Hitler died wealthy.

According to a new German television documentary, Hitler liked money, both for the luxuries it bought him and the loyalties it ensured, and he amassed a lot of it.

In all the continuing fascination with Hitler since his suicide on April 30, 1945, in his Berlin bunker as the Soviet Army closed in, little attention has been paid, until now, to his personal finances.

Abstemious in his public image, Hitler liked to live grandly. He paid much attention to his income from his own writing and from the copyright fees for his photographs, said Ingo Helm, a 47-year-old freelance journalist and filmmaker, who spent over a year making ''Hitler's Money,'' which will be shown later this month on a state-owned station, ARD.

''Hitler saw himself as an unrecognized genius, and in order to change this situation he was very interested in power, money and social advancement,'' Mr. Helm said in an interview today, after word of his film was made public in German media. ''All this was balsam for the tortured soul of the unrecognized genius.''