Falsification technology on the example of Hitler's secret diaries

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the early 80s, the loudest media sensation in the history of Germany broke out: Hitler's diaries, which began to be published by the magazine "Stern"!

"The Hitler Diaries Scandal" is the title of a book written by Michael Seifert, former deputy editor-in-chief of Stern magazine. He himself was a witness and participant in the last act of events, together with the editors of the magazine, which at that time was one of the most respected and large-circulation magazines in West Germany.

Seifert reconstructs the course of events that now seem incredible. The diaries were brought to the editorial office by reporter Gerd Heidemann, who at Stern was considered not the most serious employee, albeit a resourceful journalist.

Through a certain Stiefel, the reporter Heidemann contacted a man by the name of Fischer, who allegedly received these diaries from the GDR. These diaries, Fischer said, were in one of the boxes with the Fuehrer's personal archive, which was sent in a transport Junkers in April 1945 from besieged Berlin.

The Junker was shot down over one of the East German villages, and the diaries got to Fischer's brother, who now secretly transfers them notebook after notebook. The Stern reporter did not know that both Fischer's name and the merchandise were fake. In fact, this "Fischer" was called Konrad Kujau, and he was a failure artist, but a brilliant hoaxer, making a living by counterfeiting rarities of the Nazi era. By the way, Heidemann bought from the swindler not only the notorious diaries of Hitler, but also watercolors allegedly written by the Fuhrer, a score he composed in his youth for an opera, sewn-on ribbons on his WWI uniform, and even Eva Braun's bra.

But how could a reputable West German magazine, which had a completely different level of requirements and completely different possibilities for conducting a thorough examination of the "diaries" it bought, fell for such a bait? They were checked, of course, but superficially. Only a graphological examination was carried out seriously by several independent experts. But it was she who confirmed that Hitler really wrote the diaries. The only problem was that the fakes of the same Kuyau were taken as the standard of examination, that is, the experts compared one fake with another. Stern did not wait for the so-called technological expertise - analysis of paper, ink, etc. - it really wanted to inform the readers about the sensational find as soon as possible.

Hundreds of reporters, dozens of film crews gathered for a press conference hosted by Stern. Those gathered literally tore out of their hands the fresh issue of "Stern", which came out with a record circulation of two million three hundred thousand copies even for such a magazine. “Many pages of German history will have to be rewritten,” the editor-in-chief of the magazine announced with pathos. Media tycoons from other countries, sparing no expense, vied with each other to conclude contracts with Stern to publish translations of their diaries. Excerpts from them began to be published by the largest newspapers and magazines in the world. But the sensation burst a week later.

Konrad Kujau was one of five children in the family of the shoemaker Richard Kujau. His mother, who became a widow at an early age, was so poor that she sometimes sent her children to an orphanage. At the age of 16, Konrad became an apprentice to a locksmith, but a year later he began to steal on trifles, which he came across from time to time. After another imprisonment, Kuyau fled from the GDR to the FRG and settled in Stuttgart. In the early 1970s, he found his true calling - he began to trade in illegal Nazi paraphernalia imported from East Germany: old military uniforms, stripes, medals.

Kuyau soon discovered an easy way to add value to a product. He realized that true collectors value not so much the artifact as the story in which it is shrouded. Possessing a rich imagination and a good sense of humor, Konrad began to compose the most incredible stories - he even sold "the ashes of Adolf Hitler" to one collector. The dodger Kuyau also possessed extraordinary artistic abilities and thought of selling paintings that were attributed to them by the Fuehrer's brush.

The first manuscript produced by Konrad Kuyau in the mid-70s was called Mein Kampf. However, this is not entirely true. This is what he is known to us under the name "Mein Kampf". Kuyau, on the first page of the manuscript, reflected the traces of the author's creative torment, looking for a suitable title and crossing out one option after another. The well-known fact that the Mein Kampf manuscript never existed - Hess typed the text under Hitler's dictation - did not stop the Fuehrer's admirers. Kuyau sold the manuscript for such money that without hesitation he immediately set about composing the third, supposedly lost, volume of My Struggle. By this time, long exercises (combined with an indisputable talent) gave their result - his handwriting became almost identical to that of Hitler. As Heidemann later said, Kuyau lost his own handwriting - he even wrote letters from prison after his arrest with the Fuhrer's hand.

“I slept only a few hours a day, woke up, poured strong tea into my iron (this is how the paper aged) and worked again. I must admit, I liked the performance itself: how Hitler sits down at his desk in the evening, pulls out an old black notebook - and describes all these bastards with whom he had to communicate during the day."

It should be noted that “Stern” was not the only victim of Kuyau - in the late 70s he simply flooded the antique market with his pseudo-Hitler works - not only documents, but also paintings (Heidemann: “He just bought these landscapes at the local flea market, drew on Hitler's signature and sold me at exorbitant prices”) and even in poetry. For example, in 1980 Eberhard Jekel (who doubted the authenticity of the diaries three years later) published the academic work “All Hitler's Manuscripts. 1905-1924. After Kuyau's arrest, it turned out that this collection included at least 76 documents forged by him (about 4% of the total).

And finally, Kuyau fell for “Stern”. Initially, the forger wanted to limit himself to 27 diaries, but the amount of the advance made too strong an impression on him. For three years in a row, Kuyau, as an institute, worked at night on the manuscripts. Old (as it turned out, not old enough) notebooks he bought at a godforsaken stationery warehouse in the GDR, the initials "A. H." I made it myself to yellow the paper, dipped it into tea leaves, and then ironed it with an iron. Where did he get the material from? From open sources, in particular from the 1962 book "Hitler's Speeches and Appeals." Blind copying sometimes led to notable errors. For example, Kuyau wrote on behalf of Hitler “received a telegram from General von Epp,” as stated in the book. In reality, this telegram was sent by Hitler. Nevertheless, by and large, the diaries looked quite authentic: written by Hitler's hand, they did not contain any completely frank blunders.

Konrad Kuyau himself appeared at the police station on May 14, 1983 (a week after the start of the scandal) and honestly confessed to making fakes. His openness and frankness made such a positive impression on the investigators and judges that his sentence was even slightly softer than that of Heidemann, the second defendant in the trial of the Hitler Diaries forgery. Heidemann was accused of embezzling almost half of the money received from "Stern" - they allegedly did not reach Kuyau. As a result, both got a little over four years.

After leaving prison, it was not Heidemann that became a real celebrity, but Kuyau. He made money (and very well) by selling counterfeits, so to speak, official counterfeits, made by the most famous forger of the 20th century. Satisfied with Hitler's landscapes, he switched to Dali, Monet, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Klimt. At the request of the buyer, he either put his signature on the canvases, or forged the original signature. For violation of copyright, it is true, he was once fined 9,000 marks, but how successful this business was can be judged by the fact that soon Kuyau forgeries appeared on the market, that is, the followers of the genius copied the paintings of the old masters and put a fake signature on them by the Master …

Gerd Heidemann after his release was interrupted by occasional orders and one-time part-time jobs. If the court was right, and Heidemann really pocketed several million marks, then he buried them so securely that he still cannot find, therefore, he receives a poverty benefit. In 1991, during the filming of the film Schtonk! Which immortalized this whole hilarious plot, Heidemann managed to shake several thousand marks from the producers of the film (“after all, you are filming my story”). In order not to get paid for nothing, he insisted on his participation in the film and got the tiny role of a policeman who, according to the plot, arrests the cinematic Heidemann, that is, himself.

This episode perfectly fits into the outline of a typical perception of the story with "Hitler's diaries" as a kind of hilarious adventurous comedy. A direct consequence of which was, alas, the fact that many questions sprinkled with comedic confetti remained unanswered.

Yes, it is known that no Martin Bormann lived in 1982 in Spain, and those mysterious three pages that Clapper brought to Heidemann were (apparently) stolen from the Laakmann case in the Bundesarchive beforehand. Yes, it is known that, comparing Hitler's handwriting during the first examination, criminologists, ironically, used another, earlier, Kuyau forgery as a model.

Nevertheless, many who have read the "Diaries" agree that Kuyau alone was not able to make a forgery of such a scale. There is no doubt about his talent as a forger, but in order to compose a text of such a volume without a single major factual error, the author must have a truly encyclopedic memory and special knowledge, which Kuyau did not even have a trace.

From an interview with English journalist Gita Sereni:

- You are the first who does not consider Hitler's diaries just a bad joke. What was actually behind their publication in 1983?

- I then conducted my investigation for 10 months and came to the conclusion that behind Kuyau there were four people of right-radical, if not to say, national-socialist convictions. Their goal was to try to clear Hitler of some of the accusations that had become attached to him, especially with regard to the Jewish question. Their original idea was to publish six Hitler's diaries, but the most interesting thing is that there was one real Hitler's diary, bound in thin leather. They hired Konrad Kuyau to prepare six diaries based on this diary and other documents in their possession. Kuyau, however, quickly realized that it could make good money. He made his first attempts to sell the diaries in the United States back in 1976, seven years before the Stern scandal.

- That is, these four people wanted to present Hitler as such a kind-hearted statesman?

“One of them, a former SS man Clapper, a rogue but a first-class organizer, confessed to me:" It's true, we planned to make six diaries. " His comrade, General Monke, shifted all the blame for the failure of the operation to Kuyau. It did not even occur to him that if Kuyau had limited himself to the ordered six diaries, they would also be fakes. According to the general, then they would serve a good cause. Kuyau did not betray the other two conspirators.

- To convince readers that he is right, you say that, firstly, Kuyau physically could not make such a number of forgeries in such a short time, and secondly, that he simply did not have the necessary intelligence for this.

- There is no doubt that he wrote them down with his own hand. But to keep that firm psychological and political line, which can be traced throughout the entire diary text, is a task beyond the strength of an illiterate swindler. But he was cunning enough to constantly use (sometimes in paragraphs, sometimes in lines) pieces of materials prepared by the conspirators. Therefore, upon careful reading, the figure of a reasonable and lonely person who is forced to wage a war against his will rises before his eyes. Of course, this Hitler is not a friend of the Slavs and Jews, but he is not inclined to encourage violence and cruelty against them. He speaks of his assistants and generals with much more anger than of those whom he orders to kill or enslave.

- How do you explain the fact that this story was never discussed in the German media and that no one made any further investigations?

(It should be added that both books on the Hitler Diaries scam - Robert Harris, future author of the bestselling Vaterland, and Charles Hamilton - were published in English and were not even translated into German.)

- I do not know. This is an absolute mystery to me, I am at a loss. The tracks that I found were extremely curious - why did not a single German journalist try to unwind the ball further ?! After all, it is quite in the German tradition to give a journalist carte blanche for many months of studying and developing such intricate circumstances. “Stern” himself could have done this, for example … It's just amazing. Probably, this is some kind of inertia, some kind of laziness …

After Kuyau's political career (in the 90s he ran for mayor of his hometown) did not work out, he decided to become a writer and announced the start of work on the book “I was Hitler”. They say that such a book was really written and published in 1998, after which (in strict accordance with the laws of the genre) Kuyau declared that he did not own a single line in it and sued the publishing house. However, perhaps this is just a legend. On the personal site of Konrad Kuyau, you can buy two of his other books: “The Secret Diaries of Konrad Kuyau” (for 249 euros) and “Culinary Secret Archives of Kuyau” (only 79).

Konrad Kujau died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 62.

In 2004, the grand-niece of the “genius of forgeries” established a museum in the town of Pfullendorf, where she exhibited the works of her famous relative. But after Petra's fraud was discovered, the one-of-a-kind museum of forgeries had to be closed. Petra inherited Konrad's passion for scams. But the talent of a falsifier must not be genetically transmitted. Too soon she was exposed!

On August 8, 2004, in the town of Ochsenhausen near Stuttgart, an exhibition was opened dedicated to perhaps the most famous of the sons of the city: the genius of forgeries Konrad Kujau. In Germany, it is perhaps easier to find a person who does not know who Baron Munchausen was than one who has never heard the name of Konrad Kuyau.

The scandal with "Hitler's diaries", which cost Kuyau himself three years in prison, ultimately had a cleansing effect for the country: the so-called "scene" of the Third Reich artifact collectors, which led a semi-legal existence in the first decades after the war, was in the center of public attention. And the purely sensational-oriented journalism has learned a good lesson.

Today, the Kuyau phenomenon is part of history, says exhibition curator Michael Schmidt. Of course, all the exhibits related to the history of the Third Reich are provided with detailed commentaries, and of Kuyau's paintings, only those are exhibited that are signed by the master himself.