Her son is said to have been poisoned there by a domestic servant who wanted to take revenge for MacLeod’s punishment of her lover.

January 27, 2020

Her son is said to have been poisoned there by a domestic servant who wanted to take revenge for MacLeod’s punishment of her lover.

Her son is said to have been poisoned there by a domestic servant who wanted to take revenge for MacLeod’s punishment of her lover. After returning to the Netherlands, their marriage ended in divorce. Her daughter stayed with her husband, who did not pay her alimony and remarried. Finally she tried her luck in Paris, she wanted to become a mannequin and hired herself more badly than well as a model for painters. Until she got the idea to pretend to be an exotic nude dancer from India. In this role she became famous. In the course of her appearances abroad she came to Berlin for the first time in 1907, where she even gave a performance for the German Emperor Wilhelm II and his family. During the First World War, the dancer became increasingly in debt and had to sell property in order to maintain her luxurious lifestyle.

Since late autumn 1915, Mata Hari worked for the German secret service, as documents show. Just one year later, she is said to have been recruited by the French secret service to spy on German activities. Even if she knew personalities from politics and society through her dance career, it is still unclear whether and how much information she actually passed on and what was just naive coquetry. She herself claimed to have received money that she is said to have used to pay off her debts. But she never paid anything in return. In 1917 she was convicted of double espionage and high treason by the French military tribunal, despite scant evidence. At the age of 41, she was finally shot by a firing squad on October 15, 1917, presumably to make an example in wartime.

2. Sidney Reilly (1873-1925), the real James Bond

His person served the author Ian Fleming in his novels from the 1950s and 1960s as a model for James Bond. Sigmund Rosenblum aka Sidney Reilly is considered one of the greatest spies of the 20th century. Even his origins are mysterious: he himself repeatedly told different stories, like the son of a noble member of the court of Tsar Alexander III. to be. In the end, experts argue about his date of birth, which is given as either March 24, 1873 or March 24, 1874. The adventurer of Russian-Jewish descent was considered a gentleman and bon vivant who loved gambling, luxury and beautiful women. He served as a double agent for at least four countries, including a British secret agent for the forerunner of today’s MI6. As he himself confirmed, he spied in the Second Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. As a spy, he is said to have performed the most scintillating deeds: he is said to have stolen numerous weapons plans and prevented attacks. He is also said to have seduced the wife of a Russian minister in order to obtain information about German arms deliveries to Russia.essays websites For this he is said to have received the nickname “Ace of Spies”.

Reilly was at war with his native Russia early on: he was first noticed in Odessa in 1892 when he was arrested for his political activities and his work as a courier for a revolutionary Russian group. However, he was released, not least because he was friends with various members of the tsarist secret police. Presumably he worked as a police informant at a young age. After his release, his father informed him that his mother had died and that he was not his birth father. Then Reilly faked his death at the port of Odessa and reached South America on a British ship. There he took the name Pedro and hired himself out as a dock worker, road builder, plantation worker and cook. Historians argue about how he got to London. One version says that he robbed and killed two Italian anarchists in France with the help of an accomplice. In 1985 he appeared in London as Sidney Rosenblum. At that time he worked as a paid informant for the London police. He began an affair with the wife of the priest Hugh Thomas and married her after his death. Rumor has it that Reilly posed as a doctor to confirm the natural cause of death and to cover up a possible murder. Margaret Thomas inherited a fortune from her late husband. Marriage to Margaret also made Reilly a rich man. He took on a new identity and was called Sidney George Reilly from then on.

In 1918 he was sent to Moscow as a British secret agent to assassinate Lenin and overthrow the Bolsheviks. But an assassination attempt on Lenin by the Russian revolutionary Fanny Kaplan thwarted Reilly’s own plans and he had to go into hiding in London. Since the secret police had already heard of Reilly’s plans (also known as the Lockhart plot, named after Bruce Lockhart, Reilly’s formal superior in Moscow), he was sentenced to death in absentia by the Revolutionary Court in Russia.

His espionage career lasted a total of 20 years before he was shot dead in a forest near Moscow after his capture by the Soviet secret service OGPU on November 5, 1925 – allegedly on the personal orders of Joseph Stalin. However, even his death is shrouded in legends. His demise was questioned in many places. In Germany in 1940 the authorities still assumed that Reilly was alive and put him on the special wanted list as a British news agent.

Lawrence of Arabia (1888-1935), the adventurer

Thomas E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was a British officer, passionate archaeologist, writer and secret agent. His life was filmed in 1962 with actor Peter O’Toole in the lead role under the title “Lawrence of Arabia”. He was saved in North Wales. His father Sir Thomas Robert Tighe Chapman was of Anglo-Irish descent and his mother Sarah Junner (Miss Lawrence, after her father John Lawrence) was from the English city of Sunderland. His parents, who never married, had a total of five sons. Thomas E. Lawrence was the second oldest.

At the age of only 21, the then Oxford student spent weeks walking alone through Syria and Palestine. As an archaeologist, he took part in excavations on the Upper Euphrates and learned to speak fluent Arabic in the course of this activity. It was then that he became passionate about the Bedouins. After the outbreak of World War I, Lawrence joined the British intelligence service in Cairo from December 1914. When the Arab revolt broke out in 1916, it was supported by Great Britain. And Lawrence served as a liaison because of his relationship. The revolt was instigated by the Emir of Mecca, Sherif Hussein. He fought – with the help of British funds and advisers – for independence from the Ottoman Empire. Lawrence himself also stood up for these efforts and cultivated a friendship with Faisal I, one of the sons of the Emir of Mecca. Lawrence led the Bedouins in the guerrilla war against the Ottoman Sultan and thus contributed significantly to the victory in 1918. In the end, however, it was not about an independent Arabia, because Britain made its own claims after the war. Knowing this, Lawrence felt guilty about his Arab friends and withdrew from the country. He died in England in 1935 at the age of 46 as a result of a motorcycle accident.

Elisabeth Schragmüller (1887-1940), Miss Doctor

Dr. Elisabeth Schragmüller, known as Elsbeth, alias Fräulein Doktor, was a German political scientist. In 1914, after completing her doctorate, she traveled to Brussels and met the German Governor General Colmar von der Goltz. He initially used them in a department that evaluated confiscated letters from Belgian soldiers. She showed a talent for analysis and evaluation and was promoted to the war intelligence agency. In 1915 she became the head of the espionage department in Antwerp. It was an absolute novelty for a woman. Schragmüller is also said to have been Mata Hari’s command officer during her time as a secret service agent. To this day there are numerous myths surrounding the spy:

In 1916, for example, she is said to have traveled to the Belgian front with forged papers in order to obtain information about the Allies. On the way back Schragmüller is said to have disguised himself as a farmer in order to remain unrecognized, as the author Magnus Hirschfeld writes in his book “Sittengeschichte des First World War”. In fact, according to her own statements, the agent almost never left her desk and never went on assignments abroad. Rather, their task was to collect or intercept information and obtain agents and connections. Schragmüller spoke fluent English and French. She always signed her reports with Lieutenant Schragmüller, so that the German army command only later found out that it was a woman.

After the end of the First World War, Schragmüller, who had been promoted to first lieutenant and awarded the Iron Cross First Class, turned her back on espionage and embarked on an academic career again. Under the economist Karl Diehl, she got the post of the first female professorial assistant in Freiburg. For reasons unknown to this day, she broke off her professional career in 1934. Only a few years later she died of bone tuberculosis on February 24, 1940 in Munich at the age of 52. Apparently they wanted to hire her again as a spy during World War II.

Richard Sorge (1895-1944), the hero of the Second World War

Dr. Richard Sorge was born the son of a German engineer and his Russian wife in Baku, today’s capital of Azerbaijan (then the Russian Empire). The family later moved to Berlin. Sorge was a German communist, journalist and worked for the Soviet military intelligence service. Richard Sorge’s great uncle Friedrich Adolf Sorge was one of Karl Marx’s companions. Richard Sorge volunteered for military service in 1914, and shrapnel broke both of his legs in 1916, a wound that affected the rest of his life. During his convalescence, he made up his Abitur and completed his studies in the Faculty of Politics and Law at the University of Hamburg in 1919 with his doctorate. In 1921 he married the librarian Christiane Gerlach, the ex-wife of his professor Kurt Albert Gerlach. First he got involved with the KPD, in 1925 he moved to Moscow, in 1929 he became a Soviet secret service employee under the code name “Ramsay”.

Before and during World War II, Sorge for the Soviet Union spied primarily in China and Japan. Among other things, he provided information about the attack on Pearl Harbor and his group uncovered Germany’s preparations for war against Russia (Operation Barbarossa). He became famous in 1941 with his decisive radio message that Japan had no intention of attacking the Soviet Union. As a result, the Russian armed forces concentrated on the German troops and won the battle for Moscow.

The spy was not granted a peaceful demise either: the Japanese secret police Tokko increasingly targeted all exiled communists, including Richard Sorge. One of his contacts was exposed and Sorge was arrested on October 18, 1941. Moscow denied its existence. In September 1943 he and his contact were tried in camera and the death sentence was given. He was finally hanged on November 7, 1944 in Sugamo Prison in Tokyo and buried there. His lover, the Japanese Ishii Hanako, later moved his grave to the cemetery adjacent to the prison, which was later torn away. Today a tomb in the Tama cemetery commemorates the spy. Richard Sorge was posthumously awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union” in 1964.

Julius (1918-1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (1915-1953), the espionage couple

The two native Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were staunch communists. The electrical engineer and his wife were executed in the US in 1953 as Soviet spies in the electric chair – although both were civilians and not employees of the Soviet secret service. The case upset at that time and even Pope Pius XII. and other well-known personalities such as the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre or the artist Frida Kahlo spoke out against the death penalty.

The couple was accused of having passed on relevant information about the atomic bomb to the Russians so that they could build a bomb. Julius Rosenberg actually worked as an informant for the secret service, but could not pass on any useful information. His wife, who was largely innocent of espionage. She died because of her communist beliefs and out of solidarity with her husband. The two were accused by Ethel’s brother, who himself wanted to avoid punishment for his espionage activities in relation to the Soviet atomic bomb project. David Greenglass actually contributed to the development of the atomic bomb in the USA and provided important information to the Soviet Union. During the trial, he weighed heavily on his sister and brother-in-law in order to get away with it even with intact skin. In the end, he received a prison sentence of several years.

The Rosenbergs’ two sons, 10-year-old Michael and 6-year-old Robert, were adopted by a New York couple after their parents were executed.

Fritz Kolbe (1900-1971), the Allied spy

Born in Berlin, Fritz Kolbe worked under the code name “George Wood” as an unpaid agent and passed information about the Third Reich to the US secret service as an official in the Foreign Office. For example, he passed on the deportation plans of the Hungarian Jews and informed the Americans about Hitler’s secret headquarters, the “Wolfsschanze”.

Kolbe grew up as the son of a social democratic craftsman. He did his military service, took his Abitur in 1920 in evening school and then studied economics and languages (English, French, Spanish) at the University of Berlin and the commercial college before ending up at the Foreign Office.

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