3 Convicted in Forged Hitler Diaries Trial

A West German journalist and a confessed counterfeiter were convicted Monday of the forgery and the multi-million dollar sale of the bogus Hitler diaries to a national magazine that had claimed the documents would require a rewriting of the history of the Nazi era.

Reporter Gerd Heidemann, 53, was sentenced to four years and eight months and Nazi memorabilia dealer Konrad Kujau, 47, to four years and six months on charges of fraud at the conclusion of their 11-month trial here. Kujau’s friend, Edith Lieblang, 44, was sentenced to eight months’ probation for receiving stolen property--a part of his share for the forgeries.

The three defendants claimed to have been duped by one another about the origin of the volumes and of the money paid for them.

Heidemann and the flamboyant Stuttgart dealer who has boasted of his forgeries were found guilty of obtaining $3.1 million from Heidemann’s former employer, the weekly Stern magazine, for 60 volumes of fake diaries and other documents which the magazine initially trumpeted as a great “scoop.” The bulk of the money is still missing.

In announcing the sentences, Judge Hans-Ulrich Schroeder strongly criticized Stern’s publisher, Gruner & Jahr, for what he called its failure to take reasonable steps to determine the diaries’ accuracy in an apparent bid to boost circulation and reap a financial windfall through the sale of rights to other publications.

‘Grotesque Performance’

Accusing the magazine of a “grotesque performance” in buying the diaries and publishing excerpts from them, the judge declared: “No one (at Stern) asked, ‘Are the diaries really valid?’ ”

Schroeder said it is difficult to believe that any editor who read the diaries could accept them as authentic. He cited as an example a diary notation listing the names of 78 generals who supposedly had been promoted by Hitler.

“Who would ever write down the names of 78 generals in a diary?” Schroeder asked rhetorically.

In a statement Monday by the Hamburg-based magazine, Stern said it accepts the court’s ruling, “including the parts . . . in which Stern and Gruner & Jahr were rebuked for carelessness . . . Stern regrets that it has brought journalism into discredit.” The diary scandal caused massive upheavals at Stern and led to the resignation of its senior editors. The magazine also suffered a drop in circulation from which it has still not recovered.