Heinrich Hoffmann (12 September 188515 December 1957) was Adolf Hitler's official photographer, and a Nazi politician and publisher, who was a member of Hitler's intimate circle. Hoffmann's photographs were a significant part of Hitler's propaganda campaign to present himself and the Nazi Party as a significant mass phenomenon. He received royalties from all uses of Hitler's image, even on postage stamps, which made him a millionaire over the course of Hitler's rule. After the Second World War he was tried and sentenced to four years in prison for war profiteering. He was classified by the Allies' Art Looting Investigators to be a "major offender" in Nazi art plundering of Jews, as both art dealer and collector and his art collection, which contained many artworks looted from Jews, was ordered confiscated by the Allies. In 1956, the Bavarian State ordered all art under its control and formerly possessed by Hoffmann to be returned to him. Life and career After completing his primary school education, Hoffmann trained as a photographer from 1901 to 1903. Until 1909, he found employment in Heidelberg, Frankfurt am Main, Bad Homburg, Switzerland, France and England. By 1909, he owned a photographic shop in Munich and started to work as a press photographer. In 1913, he founded the image agency Photobericht Hoffmann. In 1917, Hoffmann was conscripted into the German Army and served in France as a photo correspondent with the Bavarian Fliegerersatz-Abteilung I. In 1919, he joined the Bavarian Einwohnerwehren, a right-wing citizens' militia. That year he witnessed the short-lived post-war Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich, and published a collection of photographs he had taken as Ein Jahr Bayrische Revolution im Bilde ("One Year of Bavarian Revolution in Pictures"). The accompanying text, by Emil Herold, suggested a connection between the "Jewish features" shown in the photographs and the subjects' left-wing policies. Odeonsplatz picture A noted photograph, taken by Hoffmann in Munich's Odeonsplatz on 2 August 1914, apparently shows a young Hitler among the crowd cheering the outbreak of World War I. The photo was later used in Nazi propaganda, although its authenticity has been questioned. Hoffmann claimed that he only discovered Hitler in the photograph in 1929, after the Nazi leader had visited the photographer's studio. Learning that Hoffmann had photographed the crowd in the Odeonsplatz, Hitler told Hoffmann that he had been there, and Hoffmann said he then searched the glass negative of the image until