GÖRING'S GRAND CROSS DOCUMENT: A FAKE

 GÖRING'S GRAND CROSS DOCUMENT

Some years ago, a Chinese collector paid over $1 million for Hermann Göring's Grand Cross document and folder. Except that he didn't, because he was sold a fake that looks nothing like the real thing, which is kept in the reserve collection of the Luftwaffe Museum. Even if one does not have privileged access to the museum, the studio photographs of the genuine article by Heinrich Hoffmann in 1940 are more than sufficiently detailed to see that the fake, offered by a leading American dealer, is nothing like it. The Chinese collector who purchased the fake Hermann Göring GK document and case is said by a number of reliable sources to be the individual who posts on the largely discredited Wehrmacht-Awards militaria forum as "Chen". "Chen" resides in Hong Kong. 

Photographed by Heinrich Hoffmann in 1940: the real GK document

The fake GK document: made in Pakistan?

 

 

 

And here we have some remarks from Mr "Chen" about the difference "big money" makes. "Chen" makes it clear in many posts on the Wehrmacht-Awards militaria forum that he spends "big money" on high end Third Reich memorabilia. He is the "crazy Chinese" who whom Dietrich Maerz referred. And there is every reason to conclude that he is the author of the implicitly threatening emails received through this website. 

 

Had "Chen" done some simple initial research, he would quickly have established that the genuine document and cassette are in the possession of the German government. They were kept in the archives of the Luftwaffenmuseum in Ütersen before German Reunification in 1989 and the transfer of the museum to Berlin-Gatow in 1995. He would not have needed "big money" to visit the museum, which is a state establishment, and to view the document. He would have needed to make an application and to have given a credible reason for wishing to see items relating to a Nazi personality like Göring. The German authorities remain quite sensitive about the Third Reich era. 

 

And here we have Chen on 18.3.2011 talking about Juli 20 1944 Wound Badges, Ritterkreuz Brillanten and the Hermann Göring Grand Cross document. There was no need for any experience in the case of the Grand Cross document to which he was referring. Even if the German authorities prevented members of the public from applying to see the original, we still have Heinrich Hoffmann's extremely clear and detailed 1940 studio photographs of the document and cassette ready for Hitler's signature. These photographs clearly show the obvious differences between the genuine items and the ensemble promoted through the WAF and other websites before being displayed by Wolfe at shows in the US and then sold to the lucky new owner in faraway Hong Kong. 

This situation neatly illustrates another aspect of the problem; we can expose crooked dealers but what about the people who buy fakes without doing due diligence and who then turn nasty if anyone tries to educate them? They prefer to "shoot the messenger" than to challenge the crook who defrauded them in the first place. In this case, the situation is compounded by cultural differences. Like many Orientals, the Chinese have a horror of what they see as 'losing face'. It is quite clear that the author of the threatening emails is the person who bought this badly executed million dollar fake and he is obviously furious with me for writing about it.

 

After the third part of this article on Hermann Göring's Großkreuz was published, the viewing statistics showed more than 300 visits to this page from Kowloon and Hong Kong Central, some lasting as long as three and half hours. More recently, we have been receiving vaguely threatening emails from the Kowloon area of Hong Kong. Someone in Hong Kong was very cross about this blog.