Berlin (AFP) — A long-lost oil painting of Nazi-era Berlin’s most notorious brothel madam, Kitty Schmidt, has been rediscovered and was presented to the public in the German capital on Thursday.

Madam Kitty’s opulent salon, located in an upscale Berlin neighbourhood, was a den of espionage wired by the Nazis to spy on prominent visitors.

“Between 1939 and 1942, diplomats, foreign journalists and even high-ranking Nazi officials were spied on without their knowledge,” Urs Brunner, the new owner of the painting, told AFP.

A woman who bought the painting on the cheap at a Berlin junk shop in 1999 recently contacted Brunner and fellow author Julia Schrammel.

The two Austrian writers are co-authors of the 2020 book “Kitty’s Salon: Sex, Spying and Surveillance in the Third Reich”.

The paint

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