Hans-Jürgen Kuhl

Jürgen Kuhl in his gallery

Hans-Jürgen Kuhl , also Jürgen Kuhl (* 1941 in Dattenfeld / Sieg), is a trained photo businessman and works as a freelance graphic designer , but became known internationally as a counterfeiter .

Beginning as an artist

Kuhl's father was a factory owner. From 1944 he lived with his parents and five siblings in Cologne . He completed an apprenticeship as a photo businessman, from 1970 he worked as a freelance graphic designer and repro photographer. In the graphic area, Kuhl specialized in collages from photographs and / or drawings, which he used as a source for the actual artistic end product: screen printing in his own studio.

Successes in fashion

From 1961 he came into contact with the Cologne underworld , where he got to know “ Dummse Tünn ” and “ Schäfers Nas ” and was nicknamed “De Duv” (The Dove) on the Cologne ring scene, which he long after his “criminal” machinations maintained.

He broke away from the milieu and achieved commercial success with his own fashion creations in the summer of 1971 with the emerging fashion of hot pants . He was sentenced to one month imprisonment during that time for irregularities in the conduct of business. This was followed by the establishment of his own fashion label under the name Paloma , which was also commercially successful.

Activities as an artist

In 1985 he created his first work of art. In doing so, he orientates himself close to plagiarism on the famous Flowers motif by Andy Warhol , whom he met in Cologne, and sold the flowers as trendy screen prints . There was litigation with Warhol over Kuhl's cathedral image, which resembled Warhol's Original Cologne Cathedral . He made the works of art in his own workshop in Pulheim . On December 31, 1997, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported on Kuhl's latest work, prints and acrylic paintings by Lady Diana in Pop Art .

Counterfeiting

Preparation for the crime

When his financial situation worsened, he and four accomplices planned to forge US dollar bills and distribute them for 10% of their face value. For this purpose, computers, scanners, a screen printing system and offset machines were acquired. The paper that they obtained from the former Yugoslavia, like the original Cranes Crest paper, did not glow under UV light .

In his Pulheim workshop in Pulheim, he scanned a 100-dollar bill from a savings bank, then changed the serial numbers with a graphics program, combined twelve bills into a sheet, photographed them and made printing plates. After many unsuccessful attempts, high-quality forgeries emerged, but no buyers were found for them.

Discovery

On September 25, 2006, workers at a waste disposal facility found plastic bags with unshredded dollar bills and documents, which investigators quickly took to Kuhl's address.

Because of the seriousness of the crime, the Cologne criminal police handed the case over to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The experts described the forgeries as "terrifyingly perfect". An eight-month observation that was then initiated was unsuccessful as there were no buyers.

The BKA smuggled in the alleged event manager with the code name Marie Sophie Susann Falkenthal . At the beginning of April 2007, she contacted Kuhl and on April 13, 2007, she paid 21,600 euros for 250,000 counterfeit US dollars. On May 22, 2007, another $ 6.5 million should be handed over and Kuhl was arrested. During the search of the workshop and apartment, as well as his two main accomplices, counterfeit money with a face value of US $ 16.5 million was seized.

It was the third largest find of false dollar bills worldwide and the second largest in Germany, surpassed by 25 million that the police in Lower Saxony found in Alfeld / Leine in 1994.

Trial and Punishment

On May 25, 2007, the Cologne police announced details of the spectacular case at a press conference. On November 8, 2007, after making a comprehensive confession, the Cologne Regional Court sentenced Kuhl to six years in prison after only one day of trial, of which he spent three and a half years in open prison. The judge called him an “extraordinary graphic artist” who had become a counterfeiter because of “massive financial difficulties”.

Media reception

As part of the ZDF series Terra X , the counterfeit money case was recreated in detail for the first episode of the two-part series F as forgery with Kuhl's own participation.

literature

• Christoph Gottwald: Blooming Dreams - The unbelievable story of the counterfeiter Jürgen Kuhl. DuMont, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-8321-9532-8 .
• Andrea Haefely: Silence, cheat, lie: What is allowed? Observer Edition, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-85569-830-1 , p. 112; limited preview in Google Book search

Web links

• www.kuhl-koeln.de Homepage of Hans-Jürgen Kuhl
• Jörg Diehl, Ralf Hoppe: The Warhol the counterfeiters. Spiegel online , July 7, 2008, accessed October 6, 2010 . 
• Wolfgang Heim: Jürgen Kuhl, artist and counterfeiter , interview with Jürgen Kuhl, SWR1 , May 24, 2013

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Anton Dumm , former professional boxer and bodyguard Romy Schneider
2. ↑ Christoph Gottwald: Bloom Dreams - The incredible story of the counterfeiter Jürgen Kuhl. DuMont, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-8321-9532-8 .
3. ↑ Tim Stinauer: The blossoms of the Cologne Andy Warhol. on: Rundschau-online August 30, 2010.
4. ↑ The protagonist ( memento of the original from October 19, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on ZDFneo, August 2012. 
5. ↑ Jörg Diehl, Ralf Hoppe: The Warhol the counterfeiters. In: Spiegel online. July 7, 2008.
6. ↑ Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of July 15, 1994.
7. ↑ Pascal Beucker : Imprisonment for Cologne counterfeiters. In: NRZ. November 9, 2007.