Lost Family Portraits of Hitler's Parents to Be Auctioned : The Price is Reich

                                        Klara Hitler                         Alois Hitler

 The oil paintings of Hitler's parents hung in the Berghof, the sprawling mountian home in the Bavarian Alps where Hitler spent weekends with Eva Braun.

Two lost oil painting of Adolf Hitler's parents are expected to fetch up to $100,000 when they are auctioned next month .

The painting of the Nazi leader's mother . Klara  and his father , Alois , surfaced earlier this year in Orange County , California, where they had been kept by a French family.

Until then the location of the sought-after portraits had been virtually unknown and experts feared they could be  missing forever. But the two famous oil paintings will now be sold alongside several other pieces of Thrid Reich art at Craig Gottieb Militaria Auction in Solana, California on Septembe 1.

The pictures of the Hitlers are understood to be the orginal paintings that were commissioned by the dictator. The paintings hung on the walls of Hitler's mountain retreat, the Berghof, in the Bavarian Alps where he entertained foreigh envoys and would spent weekends  with Eva Braun.

The luxurious mountain home contained a huge reception room equipped with a movie screen and a window 26 feet wide, from which to enjoy the scenery . But after the allies bombed the mansion, the portraits  went missing  and are are now understood to have been taken by a French soldier who liberated them from the mansion. The unknown soldier passed the works of art on to his family  who moved to California and took the portraits with them .

Experts have always believed the works had been lost, but the owners have now come forward to sell the paintings. The portraits are some of the most famous images from the Third Reich period, having appeared on postcards, on Klara Hitler's gravestone and in a period art catalog owned by Hitler.

"These portraits are not rare  - they are one of a kind . They're the only two that exist . So when it's a collecter's one opportunity  or a museum's, the sky is the limit ," Craig Gottileb told KTLA . "The portraits were in Orange County, California, and I got a phone call from the family who has owned them since the 1980s", Mr Gottlieb said.

"Photographs of the portraits that I found show they matched brush stroke for brush stroke . They are authentic . I would stake my entire reputation on it ." The auction lot also includes several additional paintings that were taken from the Hitler household at the same time. Although these  do not have the same value as the portraits of his parents.

Gottlieb said that historically the value of the pieces ' cannot be underestimated .'