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Heinz Kurschildgen
Heinrich "Heinz" Kurschildgen, called the "goldmaker of Hilden", was a charlatan in pre-World War II Germany. He made numerous people, including Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, believe that he was able to make valuable resources such as gold, radium or petrol out of base materials.
==Weimar Republic: gold and radium==
In 1914, the young Kurschildgen began an apprenticeship in a dye factory in Hilden. Fascinated by the chemicals he worked with, he cobbled together a chemical laboratory of his own and after a short time claimed to have made numerous sensational discoveries. He convinced several investors that he had found a way to make gold, and was prosecuted for fraud in 1922. Kurschildgen was, however, found to be not criminally responsible because of ''dementia praecox'', and the case was dismissed on the condition that Kurschildgen stop approaching investors with gold-making schemes.
Complying with this restriction, Kurschildgen then began claiming that he was able to synthesize radium, a very rare and expensive radioactive element. He demonstrated his "transmutation" of uranium oxide into radium to physicists of the University of Cologne, but declined to explain his procedure. When the newspapers took up his claims, the ''Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt'' examined them and found them to be fraudulent.〔 In May 1928, as a result of the publicity Kurschildgen now enjoyed, the apothecary of his hometown Hilden had a bust of Kurschildgen installed in town, mockingly dedicated to the "genius goldmaker".〔
In 1929, Kurschildgen returned to the gold-making business. He unsuccessfully contacted the German president Paul von Hindenburg as well as ''Reichsbank'' president Hjalmar Schacht with proposals to manufacture gold to pay back Germany's World War I reparations. With private backers, Kurschildgen had more success, obtaining an advance of 100,000 ''Reichsmark'' from a Cologne businessman and an offer of 1 million marks from an American millionaire called Harris.〔 In 1930, 15 of his defrauded clients brought criminal charges against him, and after being found criminally responsible (if "not very intelligent") this time, he was convicted to 18 months imprisonment. The news of his trial and conviction was reported as far away as Australia.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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