Art dealer convicted of forging forger's forgeries

He is known as the man behind what was arguably the most masterly forgery of the 20th century, the Hitler diaries. Now almost three decades after investigators rumbled Konrad Kujau's multimillion pound ruse, a woman falsely claiming to be his great niece has been convicted of forging Kujau forgeries and selling them to unwitting collectors. The bizarre tale, details of which unfolded in a Dresden courtroom during a two-year long trial, centred on 300 paintings obtained by Petra Kujau. She put his signature on them and sold them on as paintings by Konrad Kujau, claiming they were works the elderly Stuttgart forger had made in his latter years. In yet another twist his works were copied from famous masterpieces.

Petra, 51, who worked for Konrad during the 1990s, claimed to be his great niece. Prosecutors were dubious and she dropped the claim during proceedings, saying instead she was a distant relative. The court gave her a two-year suspended sentence and ordered her to do 180 hours of community service in a kindergarten. She admitted to 40 counts of having bought paintings in Asia and selling them on as "Kujau forgeries" for a total of €300,000 (£247,000). Her 56-year-old male accomplice received a 20-month suspended sentence and 120 hours' community service.



Judge Joachim Kubista called the couple's crime "hard-nosed fraud", adding: "Art forgeries are nothing unusual, but the further falsification of the forger is really rather unusual." Kujau, who died of cancer at the age of 62 in 2000, was in fact a skilled artist who began making copies of masterpieces by the likes of Paul Gaugin, René Magritte, Leonardo da Vinci and Claude Monet after his release in the late 1980s from prison. Kujau spent four years in jail after being convicted for forgery and embezzlement for the Hitler Diaries fraud. He made no secret of the fact that the paintings were fakes, but due to his notoriety, Kujau was able to sell them as "original Kujau forgeries", along with many of his own, genuine works, for up to 7,000 deutschmarks (£2,952).

The case has reawakened memories of the spectacular Hitler Diaries scandal which began in 1983, when a reporter for Stern magazine paid 10m deutschmarks for around 60 volumes of diaries which it was alleged had been smuggled out of East Germany. Working for Times Newspapers who wished to bid for the serial rights, British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper was contracted to authenticate the documents, and subsequently declared them to be genuine. He famously said standard accounts of Hitler and even certain public events "may in consequence have to be revised".


Photo from here.

Soon after publication of excerpts began, forensic experts at Germany's Federal Criminal Office revealed them to be fakes. The paper on which they had been written was too modern. Heads rolled at Stern, Newsweek and The Sunday Times, all of whose editors resigned, and Trevor-Roper's reputation was seriously dented. Kujau told the court: "I shouldn't have done it." As for Konrad Kujau, she said: "He sold an awful lot himself," claiming that he produced up to five pictures a day.

"He could finish a painting within half an hour – although by that I mean a Picasso – that didn't take long." The most expensive copies she had sold, she said, were those of Gustav Klimt works. The qualified singer turned art dealer first came to the attention of art forgery investigators after they were tipped off by a collector that far more works of Konrad Kujau's had been sold than he could possibly have produced in his lifetime.