Leni Riefenstahl photos stolen from German firm

BERLIN (Reuters) - German police are investigating the theft of 250 photographs by Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's official filmmaker, from the basement of a firm in Cologne.

The Riefenstahl photos and 300 works by American photographer Elliott Erwitt disappeared from a basement storage unit at the offices of Photo Estate GmbH, a subsidiary of Berlin gallery Camera Work AG, police said.

The estimated value of all the works taken is as much as 4 million euros ($5.9 million), they added.

Riefenstahl died in 2003 at the age of 101. Films she made of a Nazi party rally in Nuremberg in 1934 and the 1936 Berlin Olympics brought her fame before World War II and left her a notorious figure after the war ended.

(Reporting by Naomi Kresge)