A German furniture chain has apologised for selling coffee mugs featuring portraits of Adolf Hitler it had “mistakenly” ordered from a Chinese supplier, a news report said on Thursday.

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The vintage-style ceramic cups feature a faint image of a Nazi-era postage stamp that shows a black-and-white profile of Hitler, postmarked with a swastika stamp, all obscured by other design elements including a rose and cursive script.

Five thousand of the cups were ordered from a trade fair in China and delivered last month.

Christian Zurbrueggen, co-owner of the Zurbrueggen chain, told German news agency dpa on Thursday that 175 of the offending cups were sold before customers reported the problem.

Zurbrueggen said he wants to take the cups “out of circulation.”

The owner blamed the "terrible" mistake on "a stupid chain of unfortunate circumstances" involving a Chinese designer who has mistakenly chosen the image of the Nazi leader, the news report said.

"No one noticed the problem during unpacking," the store owner told the newspaper.

The 4,825 unsold cups have been destroyed and Zurbrueggen added that every customer who had bought a mug, priced at 1.99 euros, and returned it would be compensated with a 20-euro ($27) gift voucher.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS, AFP)



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