Word: heidemann
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Writer Gerd Heidemann, who spent three years tracking down the journals, was never questioned about his sources, even though he was known to have a near fanatical interest in the Nazi period. A decade ago, the journalist sold his home and bought former Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goring's boat, upon which he entertained former Nazi officials...
...Once Heidemann delivered the diaries to Stern--which paid $3.5 million for them to persons unknown--the magazine failed to conduct even rudimentary chemical tests, and instead relied solely upon the word of several historians. And even the historians performed poorly; the volumes contained numerous factual errors that should have been sufficient proof that the diaries were fakes...
From that point, however, Heidemann's story becomes murky. He will not say where or when he located the documents, how he obtained them, who had harbored them and where, or how he proved to himself that they were genuine. In a video documentary that Stern showed at its press conference, Heidemann made a strange error: he said he went to South America at the beginning of the 1980s, among other reasons, to look for Hitler's former secretary Martin Bormann. But Bormann had been declared dead in 1973 after his remains were found in West Berlin...
...Heidemann joined Stern in 1951, just three years after it was founded. A photographer turned self-styled investigative reporter, Heidemann found the reclusive mystery writer B. Traven (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) in Mexico and former Gestapo Official Klaus Barbie in Bolivia. But he is far from a star in Hamburg, West Germany's de facto journalistic capital. Says one fellow reporter: "He is a perfectly ordinary reporter, perhaps a little gullible but otherwise bland." Heidemann has one colorful trait: a passion for Nazi memorabilia. He sold his house in Hamburg a decade ago to buy a yacht...
...Heidemann has insisted that disclosure of his sources might endanger their lives. If they happen to be in East Germany, and if the diaries are authentic, the argument is persuasive: the East Berlin government would not be expected to look kindly on the smuggling out of materials of such historic, and commercial, value. Oddly, however, when NBC Reporter Jim Bittermann sought permission to go to Bornersdorf last week to follow Heidemann's story, he and his camera crew got a surprise: there were no delays, no red tape, and no supervision by officials when they interviewed residents. The townspeople...