Konrad Kujau

Introduction

• Konrad Kujau wrote long journal entries by hand in old German Gothic script in the back room of his shop in Stuttgart, Germany.
• These entries filled plain black notebooks.
• When he was done with each book, he poured tea on it and beat the pages together to make them look old and worn.
• Lastly, he decorated the notebook with a red wax seal in the shape of an Imperial eagle, a black ribbon from a real Nazi document, and gold letters written in Gothic script.
• After working almost every day for three years, Kujau made 61 volumes of journals that he said were written by Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazis.
• They became known as the Hitler Diaries and are one of the most famous fakes in history.

Forging a career

• Kujau has always been captivated by the Nazi dictatorship despite growing up in a low-income household in Germany.
• As a youngster, he started his profession in forgery by peddling phony signatures of East German leaders.
• He established a store in Stuttgart in 1967 where he faked and sold Nazi memorabilia.
• A sequel to Hitler's book Mein Kampf, the beginnings of an opera, and poetry allegedly written by him was among Kujau's works.
• If a writer from the German investigative news magazine Stern had not come forward, Kujau may have continued to be a small-time offender and amateur forger.
• After working for the magazine for more than 20 years, Gerd Heidemann's career came to a standstill.
• However, his fascination in Hitler and the Third Reich—which included a collection of Nazi artifacts—led him to Kujau.

Putting pen to paper

• The first post in Kujau's journal was written in 1978 after he spent weeks practicing writing in Hitler's handwriting.
• Kujau drew inspiration from old books, newspapers, and historical documents.
• He utilized inexpensive notebooks from Berlin that he had acquired, together with water-diluted mixtures of blue and black ink that effortlessly flowed from his sleek pen.
• Kujau affixing Hitler's initials to the book's front was another significant blunder that went unnoticed at the time.
• Given how similar the two letters seemed in Gothic style, he unintentionally utilized an "F" rather than an "A."
• Political and Private Notes from January to June 1935, the first Hitler diary, was sold to a collector by Kujau in the same year.
• He concocted an unbelievable but believable story about how the journals had been rescued from a Nazi aircraft crash in 1945 and stashed away for decades in a barn.

Making a deal

• The diary's existence first became known to Hitler memorabilia enthusiasts towards the end of 1979.
• Heidemann pursued Kujau in search of a scoop, and Kujau informed him that there were further volumes stashed away in East Germany.
• Heidemann informed Stern of the information, and the publishers of Stern gave him the funds to pay for them.
• Heidemann assured Kujau that he would pay him 2.5 million Deutschmarks (about £1.6 million at the time) for the "remainder" of the diaries.
• 60 additional volumes were produced when the forger got to work.
• By the end of February 1981, Stern had spent roughly 627,500 marks (or 1,000,000 marks) on the diaries.
• Less than half had been given to Kujau; the remainder was retained by Heidemann, who deceived both the newspaper and the forger.
• After receiving 12 diaries, Heidemann said that the cost had increased and that it had become more difficult to sneak the journals out of East Germany.
  • He told Stern that this was the case.
• Heidemann kept buying the journals throughout 1981, sometimes informing Stern of price rises.
• In the end, Stern would pay Heidemann 9.3 million marks (£5.8 million), of which Kujau would get less than a third.
• The journalist spent lavishly on his lifestyle, acquiring additional Nazi relics from Kujau as well as an apartment, fancy vehicles, and more.
• Stern's management ordered handwriting specialists to examine the diaries in April 1982 and gave them examples of Hitler's handwriting as proof.
• Unknown to the experts, the samples were likewise fakes made by Kujau and came from Heidemann's collection of Nazi artifacts.
• The experts affirmed the validity of the journals.
• Hugh Trevor Roper, the first historian to study the diaries, declared them to be genuine, boosting the management of Stern's trust but ultimately damaging the historian's reputation.
• In 2004, Berlin's Jeschke, Greve, and Hauff auction house sold the last volume of the Hitler Diaries for €6,500 (£4,000), replete with Kujau's verification.
• Stern announced the news of the discovery of the diaries in late April 1983, setting up a worldwide media frenzy.
• It claimed that the diaries showed that Hitler's Final Solution was to deport the Jews, not exterminate them, leading some observers to assert that the history of the Third Reich would need to be revised.

Suspicions surface

• More dubious historians, however, referred to the records as forgeries due to the simplicity of some of the entries.
• Stern hired forensic specialists from Germany's Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive) to examine the diaries as doubts about their veracity developed.
• The public got its first look at the diaries in Stern's issue from April 28.
• Heidemann met with Kujau the next day and purchased the last four volumes.
• The forensic specialists' definitive finding that the diaries were fakes was made known to Stern management within a week.
• The journals were created using paper, glue, post-war ink, and binding.
• A fluorescent component in the paper that was not there in 1945 was revealed by ultraviolet light.
• One of the diaries' binders was made of polyester, a material that wasn't invented until 1953.
• The German authorities intervened and announced that the diaries were obvious forgeries before Stern could make their own statement on the discoveries.
• Heidemann had to provide Stern's management the identity of his source, which he did.

The downfall

• Kujau and his wife had escaped to Austria at that time.
• When the forger realized Heidemann had betrayed him, he surrendered to the authorities.
• Heidemann said the journalist knew the journals were phony because he was resentful that he had retained so much of the money for himself.
• Heidemann and Kujau were put on trial for defrauding Stern of 9.3 million marks on August 21, 1984.
• During the trial, both men laid responsibility on the other. Heidemann and Kujau were both given prison terms of four years and eight months in July 1985.
• In 1987, after being freed from prison, Kujau chose to live in notoriety.
• He discovered a market for replicating well-known pieces of art and selling them, and he rose to modest stardom on TV, dying of cancer at age 62 in 2000.
• Heidemann was likewise let out of jail in 1987, but he never went back to being a journalist.
• For Stern, the incident was very damaging. The once-praised publication was degraded for its careless reporting.

Authenticating historic documents

• Whether it's a letter, journal, or other handwritten object, every historical document is different.
• Forensic investigators use historical, scientific, and stylistic examination to establish the authenticity and authorship of historical materials that are not dated.
• These specialists can identify the time period in which it was produced by looking at the printing technique, the address, and the postmark.
• By detecting the existence of material that was absent at the time, many frauds are exposed. Investigators utilize a variety of methods, including magnifying glasses and molecular spectroscopy, which exposes how much of the ink has degraded over time and offers hints as to when a document was written.
• Scientific study of the paper used may be particularly illuminating.
• A historical document's pen, quill, or writing instrument may be identified by looking at the ink used to write it, which may provide further details about the time period when it was written.

Konrad Kujau

• Konrad Kujau was one of five children who were born in Löbau, Germany, amid substandard conditions in 1938.
• Adolf Hitler was idolized by Kujau as a child since his parents joined the Nazi Party in 1933.
• This preoccupation persisted even after Hitler's demise and the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.
• By the 1960s, Kujau was a minor offender with a history of forgery, theft, and bar brawls.
• He discovered that many East Germans possessed Nazi artifacts in 1970 when visiting relatives there, despite the country's laws forbidding them.
• Kujau saw a chance and purchased Nazi relics on the illicit market, bringing them back to West Germany to resell.
• When his wife Edith objected to the size of Kujau's collection of Nazi artifacts in 1974, he hired a shop in Stuttgart to house it.
• At that point, he began to add nuances to his things to make them more valuable. As his ambition grew, he started to fake Hitler's writings.

Six clues that the diaries were forged

• After WWII, whitener and fibers in paper were manufactured.
• His utilization of modern ink
• Plastic was used for at least one set of initials glued to the front.
• The unintentional use of the letter "F" instead of the letter "A"
• Evidence that Kujau copied German author Max Domarus
• Historical errors

Related Crimes

• April 2, 1796: A play that is being sold by a forger going by the name William Henry Ireland is one that Shakespeare is said to have lost.
• January 23, 1987: Mark Hofmann, an American forger, was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to fabricating Mormon history papers and killing two witnesses.
• February 2007: The journals of fascist leader Benito Mussolini, which date from 1935 to 1939, are allegedly in the possession of Italian senator Marcello Dell'Urti, however historians in his country subsequently disprove this.