The house where they allegedly played the game belonged to a prominent Jewish family, who left the Austro-Hungarian capital in the run-up to the Second World War and leaving a part of their property to the housekeeper. The etching and the chess set pictured on it were among the possessions left.
The etching was allegedly drawn from nature by the future Fuhrer’s art teacher, Emma Lowenstramm, and is dated 1909.
Now the image and the chess set belong to the great-great grandson of the housekeeper, who now wants to sell the items. The unnamed vendor asserts that his father devoted all his life to prove the authenticity of the image. The lot is accompanied by a 300-page research document with proofs that the paper and the signatures are original. The preliminary price of the two items is estimated at £40,000 (approximately $65,000).
Experts still doubt authenticity of the engraving. Historians do not have any confirmed information that Lenin and Hitler ever met at all. They are also not so sure that Lenin happened to be in Vienna in 1909. Moreover, by that time, Lenin was already bald, whereas the engraving pictures somebody not lacking hair (presumably, Hitler is on the left, by the window, and Lenin is opposite him).
The last argument, however, was challenged by the auctioneer, asserting that Lenin could have used a wig for the sake of conspiracy.
Source: http://www.russiatoday.com
I think they did.
Apparently it IS quite possible. I just researched and found a letter by Lenin dated September 20,1909 to M.P Tomsky in Lenin Collected Works 1977 Volume 3 pages 221-222 where he just got back to Paris from Vienna where he had met with Trotsky. In January 1910 over lenin’s opposition the Central Committee decided to re-unify the opposing factions and make Trotsky’s Vienna based Pravda a financially sponsored organ
I think Hitler used the “Berlin” against Lenin’s “Scary Uncle”.
That seems like a MASSIVE stretch and a find that is too good to be true. There have been a lot concocted artifacts from that period cropping up, like the Hitler Diaries.
Think about how unlikely this is. The equivalent to finding an engraving of a young Obama playing chess with Ronald Reagan in 1979.
a] Yes, Hitler might have attended a Lenin speech.
b] Possibly Hitler shook hands with Lenin.
c] More improbable would be finding a picture of Hitler and Lenin in a photo together.
d] More improbable still would be a photo of Lenin and Hitler shaking hands in a photo, like Clinton-Kennedy.
e] An “engraving” of a 20 year-old Hitler and Lenin together is nearly unimaginable.
f] Finally, an engraving of them together ALONE as the subjects of an artwork. What planet does that happen on? You have a better shot at winning the lottery.
g] Finally, they happen to be playing CHESS! A supremely intellectual game which Lenin canonized as the official mark of Russian superiority over the rest of the world. The ultimate struggle of Communism verses National Socialism played out over the chess board!
H] And lastly, they both signed the engraving! How completely coincidental. How many of DaVinci’s models were asked to sign the back of his work?
If I were a betting man, I would wager my house that this work will eventually turn out to be something concocted after 1933.
But if you fold the picture bringing both faces together it forms a familiar picture: the devil’s ass.
Of course it’s fake. The probability of the two meeting is insignificant and the probability of someone painting two such (at that time) unimportant people is even lower.
And it’s not even a good fake, since Lenin should be bald. Removing this discrepancy by “Lenin wore a wig” makes this whole hoax even thiner than it was from the beginning.
Re the comment here that Lenin wrote to Tomsky in September 1909 having just got back from Vienna’ – not that’s wrong. Lenin had just got back from an extended holiday at Bombom in , 30 miles east of Paris in Seine et Marne. apart from brief trips to Brussels and Liege that year he remained largely in Paris.
Re the ‘he wore a wig in exile’ is a very weak argument by the seller. Lenin only wore a wig once that I know of – in the summer of 1917 when he shaved off his bear and wore a wig to get the hell out of Russia in a hurry.
At best this is an intellectual joke, at worst a very obviously retrospective forgery. Lenin would never ever have signed his name to anything at this time! all best, Helen Rappaport, author of Conspirator: Lenin in Exile, just published in UK.
The portrait is a fake! The image of Hitler in the sketch is that of a 40 something year old Adolf and not a 22 year old in 1909! It’s so obvious!