Eva Braun’s lilac underwear fetched a price of £2,900, six times more than the expected bid when auctioned recently by Philip Serrell Auctions. When fees were added the price was £3,420.
Other items belonging to Adolf Hitler’s mistress, her sparkling red lipstick and gold ring set anchored with an opal surrounded by six rubies, fetched £1,900.
Also sold were a silver jug, two silver oval dressing table packages, and a silver mounted pendant engraved with her initials. The items would have been taken not long after Hitler and Braun committed suicide in his Berlin bunker near the end of World War II.
Every one of these items was in possession of a British collector who owned them for a long time, said auctioneer Sophie Jones. The undergarments were used but they are clean, and there are no holes. The pale lilac color has faded due to the passage of time.
The ring and pants were taken as souvenirs by an American soldier who found them in an abandoned bunker in the Platterhof Hotel adjacent to Hitler’s Berghof home near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria. He took them back with him to the United States, the Express reported.
Eva Braun, who met Hitler in 1929 when she was 17 years old and he 40, became his mistress and – less than forty hours before they both died – his wife. She did not attend official functions with him but was a part of his household.
When it became obvious in April 1945 the war was lost, she married Hitler a short time before they both died by suicide, he by a gunshot to the head and she by cyanide.