RTL series
“Faking Hitler” with Bleibtreu and Eidinger: The series about the unbelievable scandal celebrates its free TV premiere
“Faking Hitler” starring Lars Eidinger and Moritz Bleibtreu
© RTL
Moritz Bleibtreu as the brazen diary forger, Lars Eidinger as the arrogant star reporter: “Faking Hitler” about the story behind one of Germany’s biggest press scandals is worth it just because of the actors. The series is now celebrating its free TV premiere on RTL.
It was one of the biggest media scandals of the past decades: in 1983 the star the alleged diaries of Adolf Hitler. A world sensation, the international press looked at the Hamburg editorial team. Then the embarrassment: The editors had fallen for a forger. In the podcast “Faking Hitler” the star In 2019, I worked through my own story and reconstructed the events surrounding the title story using original sound recordings from back then. This resulted in a series of the same name for RTL with a satirical approach – and great actors.
Lars Eidinger and Moritz Bleibtreu play the bizarre male duo Gerd Heidemann and Konrad Kujau in the six-part series. Eidinger plays the vain star reporter Heidemann, Bleibtreu the brazen counterfeiter Kujau and both are brilliant in their roles. While Bleibtreus Kujau, as an irresponsible bon vivant, wobbles from one sold fake to the next with a lot of charm, the vain Heidemann, blinded by his fascination with Hitler, gets lost in a story that was too good to be true from the start.
“Faking Hitler”: At that time, the star paid over nine million marks for the diaries
Always with the big “blockbuster”, as Heidemann calls it, in mind, superlatives are not spared in Hamburg when it comes to publication. “The history of the Third Reich must be rewritten!” boasted the editors at a special press conference in April 1983. The star-April 25, 1983 issue actually sold a record-breaking circulation of more than two million copies. Over nine million marks had been handed over to the counterfeiter Kujau to get the supposed world sensation.
How the two men ensnare each other until the fateful deal finally comes about is great cinema. “Faking Hitler” is an entertaining ride through 1980s Germany and at the same time makes the topicality of the topic clear. The Hitler diaries – that was the first major case of fake news in Germany. Especially the fictional character starEditor Elisabeth Stöckel (Sinje Irslinger) provides a view of today in the series. She has to endure the everyday sexism in the editorial office at the time and attaches herself to the meticulously hidden traces of her own family’s Nazi past. She is shocked to discover that while researching the Waffen-SS past of actor Horst Tappert, she comes across her own father (Ulrich Tukur) of all people.
But the series is also fun because it captures Hamburg in the 1980s and the editorial culture back then in such detail. And so the big press bankruptcy turns into a ludicrous crime thriller with characters that will be remembered.
“Faking Hitler” runs as a free TV premiere on September 14th. and 21 with three episodes each from 8:15 p.m. on RTL