Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

Heidemann felt that such treasures should be exhibited in a setting worthy of their value. During his meetings with Werner Maser in June he raised the possibility of buying Hitler’s childhood home in Leonding. Maser, who knew the area well from his earlier researches, offered to help. On 1 July, the historian and his wife, together with Heidemann and Gina, drove into Austria where Maser had arranged a meeting with the Bürgermeister and town council of Leonding. According to Maser:

Heidemann offered to buy Hitler’s parental home. A large sum was mentioned as the purchase price – I think it was 270,000 marks, I’m not sure exactly. Heidemann said that money was no problem and patted his wallet. It seemed to the gentlemen of the town council of Leonding rather dubious that a journalist from Germany should be travelling around with so much of his own money in his pocket…. I asked Herr Heidemann on this occasion where he got the money from. He insisted it wasn’t money from Stern but from his wife who had sold two hotels for about 9 million marks.

From Leonding we drove on together to Braunau. Heidemann wanted to look at Hitler’s birthplace and possibly even to buy that. For my part, I declined to put Heidemann in touch with the town authorities there. I had slight doubts about Heidemann. For a start, I was worried by the fact that he was wandering around with so much money and saying that the price was no object. The other thing was that the behaviour of Herr and Frau Heidemann rather repelled me when they talked about Hitler.

As part of their tour that summer, the Heidemanns and the Masers also visited Berchtesgaden where they spent a while poking around in the rubble.

The idea of buying the house in Leonding was not a mere whim. Heidemann was serious. After his return to Hamburg, on 13 July, he wrote to the town council to repeat his proposal ‘once again in writing’. Hitler’s childhood home, said Heidemann, ‘always meant more to him than his birthplace in Braunau’:

Adolf Hitler had a decisive influence on the history of our century. The world and the events of today are a consequence of his politics and his war. A complete knowledge of all the threads in his life and the politics of this man is the basic precondition for the understanding of history. In my opinion, the house of Hitler’s parents is an ideal site for an historical museum, to be supervised by a trustee from your town to ensure that the presentation is strictly factual.

If the town authorities agree, I will purchase from the town, for an agreed sum, the relevant house and land. I accept the conditions this would entail – for example, not altering the use to which the property is put without the express approval of the town authorities.

Should there be any complications in selling this piece of land to me as a citizen of West Germany, an Austrian historical institute could be found who would become the legal owner of the land and museum.

I ask you to consider this offer in a positive way. I await your answer and remain yours, etc, etc.

The town council met to discuss Heidemann’s offer three days later. Despite his assurances that his Hitler museum would be ‘strictly factual’ there was something about the reporter and his proposal which the burghers of Leonding found faintly sinister. Heidemann’s scheme was rejected.

Thwarted in his plan to install his collection in Leonding, Heidemann had a new idea. He decided to investigate the possibility of moving his Hitler memorabilia to South America and in the summer of 1981, he sought the advice of Klaus Barbie.

Heidemann had met Barbie in Bolivia two years previously, during his honeymoon tour with Gina and General Wolff. The two men had enjoyed a friendly relationship. Unfortunately, from Heidemann’s point of view, a year after his return, in October 1980, Stern had decided to salvage at least something from the trip which they had financed. There had been a military coup in Bolivia in which Barbie, correctly, was suspected of having played a part. Despite strong opposition from Heidemann, the transcript of his interview with ‘the Butcher of Lyons’ had been used by another reporter as the basis for an article entitled ‘New Power for Old Nazis’. The piece depicted Barbie as a brutal SS torturer. Barbie had not been pleased.

Hoping for a reconciliation, Heidemann wrote to him on 22 August 1981. He sent his condolences on the recent death of Barbie’s son. ‘I am very sorry’, he added, ‘that I have also caused you some sorrow.’ He then explained how the transcript of their interview had been taken off him by Stern ’s editors and given ‘a completely different slant’:

Of course I tried with all the means at my disposal to prevent publication – sadly, in vain. For me, the matter has been a continuing source of embarrassment and my wife reproached me for it for months. If she could not understand my dilemma, I can, of course, expect even less understanding from you and your wife. I can only ask for your forgiveness. I regret very much the loss of your friendship as a result of this stupid affair.

Nevertheless I would like to entrust you with an important matter, and seek your advice on it.

I have succeeded in securing a large part of Hitler’s property – extremely interesting notes, watercolours and oil paintings executed in his own hand; the pistol with which the Führer killed himself in the bunker (a handwritten letter from Bormann guarantees it); crates with documents from the Reich Chancellery; and, above all, the Blood Flag, still in its original case with the memorial plaque to the fallen of 1923. In my view, these relics of the National Socialist movement should, at the very least, be kept in a safe place by reliable men. You will understand that I do not want to store the flag for too long in Germany: here, the relevant laws and statutes are always getting tighter and tighter and there are frequent house searches for Nazi relics. Perhaps you can advise me where I could place these relics for safety?

In the hope that you will still be prepared to have anything to do with me, I await your answer and will then give you more details about my finds. With best wishes to your wife from my wife and myself;

There is no record of Barbie’s reply.

ON 1 JULY Manfred Fischer left Hamburg to take up his new appointment in Guetersloh as managing director of Bertelsmann. He was now in the first rank of European executives, controlling a company with an annual turnover of more than $2 billion. Bertelsmann had expanded so rapidly during the 1970s, growing by as much as 15 per cent a year, that its capital base had become thin; a period of retrenchment was required. Mohn had decided that Fischer was the best man to oversee this new policy: he did so on the basis of Fischer’s reputation as a cost cutter. Similarly, to replace Fischer at Gruner and Jahr, Mohn chose another businessman supposedly with an ability to enforce stringent economy.

Gerd Schulte-Hillen was only forty years old. After leaving school he had spent a year in the Bundeswehr, then qualified as an engineer, joining Bertelsmann in 1969. He was promoted rapidly, from assistant manager in Germany, to technical manager of printing plants in Spain and Portugal. He was put in charge of printing for the whole of Gruner and Jahr and built a huge new factory for the group in the United States. Schulte-Hillen’s appointment as managing director came as something of a surprise. He was a highly respected technician, but he had little experience of handling journalists, of whom he was felt to be slightly in awe. He was quickly initiated into Gruner and Jahr’s great secret. ‘I think it was in June 1981,’ he recalled, ‘that Dr Manfred Fischer swore me to secrecy and then told me that the Hitler diaries were being bought by the company.’