From scoop to swindle: but many feel the fake Hitler Diaries should now be seen as works of art, reports Derek Scally in Berlin
Deep in a basement vault in Hamburg lie 60 slim black volumes, unopened and unread. The books, occupying just two feet of shelf space, last saw daylight two decades ago.
Then, Stern magazine marked the 50th anniversary of the Nazis sweeping to power in Gemany with the scoop of the century. "Hitler's Diaries Discovered" proclaimed its front cover on April 28th, 1983, while inside, the magazine told how the diaries, lost for half a century, had come to light in an East German barn.
"History will have to be rewritten," prophesised the editor. But in less than two weeks, the story went from scoop to swindle when the diaries were revealed as fakes, and not particularly good ones at that. The con job of the century cost Stern nearly €5 million, several top editors their jobs and Germany's largest-selling news magazine its reputation.
Two decades on, the Hitler Diaries are now part of the myth surrounding the dictator who allegedly penned them, a myth that grows with the passing years.
On a sunny spring day in central Berlin, a blonde woman in her late 30s opens the door of her gallery to let in some air before disappearing into the back room for a moment, leaving the gallery unattended. It seems like a reckless thing to do, considering the works of art hanging on the walls - Picasso, Klimt and Van Gogh.
In the cool light of the gallery, the colours of the Van Gogh are especially life-like, as if it was just recently completed. A closer inspection reveals that it was: three years ago to be precise. In the opposite corner to Van Gogh's famous signature is another signature: "Kujau 99". The painting, like all the works in the gallery, is the work of Konrad Kujau, Germany's most celebrated forger. Painting was his love, as the works around the gallery clearly show, but it was the two years he spent forging the Hitler Diaries that became his life.
"He was such a dear, you could see in his eyes that he had a good heart, he wasn't a bad person," says Petra Kujau, curator of the gallery, of her notorious father who died two years ago.
He was born in Saxony in 1938 into a family of five. His father, a fervent Nazi, died in 1944, plunging the family into poverty. A decade later, Kujau fled what was by then East Germany and eventually settled in Stuttgart, opening an antique shop specialising in military memorabilia. He soon realised the huge market for Nazi memorabilia and began importing items from East Germany. Whatever he couldn't find, he forged, putting to use a skill he first developed in his teens.
He sold roomfuls of fake Hitler memorabilia to one avid collector in particular: war helmets, the "original" manuscript of Mein Kampf and dozens of "Hitler" paintings with titles such as Female Nude, Chubby, Fräulein E. Braun.
Early in 1981 he received a phone call from Gerd Heidemann, a journalist from Stern. Heidemann said he had seen a diary belonging to Hitler, which Kujau had sold.
Kujau explained to Heidemann how he came on the diary with a story weaving truth and lies. In the last days of the war, Hitler packed his papers into steel crates to have them flown to safety. The plane carrying the documents crashed near Dresden, killing all onboard. The papers were rescued by locals and discovered by his cousin, an East German general who was prepared to smuggle the diaries out of East Germany, one by one, hidden inside pianos. Heidemann said that Stern was prepared to pay at least €1.8 million for the set of diaries. Kujau agreed and went to work.
The discovery of the Hitler Diaries was a coup for Heidemann. He had worked for Stern for over 25 years, specialising in war reporting and photography, but by the 1980s, his interest, even obsession, was the Third Reich.
Today, 20 years on, he seems amazed by how he spent two years on his top-secret mission between Hamburg and Stuttgart, a seven-hour drive. "Sometimes I would have as much as 900,000 deutschmarks (€460,000) in a plastic bag beside me, enough money for three or four volumes and Kujau would have just one," said Heidemann in a recent interview. "Kujau could never tell me how many diaries he would have." The number, of course, depended on how productive Kujau had been.
Sometimes he would work through the night to get a diary finished, copying whole passages from well-known history books of Hitler's speeches and declarations, interspersed with personal details, in old German script.
"My stomach makes it difficult to sleep, my left leg is often numb," wrote "Hitler" in July 1934. His health problems continued, writing in 1941: "At Eva's request, I am given a through examination by my doctors. Because of the new pills, I have violent flatulence, and, Eva says, bad breath."
Heidemann and his bosses back in Hamburg were enthralled by the Hitler presented in the banal diary entries, more obsessed with his bowels than the Jews. In their eyes the banality added to the authenticity of the diaries, which Kujau had aged by throwing them around a bit and giving the pages the once-over with a steam iron filled with tea.
As the months rolled by, news of the top secret project started to leak and Stern bosses began to panic. They were anxious to see a return on their €5 million investment that had cost Konrad Kujau little more than €35 and a few pots of tea. They began syndication discussions with other publications to recoup the cost and the publication date for the Hitler Diaries issue was brought forward, despite only cursory, conflicting authentication tests.
"The state police confirmed the authenticity of the handwriting as Hitler's when they compared it to another handwriting sample we gave them," says Heidemann. "But that piece we had also bought from Kujau. We didn't know that Kujau had forged that as well."
The stage was thus set for the legendary press conference in Stern's Hamburg headquarters, where Gerd Heidemann held aloft the slim black diaries in front of the world's media. The story was a sensation, making front page news around the world for days on end. But almost immediately the first cracks emerged and in less than two weeks, material tests revealed that the paper and glue in the diaries were of post-war origin, as was the ink. A government investigation denounced the diaries as a "crude forgeries" filled with historical inaccuracies, created by someone "of limited intelligence".
"I was in a car in southern Germany when it was announced that the diaries were fakes," remembers Heidemann. "I just looked for the next bridge I could crash into. I felt numb, pale, finished. But no bridge came."
Petra Kujau remembers the reaction of her father when he heard that Stern had published the diaries. "What an ass! They weren't even finished. I'm still writing," he told her. She says her father never expected the story to take the turn it did.
When the case came to trial the following year, the riddle remained how Stern, the Sunday Times and Newsweek were taken in by Kujau, a compulsive liar and petty crook. The prosecution alleged during the trial that Heidemann skimmed off nearly half of the €5 million Stern handed over for the diaries into his own bank accounts, something he denies to this day. The two men never saw each other again after the court sentenced each of them to four years in jail for fraud.
Kujau used the time in prison to return to his first love, painting forgeries and, on his release, became a media star. But the affair ruined the reputation and career of Heidemann and his editors, not to mention the reputation of Stern magazine.
A few months ago, Heidemann, now retired, contacted Petra Kujau and arranged to meet up. "I was nervous about meeting him, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was satisfying to hear his side of the story," says Kujau. "I'm really sorry that he fell for it."
Two decades on, both agree that the diaries should see daylight. For Heidemann, to show conclusively that they were written by Kujau alone and not, as the conspiracy theorists claim, the work of the Soviets, the CIA, neo-Nazis or even Hitler himself.
Kujau has a more personal interest in seeing the diaries again. "The Hitler Diaries are forgeries but at such a level that it's art," she says of her father's most famous work. "Forgery was his art. Only an artist can do what he did."