Media: False Hitler diaries – “Stern” reporter Heidemann dead

“Stern” reporter Gerd Heidemann was considered a conscientious researcher, but today his name is primarily associated with one of Germany’s biggest media scandals. After the “Hitler Diaries” turned out to be a fake in 1983, he left the Hamburg magazine. Now Heidemann has died in a hospital in Hamburg at the age of 93, as his partner told the German Press Agency in Hamburg. “Stern” also confirmed Heidemann’s death, citing family members. The online magazine “t-online” first reported.

The Hamburg magazine “Stern” announced the “Hitler Diaries” as a historical sensation in 1983. On April 22, 1983, the “Stern” went public with the announcement that it had discovered a total of around 60 secret diaries of Adolf Hitler from the period from June 22, 1932 to mid-April 1945.

Three days later, the editor-in-chief presented the supposed diaries, discovered by reporter Gerd Heidemann. Now “the dictator’s biography and with it the history of the Nazi state must be largely rewritten,” it was said.

Heidemann stated that the “documents” were on board a “Ju 352” propeller plane that was supposed to fly secret material from the Führer bunker in Berlin in the last days of the war and that crashed south of Dresden.

The first literal excerpts from the alleged diaries formulated Hitler’s sometimes derogatory criticism of his closest colleagues in the command staff. According to the entries, Hitler’s arbitrary acts against Jews had gone too far. They also showed the image of a “human” Hitler who, among other things, was concerned about the health of his lover Eva Braun.

Experts doubt its authenticity

Well-known German professors such as Werner Maser, Karl Dietrich Bracher, Martin Broszat and Eberhard Jäckel were skeptical and doubted the authenticity of the notes. On May 6, 1983, the Federal Archives in Koblenz announced: “No authenticity can be attributed to these documents.”

Heidemann fell for the forger Konrad Kujau. The publishing house Gruner + Jahr spent 9.3 million marks (almost 4.8 million euros) in cash on the supposed sensation. Kujau received four and a half years in prison for the huge fraud, of which he served three. He finally died in mid-September 2000.

Heidemann was also sentenced to four years and eight months because the court did not believe that he had passed the entire million on to Kujau. Decades later, he emphasized that he had not embezzled any money.

In 1992 the scandal was made into a film by Helmut Dietl under the title “Schtonk”. In 2019, “Stern” published the podcast “Faking Hitler,” which tells the story from the perspective of the tricked Heidemann and the art forger Kujau using original recordings of phone calls between the two. An RTL+ series of the same name also paved the way for the publication of the diaries in 2021 – tongue-in-cheek, entertaining and with fictional elements. Heidemann was played by Lars Eidinger.

Documents will end up in the Federal Archives in 2023

In 2023, 40 years after the scandal, 52 notebooks were handed over to the Federal Archives. After an archival inventory, they should be digitized and made available in digital form. According to a statement, Federal Archives President Michael Hollmann said that the fake diaries had the potential to trivialize the brutal crimes of National Socialism in the 1980s. “It is good that the evidence of this difficult chapter in the Federal Republic’s post-war history can now be secured in the Federal Archives and identified as forgeries in the context of the authentic sources.”

Historian: Heidemann spoke to old Nazis and secured legacies

Even though Gerd Heidemann’s name will always be closely linked to the fake Hitler diaries, he also achieved important things beyond that. “It is Gerd Heidemann’s great achievement that he managed to get leading old Nazis to speak and secure many of their legacies in the 1970s,” said historian and history professor Thomas Weber, who teaches at Scotland’s University of Aberdeen and researches.

Weber is also a so-called visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford and has helped for years to ensure that Heidemann’s private archive – a large collection about Nazi perpetrators and their motivations – was able to move from Hamburg to Stanford. Weber and Heidemann had known each other since 2016 and were last in contact a few days ago.

Ego documents from extremists thanks to Heidemann

“We have far too few ego documents from extremists in which they do not downplay their actions, as they do in court, and therefore still inadequately understand their motivations and actions to this day. The real significance of Heidemann lies not in the Hitler diary scandal, but in the Collection of perpetrator ego documents that he built up in the 60s and 70s and which has hardly been evaluated so far.” That’s why the Hoover Institution acquired his collection.

Heidemann always kept many things confidential – for example, with secret services and other agencies that tracked down old Nazis, said historian Weber. “If he had not adhered to confidentiality, his work in South America, for example, when he interviewed Klaus Barbie and other Nazi greats, would have long since appeared in a different and more positive light.”