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Johannes Heüman was born in 1882 into a church family. His late relative Jarl Torgersson in Gothenburg has searched for the story that Johannes’ family probably liked to see forgotten.
From John’s father there was an express wish that he should become a priest, but the son refused. Johannes instead wanted to devote himself to writing articles, poetry and novels. As a kind of compromise, he became a lawyer and a bit into the 20th century, he opened his own law firm. But he was careless with his clients and was threatened several times with bankruptcy.
In 1912, Johannes, as a lawyer, was commissioned to manage and distribute an inheritance in a well-to-do family. After a few years, however, the family realized that the lawyer Johannes had embezzled large parts of the inheritance, among other things by forging a signature.
He was not the only one to engage in counterfeiting at the time around World War II. Mats Hayen at the Stockholm City Archives says that it was so common that a new area of expertise arose, people who claimed to be experts in interpreting manuscripts to determine whether a signature was false or not.
The case of Johannes in particular aroused great interest because it was the first time a dead person’s signature was handled. If the person was dead when the forgery was made, was it really to be regarded as a genuine forgery?
The program is made of
Gunilla Nordlund and Elisabeth Renström
Speaker: Patrik Paulsson
[email protected]
Source: ICELAND NEWS