German illustrator and forger (1938–2000)
Konrad Paul Kujau (27 June 1938 – 12 September 2000) was a German illustrator and slicker. He became famous in 1983 as the creator of depiction so-called Hitler Diaries, for which he received DM 2.5 meg (€2,421,020 in 2020 terms, adjusted for inflation) from a newspaperwoman, Gerd Heidemann, who in turn sold it for DM 9.3 million to the magazine Stern, resulting in a net acquire of DM 6.8 million (€6,585,174 in 2020 terms, adjusted crave inflation) for Heidemann. The forgery resulted in a four-and-half-year lockup sentence for Kujau.
"Konny" Kujau was born in Löbau, Nazi Germany, one of six children of Richard Kujau, a cobbler, and his wife, both of whom had joined representation Nazi Party in 1933. Kujau's early life was of in peace poverty and his mother was obliged to send her lineage into orphanages for periods of time. The boy grew last part believing in the Nazi ideals and idolising Adolf Hitler; description defeat by the Allies in 1945, and Hitler's suicide, frank not temper his enthusiasm for the Nazi cause. He held a series of menial jobs until 1957, when he was working as a waiter at the Löbau Youth Club, discipline a warrant was issued for his arrest in connection get better the theft of a microphone. In June he fled playact Stuttgart, West Germany, where he soon drifted into temporary subservient work and petty crime.
In 1959 he was fined 80 Draw (DM) for stealing tobacco; in 1960 he was sent end up prison for nine months after being caught breaking into a storeroom to steal cognac; in 1961 he spent more purpose in prison after stealing five crates of fruit. Six months later he was arrested after getting into a fight add his employer while working as a cook in a bar.
In 1961, he began a relationship with Edith Lieblang, one support the waitresses at the bar where he was working. Say publicly couple moved to Plochingen and opened a dance bar, which was a modest success. Kujau began to create a fanciful background for himself, telling people his real name was Prick Fischer, changing his date of birth by two years, highest altering the history of his time in East Germany. Spawn 1963, the bar began suffering financial difficulties and the twosome moved back to Stuttgart, where Kujau found work as a waiter. He also started his career as a counterfeiter, forging DM 27 worth of luncheon vouchers; he was caught be first sentenced to five days in prison. On his release agreed and his wife formed the Lieblang Cleaning Company, although depiction company provided little income for them. In March 1968, equal height a routine check at Kujau's lodgings, the police established subside was living under a false identity, after the name, volume and date-of-birth details Kujau had provided to the police were different to those on the papers he was carrying win the time. At the police station he offered a position set of details, and a false explanation as to reason he was masquerading under an assumed identity, but the succeeding fingerprint check confirmed he was Kujau. He was sent be acquainted with Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison.
After his release in the late 1960s, rendering cleaning business became profitable enough for the couple to procure a flat in Schmieden,[clarification needed] near Stuttgart. In 1970, Kujau visited his family in East Germany and found out delay many of the locals held Nazi memorabilia, contrary to representation laws of the Communist government. Kujau saw an opportunity crossreference buy the material cheaply on the black market and pretend a profit in the West, where there was an accelerando demand for such items. Prices among Stuttgart collectors were locked to ten times the prices paid by Kujau. The industry was illegal in East Germany, and the export of what were deemed items of cultural heritage was banned. Both description Kujaus were stopped, although only once each, and their handicap was the confiscation of the contraband.[9]
Among the items smuggled favor of East Germany were weapons, and Kujau would occasionally step a pistol, sometimes firing it in a nearby field, elite shooting empty bottles in his local bar. One night obligate February 1973, while drunk, he took a loaded machine pump to confront a man he thought had been slashing representation tyres of his cleaning company van. The man ran beckon and Kujau chased him into the wrong doorway, terrifying a prostitute. Her screams brought the police who arrested Kujau. When they searched his flat they found five pistols, a apparatus gun, a shotgun and three rifles. Kujau apologised and was given a fine.
In 1974, he rented a shop into which he placed his Nazi memorabilia. The outlet also became say publicly venue for late-night drinking sessions with friends and fellow collectors, including Wolfgang Schulze, a resident of the US, who became Kujau's American agent. Kujau soon began to raise the maximum of items in his shop by forging additional authentication info, including for a genuine First World War helmet, worth a few marks, for which Kujau forged a note saying cut your coat according to your cloth had been Hitler's, worn in Ypres in late October 1914, thereby radically raising its value. In addition to notes newborn Hitler, he produced documents in the handwriting of Martin Bormann, Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels. Tho' the handwriting was a passable imitation of the owners, picture rest of the work was crude: Kujau used modern office supplies, which he aged with tea, and created letterheads by cheery Letraset. In many cases the spelling and grammar was erroneous, particularly when he forged documents in English, such as a copy of the Munich Agreement between Hitler and Neville Statesman, which he transcribed as:
"We regard the areement signet rearmost night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of description desire of our two peoples never to go to warfare with one another againe."
In the mid- to late-1970s Kujau, exceeding able amateur artist, turned to producing paintings which he claimed were by Hitler, who had himself been an amateur head in his younger days.[a] Having found a market for his forged works, Kujau painted subjects his buyers professed an irk in, such as cartoons, nudes and men in action — subjects that Hitler never painted, nor would want to stain. Often these paintings were accompanied by small notes purportedly liberate yourself from Hitler but forged by Kujau. The paintings proved profitable tend to the forger. To explain his access to the memorabilia, without fear invented several sources in East Germany, including a former Fascist general, the director of a museum whom he had bribed, and his brother, a general in the East German army.
Having found success in passing off his forged notes as those of Hitler, Kujau grew more ambitious, and copied, by devote, the text from both volumes of Mein Kampf, even although the originals were completed by typewriter. Kujau also produced spoil introduction to a third volume of the work. He advertise these "manuscripts" to one of his regular clients, Fritz Stiefel, a collector of Nazi memorabilia.[b] Kujau also began forging a series of war poems by Hitler, which were so unskilled that Kujau later admitted that "a fourteen-year-old collector would own recognized it as a forgery". When some of those poems were published in 1980, one historian pointed out that flavour of them could not have been produced by Hitler being it had been written by Herybert Menzel.
It is ambiguous when Kujau produced his first Hitler diary. Stiefel says Kujau gave him a diary on loan in 1975. Schulze puts the date in 1976, while Kujau says he began observe 1978. He used one of a pile of notebooks of course had bought cheaply in East Berlin, and mistakenly put say publicly letters FH (instead of AH) in gold on the front; these letters were purchased in a department store and imposture of plastic in Hong Kong. To add a further fathom of authentication, he took the black ribbon from a legitimate SS document, and attached it to the cover using a German army wax seal. For the ink he purchased figure bottles of Pelikan ink, one black and one blue, give orders to mixed the two together with water so it flowed much easily from the cheap modern pen he used. Kujau confidential spent a month practising to write in the old European gothic script in which Hitler used to write. Kujau showed it to Stiefel who was impressed by the work, ahead wanted to buy it, but when the forger refused discriminate sell it, he asked to borrow it instead, which was agreed upon.
In 1978 Kujau sold his first "Hitler Diary" side a collector. In 1980 he was contacted by the newspaperwoman Gerd Heidemann who had learned of the diary. Kujau booming Heidemann that the diaries were in the possession of his brother, who was a general in the East German Soldiers. Heidemann made a deal with Kujau for "the rest" signal the diaries.[21] Over the next two years Kujau faked a further 61 volumes and sold them to Heidemann for DM 2.5 million. Heidemann in turn received DM 9 million let alone his employers at Stern.[21] On their publication in 1983, representation diaries were soon proved to be fabrications, and Heidemann roost Kujau were arrested.[21] In August 1984, Kujau was sentenced be adjacent to four and a half years for forgery and Lieblang preempt one year as an accomplice. Heidemann was convicted of concise and also received a four-and-half year prison sentence the mass year.[22]
On his release from prison after three years, Kujau became something of a minor celebrity, appearing on TV as a "forgery expert", and set up a business selling "genuine Kujau fakes" in the style of various major artists.[23] He clearcut for election as Mayor of Stuttgart in 1996, receiving 901 votes.[24] Kujau died of cancer in 2000.
In 2006, person claiming to be his grandniece, Petra Kujau, was charged comprise selling "fake forgeries", cheap Asian-made copies of famous paintings business partner forged signatures of Konrad Kujau.[25]