Five paintings attributed to Adolf Hitler have failed to find buyers at an auction held amid anger at the sale of Nazi memorabilia.

High starting prices of between €19,000 and €45,000 ($21,000 and $50,000), and lingering suspicions about the authenticity of the artworks were thought to have scared off potential buyers at Saturday’s auction in Nuremberg.

The Weidler auction house did not comment on the reasons for the failure but said the paintings could yet be sold at a later date.

Nuremberg’s mayor, Ulrich Maly, had earlier condemned the sale as being “in bad taste”.

Among the items that failed to sell were a mountain lake view and a painting of a wicker armchair with a swastika symbol presumed to have belonged to the late Nazi dictator.

The Weidler auction house held the “special sale” in Nuremberg, the city in which Nazi war criminals were tried in 1945.

A watercolour attributed to Adolf Hitler on display ahead of the auction in Nuremberg. Photograph: Daniel Karmann/AFP/Getty Images

Days before the sale a number of the artworks were withdrawn on suspicion they were fakes, with prosecutors stepping in.

Sales of alleged artworks by Hitler – who for a time tried to make a living as an artist in his native Austria – regularly spark outrage that collectors are willing to pay high prices for art linked to the country’s Nazi past.

According to Stephan Klingen of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich, Hitler had the style of “a moderately ambitious amateur” but his creations did not stand out from “hundreds of thousands” of comparable works from the period – making their authenticity especially hard to verify.

The authenticity of the watercolours attributed to Hitler has been questioned. Photograph: Daniel Karmann/AFP/Getty Images

The watercolours, drawings and paintings bearing “Hitler” signatures featured views of Vienna or Nuremberg, female nudes and still life works, the auction house said. They were offered by 23 different owners.

Prosecutors have collected 63 artworks from the Weidler premises bearing the signature “A.H.” or “A. Hitler”, including some not slated to go under the hammer.

The Nuremberg-Fuerth prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation against persons unknown “on suspicion of falsifying documents and attempted fraud”, chief prosecutor Antje Gabriels-Gorsolke said.

A wicker armchair bearing a swastika and presumed to have belonged to Adolf Hitler was also part of the auction on Saturday. Photograph: Daniel Karmann/AFP/Getty Images

“If they turn out to be fakes, we will then try to determine who knew what in the chain of ownership,” she said.

Weidler said in a statement that the paintings’ withdrawal from sale did “not automatically mean they are fakes”.