Konrad Paul Kujau (June 27, 1938,
LöbauThe Lobau is a Vienna floodplain on the northern side of the Danube and partly in Großenzersdorf, Lower Austria. It has been part of the Danube-Auen National Park since 1996 and has been a protected area since 1978. It is used as a recreational area and is known as a site of nudism. There is...
,
SaxonyThe Free State of Saxony is a federal state of Germany, located in the southeastern part of present-day Germany. It is the tenth-largest German state in area and the sixth largest in population , of Germany's sixteen states.Long in the heart of German-speaking Europe, Saxony became one of the new...
- September 12, 2000,
StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
) was an
illustratorAn illustrator is a graphic artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
and
forgerForgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents , with the intent to deceive. The similar crime of fraud is the crime of deceiving another, including through the use of objects obtained through forgery...
who became famous in 1983 as the creator of the so-called
Hitler DiariesIn April 1983, the West German news magazine Stern published extracts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries , which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries...
, for which he received 2.5 million
DMThe Deutsche Mark or German mark was the official currency of West Germany and, from 1990 until the adoption of the euro, all of unified Germany...
from a person who in turn sold it for 9.3 million DM to the magazine
SternStern is a weekly news magazine published in Germany. It was founded in 1948 by Henri Nannen, and is currently published by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. In the first quarter of 2006, its print run was 1.019 million copies and it reached 7.84 million readers according to...
.
"Konny" Kujau was one of five children of Richard Kujau, a cobbler, who died in 1944. Kujau's early life was of unremitting poverty and his mother was obliged to send her children into orphanages for periods of time.
Konrad Paul Kujau (June 27, 1938,
LöbauThe Lobau is a Vienna floodplain on the northern side of the Danube and partly in Großenzersdorf, Lower Austria. It has been part of the Danube-Auen National Park since 1996 and has been a protected area since 1978. It is used as a recreational area and is known as a site of nudism. There is...
,
SaxonyThe Free State of Saxony is a federal state of Germany, located in the southeastern part of present-day Germany. It is the tenth-largest German state in area and the sixth largest in population , of Germany's sixteen states.Long in the heart of German-speaking Europe, Saxony became one of the new...
- September 12, 2000,
StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
) was an
illustratorAn illustrator is a graphic artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
and
forgerForgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents , with the intent to deceive. The similar crime of fraud is the crime of deceiving another, including through the use of objects obtained through forgery...
who became famous in 1983 as the creator of the so-called
Hitler DiariesIn April 1983, the West German news magazine Stern published extracts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries , which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries...
, for which he received 2.5 million
DMThe Deutsche Mark or German mark was the official currency of West Germany and, from 1990 until the adoption of the euro, all of unified Germany...
from a person who in turn sold it for 9.3 million DM to the magazine
SternStern is a weekly news magazine published in Germany. It was founded in 1948 by Henri Nannen, and is currently published by Gruner + Jahr, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. In the first quarter of 2006, its print run was 1.019 million copies and it reached 7.84 million readers according to...
.
A picaresque life
"Konny" Kujau was one of five children of Richard Kujau, a cobbler, who died in 1944. Kujau's early life was of unremitting poverty and his mother was obliged to send her children into orphanages for periods of time. Konrad did well at school, but was obliged to leave at 16 and was apprenticed to a locksmith. After a year he quit and took a succession of casual jobs. In 1957 a warrant was issued for his arrest over the theft of a microphone from the Löbau Youth Club, where he was then working. Kujau left
East GermanyThe German Democratic Republic was a Communist state that originated from the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany and the Soviet sector of occupied Berlin...
and fled to
West BerlinWest Berlin was the name given to the western part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors established in 1945. It was in many ways integrated with, although legally not a part of, West Germany...
to stay with his uncle.
Kujau eventually settled in Stuttgart where he drifted into a life of casual work and petty crime. In 1961, after several arrests and two short jail terms for theft, Kujau met and settled down with Edith Lieblang. They opened a bar, but the next year he was arrested for forging
luncheon vouchersThe Luncheon Voucher is a paper ticket used by some employees in the United Kingdom to pay for meals in private restaurants. It allows companies to subsidise mid-day meals for their employees without having to run their own canteens.The scheme was created in 1954, when food rationing had just...
under the name "Peter Fischer" and spent five days in prison. Kujau and Leibling then started an office cleaning business which eventually prospered. Incidentally, a "Dr. Fischer" was originally named as the source of the Hitler Diaries.
In the early 1970s Kujau began to illegally import Nazi
militariaMilitaria are artifacts or replicas of military, police, etc., collected for their historical significance. Such antiques include firearms, swords, knives, and other weapons such as; uniforms, helmets, other military headgear, and armour; military orders and decorations; challenge coins and...
from East Germany. In order to increase their value Kujau began to forge documents to give them false
provenanceProvenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", means the origin, or the source, of something, or the history of the ownership or location of an object, The term was originally mostly used of works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and...
. He also began to forge paintings - something that had been a mere hobby until then - signing them "Adolf Hitler". Kujau became more ambitious as he realised the potential market for
Nazi memorabiliaNazi memorabilia are items of Nazi origin that are collected by museums and private individuals. Much of it comes from soldiers who collected small items as trophies during the Second World War....
. He copied out Hitler's published
Mein KampfMein Kampf, in English: My Struggle, is a book by Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology...
and sold it as "the original manuscript". To an old pistol he attached a label claiming that it was the gun with which Hitler committed suicide. He was aided by the fact that most "collectors" of Nazi items were highly secretive, since possession of these items was illegal under German law.
Hitler diaries
In 1978 he sold his first "Hitler Diary" to a collector. In 1980 he was contacted by the journalist
Gerd HeidemannGerd Heidemann is a German journalist best known for his role in the publication of purported Hitler Diaries that were subsequently proven to be forgeries....
who had learned of the diary. Kujau told Heidemann that the diaries were in the possession of his brother, who was a General in the East German army. Heidemann made a deal with Kujau for "the rest" of the diaries.
Over the next two years Kujau faked a further 61 volumes and sold them to Heidemann for 2.5 million DM. Heidemann in turn received 9 million DM from his employers at
Stern.
However on their publication in 1983 the diaries were soon proven to be fakes and Heidemann and Kujau were arrested. In August 1984 Kujau was sentenced to 4½ years for forgery and Lieblang one year as an accomplice. Heidemann was convicted of fraud and received a sentence of 4 years 8 months.
On his release from prison after 3 years Kujau became something of a minor celebrity appearing on TV as an "forgery expert", and set up a business selling "genuine Kujau fakes" in the style of various major artists.
http://www.kujau-archiv.de/foyer.html He stood for election as Mayor of Stuttgart in 1996, receiving over 9000 votes. Kujau died of cancer in 2000.
In 2006 his grandniece, Petra Kujau, was charged with selling "fake forgeries", cheap Asian-made copies of famous paintings with forged signatures of Konrad Kujau.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2146118.html
Sources
- Harris, Robert
Robert Dennis Harris is an English novelist. He is a former journalist and BBC TV reporter.-Early life:Harris spent his childhood in a small rented house on a Nottingham council estate. His ambition to become a writer arose at an early age, from visits to the local printing plant where his father...
: Selling Hitler (Faber & Faber, 1986) ISBN 0-571-14726-7