A German man who claims to be the last living relative of Adolf Hitler has been handed an €800 fine after being convicted of sexually assaulting a schoolgirl.
Romano-Lukas Hitler, 69, was found guilty by a court in Goerlitz after he kissed a 13-year-old girl, who, for legal reasons, was identified only as Ania R.
Prosecutors took the case to court after a complaint by the girl's father, identified as 60-year-old Piotr, originally from Poland.
Advert
According to reports, Piotr said: "I had put a garage up for sale and Hitler answered the advert. But when he turned up he didn't seem to have much interest in the garage, only in Ania.
"He lured her to his flat with sweets, brought her clothes and plastic flowers and even offered to marry her."
Piotr said when his daughter had told him Hitler had kissed her, he banned her from seeing the older man and filed a complaint with the police.
Advert
Hitler, however, defended himself, saying he simply enjoyed the company of the child and that when he kissed her it had simply been the usual sort of greeting that was normal in Germany and was harmless.
He insisted: "I'm innocent."
His pleas were rejected by Judge Ulrich Schettgen, 62, who found it proven that Hitler had 'kissed' the girl 'against her will on both the neck and cheek'.
Advert
Hitler, who claims he ended up in a monastery when his parents died and was adopted by a Polish family before moving to Germany as an adult to train as a ships helmsman, has said he will appeal the conviction.
He has always insisted it is bad for him to have been related to the German dictator, claiming that his surname was the reason why he struggled to find work.
The 69-year-old added: "The name is like a cross to bear and I wish that on nobody."
However, despite apparently lamenting his connections at his home he reportedly has a picture of the dictator on his wall alongside an image of Angela Merkel.
Advert
Hitler claims he is related to the Nazi leader through his father Alois. He says Alois had a younger brother, whose grandson was his dad.
Historians have discussed two candidates for the father of Alois. The first is Johann Georg Hiedler, whose name was added to Alois's birth certificate later in his life and who was officially accepted as the father of Alois by the Third Reich.
The other is Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, Georg's brother and Alois's step-uncle, who raised Alois through adolescence and later bequeathed him a considerable portion of his life savings.
Featured Image Credit: CENTopics: World News, Interesting