MikeLigalig.com

Konrad Paul Kujau (born 27 June 1938 in Löbau, Germany; died 12 September 2000 in Stuttgart, Germany) was an illustrator and forger who became famous in 1983 as the creator of the so-called Hitler Diaries, for which he received DM 2.5 million from a person who in turn sold it for DM 9.3 million to the magazine Stern. --Wiki

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=49037.0

In 1983, the West German news magazine Stern announced that it had come into possession of a 62-volume collection of diaries written by none other than Germany's most famous square-mustached dictator. The diaries, written by hand and covering the entire span of Hitler's reign, mixed political diatribes with inane, sometimes amusing personal notes and anecdotes, like "Because of the new pills I have violent flatulence, and -- says Eva -- bad breath." There is literally no book that can't be improved by adding a farting Hitler chapter.

But besides giving long-sought-after insight into the nature of Hitler's farts, the diaries threatened to rewrite everything we thought we knew about the infamous Fuhrer. It painted him as a sympathetic figure who yearned for peace with Britain and wasn't even aware that his military was committing genocide, thinking they were just shooing the Jews someplace far away.

When Stern learned about the diaries, it coughed up $4 million on the spot, without checking to see if they were real. After that, offers started pouring in from media the world over to purchase the rights to publish them, and even Rupert Murdoch joined in the bidding war. Through the hysteria, nobody seemed to notice that there were a few, well, oddities.

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=49037.0

Why No One Should Have Bought It:

First, there was the little fact that the initials on the cover read "F.H." instead of "A.H.," due to the forger's inability to distinguish between calligraphic lettering.





When someone finally decided to have the diaries analyzed, they found that the books weren't just fake -- they were primary-school-art-project fake. The forgeries were written in modern books with modern ink and dipped in tea in order to pass as antiques. Furthermore, the text didn't match Hitler's handwriting. "Hitler" even got the color of his own uniform wrong.

The journalist who had invested in the diaries, Gerd Heidemann, was such a sucker for Nazi memorabilia that he took the diaries at face value without, you know, running them past a historian or something. The guy he was dealing with turned out to be Konrad Kujau, a notorious forger who made his livelihood by creating fake Nazi relics and selling them to collectors for profit. Kujau did four years in prison for the stunt, but after his release, he was so famous that his forgeries sold better if he put his name on them. In fact, other forgers began to make money by forging Kujau's forgeries. -- http://www.cracked.com/

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=49037.0

Hehehe...

Linkback: https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=49037.0