Rare Nazi wine to be sold at auction

Two rare bottles of “Führerwein”, made on the orders of Adolf Hitler, are set to go under the hammer at an auction in Glasgow.

‘Führerwein’

Hitler was famously teetotal but was known to gift high-ranking German officers with bottles of “Führerwein”, meaning leader’s wine, according to a report by The Daily Mail. 

One of the bottles, an unopened 1.5 litre magnum of red wine, was made in 1943 to mark the dictator’s 54th birthday and was given to a German officer who, after the war, gave it to a Hungarian prisoner of war whose family it has remained with ever since.

It features an image of Hitler, a wax swastika stamp and the stamp of the Reichszeugmeisterei – the central office that supplied Nazi equipment.

The wine is thought to have been made in Germany and believed to be 12% Schwarzer Tafelwein – black table wine.

It was recently handed to a Glaswegian auction house to be sold in an online auction and is expected to sell for somewhere in the region of £2,000, however experts have said that it is likely to be “undrinkable”.

Dominic Hughes, from McTear’s Auctioneers in Glasgow, told The Daily Mail, said: “The bottle was consigned to us by a Hungarian man whose father had procured it during World War II. The owner’s father was taken as a prisoner of war and when he returned home he was given this bottle by a German soldier. It has been in his family ever since. Hitler commissioned the red wine to be made for his 54th birthday to give as presents to his general staff.

“He was so self-obsessed that he called the wine Führerwein and insisted the label carried a picture of himself on it. The wine was possibly produced in Germany and would not have been amazing when it was bottled, but now it would be completely undrinkable.”

He added: “I think that the bottle is an important historical artefact – it is certainly not a bottle that you would come across very often, if at all.”

A 75cl second bottle of “Führerwein”, made in 1944 and bottled for Hitler’s 55th birthday, is also up for sale, and has an estimated selling price of £600.

Hitler shot himself in his underground bunker at the Reich Chancery in Berlin in 1945, days after his 56th birthday.