Topeka ? A statue given to Adolf Hitler on his 46th birthday will be sold at auction this week in Topeka.

The handsome bust of a man wearing a crown is a copy of the Bamberg Rider, a famous statue of a revered medieval German emperor.

The bust came to the United States in 1945 after Pauline Beatty’s husband, Marion, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army during the occupation of Germany, picked it out of the debris of the chancellory in Berlin. Marion Beatty died in 1967.

After selling her home of 45 years, Pauline Beatty decided to sell the bust at an auction Saturday at Kull Auction and Real Estate Co. Inc.

Dan Kull, president and chief executive officer of Kull Auction and Real Estate, said the Bamberg Rider was a warrior. “I think that’s the reason he was given to Hitler. He fashioned himself as a great warrior,” Kull added.

The statue in Bamberg, Germany, was carved in the 1200s. Kull said he thought the bust was carved in the mid- to late-1800s.

Who gave the bust to Hitler remains a mystery.

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A silver plaque with it reads: “To the creator of the new Germany and the new German Army, April 20, 1935. F.S.”

April 20, 1935, was Hitler’s 46th birthday, but it’s unclear who F.S. was. One theory is that the initials stand for Fritz Sauckel, an early Nazi Party member and Hitler’s director of labor who ordered the deportation of 5 million people from occupied Europe to work as slaves in Germany.

Kull declined to estimate the bust’s worth, but said its link to Hitler and the fact that it was given to him before the Holocaust add to its value.

Marion Beatty commanded an Army claims unit, later was chief of claims for the U.S. 7th Army in Europe and was judge of the U.S. District Court, Military Government, in Augsburg, Germany.

Col. Beatty found the bust in Berlin, which had been heavily bombed during the war, Pauline Beatty said.