Franz von Rintelen

Franz Dagobert Johannes von Rintelen (born as Rintelen , officially Rintelen von Kleist by adoption ;) (born August 19, 1878 in Frankfurt an der Oder ; † May 30, 1949 in London ) was a German officer , diplomat and spy . Von Rintelen was one of the main people responsible for the German espionage and sabotage actions in the United States during the First World War .

Espionage in the United States

At the beginning of the First World War, von Rintelen was sent to the United States by the German General Staff . He was officially accredited there as an employee of the German embassy in Washington , but his actual mission was to prevent the (still) neutral USA from delivering ammunition and goods to the allied war opponents of the German Reich. As a result, he was conspiratorial in Washington and New York from 1914 to 1915. With the help of the so-called "fountain pen" bombs he developed , he was able to damage or destroy 32 British ships carrying war-relevant goods. The Time Magazine estimated the damage done by his loss in 1940 to approximately 50 million US dollars.

In 1915, after a falling out with his superior, the military attaché Franz von Papen , von Rintelen was ordered back to Berlin. Since the British secret service was able to intercept the message in which von Papen announced to the German General Staff that Rintelens was about to return home, the Allies knew about Rintelen's journey and the means of transport he had chosen (some historians even suspect that Papen had a code in this connection used to transmit the said message, which he knew the British had already decrypted to deliberately get von Rintelen into trouble). When von Rintelen sailed to Europe on a Dutch passenger steamer in the summer of 1915, the ship was seized in British waters and brought ashore by Rintelen in Southampton . He remained in British captivity for two years until he was finally extradited to the United States after entering the war in 1917 to serve a four-year prison sentence in Georgia for espionage.

Later life (1920-1949)

After a presidential general amnesty in 1920, von Rintelen was released early and returned to Germany. After falling out again with Franz von Papen, he moved to Great Britain in 1926. There von Rintelen - generally known as "Captain von Rintelen" - made a name for himself as a bon vivant and author of widely read spy novels.

In 1940, during the Second World War , von Rintelen was interned again as an " enemy alien " - although he had already passed the regular maximum age for interning members of "hostile nations" - sixty years. He was held on the Isle of Man until 1945 . Due to his journalistic activities directed against the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s, von Rintelen was scheduled for immediate arrest and liquidation by the Gestapo in the event of a successful invasion of Great Britain , such as from the special wanted list GB found in 1945 in the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin by the Allies from 1940, which recorded the twenty-eight “most urgently to be arrested” German and European emigrants (from the Gestapo’s control point).

Rintelen died suddenly in 1949 in a hospital in London.

Works

Franz von Rintelen: The Dark Invader. Wartime Reminiscences of a German Naval Intelligence Officer , London 1933.
Franz von Rintelen: The Return of the Dark Invader , London 1935.
Oswald Dutch : The Errant Diplomat. The Life of Franz von Papen , London 1940. (Foreword by Franz von Rintelen)

Web links

Literature by and about Franz von Rintelen in the catalog of the German National Library
Veronika Bock and Ulrich Biermann: May 30th, 1949 - anniversary of the death of Franz von Rintelen WDR ZeitZeichen (podcast).

Individual evidence

^ "In 1933 a book by a man who called himself Franz Rintelen von Kleist appeared in England," The dark invader ". The author said he was sent to the United States on an espionage mission during World War I. He also reported on a Charles von Kleist, a man about 70 years old at the time of the book's action, who had made his way from cabin boy to captain and had participated in the espionage. He died in 1919/1920 in Atlanta penitentiary. ”(Cf. homepage of the von Kleist family ; cf. also DNB catalog ( memento of October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ))
^ Franz von Rintelen: The Dark Invader: Wartime Reminiscences of a German Naval Intelligence Officer . Taylor & Francis, London 1998, ISBN 0-7146-4347-5 , pp. Ix.
↑ Tim Weiner : FBI: The True Story of a Legendary Organization. From the American by Christa Prummer-Lehmair, Sonja Schuhmacher and Rita Seuß, S. Fischer 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-091071-4 , p. 23 f.
↑ Excerpt from an article in the Daily Mail printed in: Ernst Hanfstaengl : Between White and Brown House , 1970, p. 396.
^ Franz von Rintelen: The Dark Invader: Wartime Reminiscences of a German Naval Intelligence Officer . Taylor & Francis, London 1998, ISBN 0-7146-4347-5 , p. Xxxii.

personal data
SURNAME	Rintelen, Franz von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Rintelen von Kleist, Franz Dagobert Johannes von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German officer and spy
DATE OF BIRTH	August 19, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH	Frankfurt Oder
DATE OF DEATH	May 30, 1949
Place of death	London

[1] "In 1933 a book by a man who called himself Franz Rintelen von Kleist appeared in England," The dark invader ". The author said he was sent to the United States on an espionage mission during World War I. He also reported on a Charles von Kleist, a man about 70 years old at the time of the book's action, who had made his way from cabin boy to captain and had participated in the espionage. He died in 1919/1920 in Atlanta penitentiary. ”(Cf. homepage of the von Kleist family ; cf. also DNB catalog ( memento of October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ))

[2] Franz von Rintelen: The Dark Invader: Wartime Reminiscences of a German Naval Intelligence Officer . Taylor & Francis, London 1998, ISBN 0-7146-4347-5 , pp. Ix.

[3] Tim Weiner : FBI: The True Story of a Legendary Organization. From the American by Christa Prummer-Lehmair, Sonja Schuhmacher and Rita Seuß, S. Fischer 2012, ISBN 978-3-10-091071-4 , p. 23 f.

[4] Excerpt from an article in the Daily Mail printed in: Ernst Hanfstaengl : Between White and Brown House , 1970, p. 396.

[5] Franz von Rintelen: The Dark Invader: Wartime Reminiscences of a German Naval Intelligence Officer . Taylor & Francis, London 1998, ISBN 0-7146-4347-5 , p. Xxxii.