Richard Sorge

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Richard Sorge (1940)

Richard Sorge ( Russian Рихард Зорге ; * September 22nd July / 4th October  1895 greg. In Sabunçu, Ujesd Baku , Russian Empire , today Azerbaijan ; † November 7th 1944 in Toshima , City of Tokyo , Japan ) was a German communist , Writer and agent and spy working for the Soviet military secret service. Before and during World War II, he worked as a journalist and on a secret mission for the Soviet GRU in China and Japan. His pseudonym was among other things R. Sonter, his GRU code name for the Japanese mission "Ramsay" ( Russian Рамза́й ).

In June 1941 he obtained information on the exact date of Germany's attack on the Soviet Union and in September 1941 the well-known and - from a historical perspective - war-decisive information that the ally Japan in the three-power pact between National Socialist Germany , fascist Italy and Japan would not attack the Soviet Union .

resume

Childhood, youth and professional development

House in Sabuntschi, where Richard Sorge lived from 1895 to 1898
Sorge (left) in World War I with Erich Correns , 1915
Memorial plaque on Weidenweg 29, in Berlin-Friedrichshain

Richard Sorge's parents were the Baku-based German oil engineer Wilhelm Sorge and his Russian wife Nina (née Kobelewa). He had a total of eight siblings. Sorge was born in Sabuntschi, a suburb of Baku, in 1895. In 1898 the family moved from Azerbaijan to Berlin , where from 1901 he attended the upper secondary school in Lichterfelde . Richard Sorge's great uncle Friedrich Adolf Sorge was one of Karl Marx's companions and co-founder of the First International.

With the beginning of the First World War in 1914 Richard Sorge volunteered for military service . He joined an artillery battalion and was transferred to the Western Front . There he was seriously wounded by shrapnel in March 1916 , breaking both legs. The wound left him physically impaired for the rest of his life. He was promoted to sergeant and received the Iron Cross 2nd class. During his recovery, he passed his secondary school diploma in 1916 and studied the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . Shortly thereafter, he began studying economics and philosophy in Berlin , then in Kiel , where he met Kurt Albert Gerlach and worked as his assistant at the Kiel Institute for World Economy . His studies he finished at the State and Law Faculty of the University of Hamburg in 1919 and has been with the rewarding political work "The kingdom of tariffs of the German Central Association of cooperatives " to Dr. rer. pole. PhD . The work received the rating “summa cum laude”.

Richard Sorge became a member of the USPD as early as 1917 and took an active part in the November 1918 events as a member of the Kiel Workers and Sailors Council. At the beginning of the following year he became editor and author of the Hamburger Volkszeitung - organ of the USPD. On October 15, 1919, he joined the KPD with membership number 08678. His sphere of activity was the Rhineland and he was elected to the local party leadership in Aachen that same year. Here he was also the leader of study circles for the study of the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin . At the end of the year Richard Sorge followed Prof. Kurt Gerlach to the Technical University of Aachen , but was dismissed from his position as assistant in 1920 because of his active participation in armed defensive battles against the Kapp Putsch . He then worked underground in a mine for several months. Here he helped to form company groups and organized escape routes for persecuted miners. Due to police persecution and bans, he had to leave the Rhineland. In Remscheid , he worked as an editor at the KPD regional organ Bergische Arbeiterstimme , where he also wrote leading articles . In 1921 he moved to nearby Solingen , became a teacher at the KPD party school and also taught at the adult education center in neighboring Ohligs . In August 1921 he took part as a delegate at the 2nd party congress of the KPD in Jena.

In the same year Richard Sorge married the librarian Christiane Gerlach, the divorced wife of his professor Kurt Albert Gerlach . Together with her he moved to Frankfurt am Main in October 1922 and became a member of the Society for Social Research , the formal association for the establishment of the Institute for Social Research . Up until Gerlach's early death in October 1922, Sorge worked as his assistant and was mainly active as a lecturer at the institute. During this time his first monograph on “Rosa Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital” was published in Solingen. In addition, he used his job-related travel activities for courier services between individual regional organizations of the KPD. At the end of the year he took part in the First Marxist Work Week in Ilmenau. In the following year he organized the Marxist working week at Whitsun in Geraberg near Arnstadt, at which u. a. Felix Weil , Karl Korsch , Georg Lukács , Friedrich Pollock , Karl August Wittfogel and Julian Gumperz took part. In 1924, Sorge was one of the institute's two main assistants. His wife Christiane also belonged to the institute; she received her doctorate in Cologne in 1922 with a thesis on Tolstoy ( Leo Tolstoy as a social worker ).

The year 1923 brought the political conflicts to a head and led to the formation of workers' governments in Saxony and Thuringia . In Hamburg there was a strike by dock workers and an uprising. Richard Sorge worked here as an employee of a partly conspiratorial KPD courier service, which was supposed to ensure the information channels between the KPD organization Frankfurt / Main and the workers' governments. When the Hamburg uprising was put down in autumn and the then chairman of the KPD Ernst Thälmann had to go illegally, Richard Sorge was employed as his personal courier under the code name "Robert". In a courageous action he succeeded in getting the urgently needed party funds and the current membership list to a safe place from the police. Due to the ongoing party ban, the 9th party congress of the KPD had to be held in Offenbach / Frankfurt in April 1924 under conditions of illegality. Richard Sorge was responsible for the care and personal safety of the representatives of the Executive Committee of the Comintern during these days . Due to the contact he made with employees of the office of the Communist International established in Moscow , he decided at the end of the year to work on behalf of this office. He moved to Moscow.

The Sorge couple initially stayed at the Hotel Lux in Moscow in early 1925 . In 1925 he became a member of the CPSU . He worked in the information department of the Communist International. This was primarily about press work and supporting individual country sections with the necessary publications. During this time he wrote articles for the magazines “Communist International”, “Bolsheviks”, “The Red Trade Union International”, the “Bauer International” and the newspaper “Weltwirtschaft und Weltpolitik” under several pseudonyms such as I. Sorge, IK Sorge, R. Sonter. That was entirely in line with his previous work experience. However, business trips to individual countries also became necessary in order to present the existing situation there more precisely and to establish contact with the regional partners. These trips initially took him to the Scandinavian countries, especially Denmark and Sweden, and later to the Far Eastern countries. China was an important target country, since political, military and largely covert activities of domestic and foreign forces could be analyzed better on site than from Moscow.

Richard Sorge was also involved in the German Communist Club in Moscow. In the spring of 1926 he was elected chairman there. On May 6, 1926, according to the minutes of the meeting, he gave a speech in the club on the occasion of a visit by a German company to the Red Army regiment in the Kiev military district. During the months of his presence in Moscow, he also continued his scientific work. In 1928 his work “The New German Imperialism” appeared in Berlin and Leningrad under the pseudonym R. Sonter. In the summer he took part as a delegate on the VI. Participated in the World Congress of the Communist International from July to September 1928. And at the end of the year he was studying in Denmark and Norway.

Activity in the intelligence service of the Red Army (GRU)

His clear analyzes in political situations and his ability to get a realistic picture of the events and people during such trips and to find his way quickly in trusting networks were in 1929 for Jan Karlowitsch Bersin (1880-1938), the head of the intelligence service of the Red Army GRU , crucial points to win Richard Sorge as an employee for the foreign assignment.

His first assignment was to take him to China that same year. The meeting of critical political constellations in several provinces, but above all in the region around Shanghai, had created areas of conflict for military clashes, which developed into a serious threat to the external security of the Soviet Union. Military forces had been concentrated here, including Japanese military units; the so-called Kuomindang Army was preparing for military clashes, and it received intensive support from military advisers from the German Reichswehr under General Hans von Seeckt (1866-1936). At the end of 1929 Richard Sorge traveled to Shanghai , disguised as a bourgeois journalist and correspondent for the "Deutsche Getreide Zeitung" and representative of the German-Chinese society. His code name here was "Johnsen". In order to solve the tasks assigned to him, he built up a group of like-minded people on site, which included the German radio operator Max Christiansen-Clausen (1899–1979) and the Japanese journalist Ozaki Hotsumi (1901–1944), as well as Ruth Werner temporarily included.

As a result of this mission, the group was able to obtain important information about the political and military activities of the forces around Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975) and the military advisers of the German Reichswehr who supported him. Above all, these helped to take individual countermeasures before military provocations in good time and to thwart strategic planning in the beginning. These results were of great importance to the Soviet Union in two respects. On the one hand, the military forces, the arms industry of the Soviet Union and the organization of the Red Army were not yet sufficiently developed to be able to offer the necessary resistance to military attacks. On the other hand, on the basis of the treaty concluded with China on May 31, 1924, the Soviet Union felt obliged to give the young national government help and support in the event of possible attacks on the sovereignty of the liberated areas.

Richard Sorge then traveled back to Germany - from 1933 onwards, disguised as a German journalist, to set up a group in Japan that would be able to obtain information from the highest political and military circles. Because this country increasingly posed threats to the existing status quo in the Pacific region and thus also to the Far Eastern territories of the Soviet Union. In addition, Japan had developed into a serious ally of the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis since the early 1930s. Several political and military advances against China and the Soviet Union were aimed at gaining new territory and areas of influence on the Asian mainland.

Richard Sorge arrived in Yokohama on September 8, 1933 . Officially, he initially worked as a journalist for the "German Stock Exchange Courier". In the following years he built up a network of informants who reached into the highest Japanese government circles and military strategic areas. For his own disguise, he became a member of the NSDAP on October 1, 1934 with membership number 2,751,466 . His circumstances gave him the opportunity to establish close relationships with individual employees of the German embassy in Tokyo, including the then military attaché Eugen Ott (1889–1977). He was presented to him for the first time at the end of 1934, according to Ott's memories.

From Tokyo, Richard Sorge made numerous trips to Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Moscow and Berlin. Here he gained further legitimacy, such as his official connection as the German correspondent for the magazines Der Deutsche Volkswirt , Zeitschrift für Politik , Zeitschrift für Geopolitik , Die Wehrmacht and, in 1936, even the Frankfurter Zeitung . In November 1935, the former German radio operator Max Christiansen-Clausen arrived in Tokyo at the special request of Richard Sorges. The group was now fully operational, but already had a good network of connections in Japanese political, military and economic circles. Through Ozaki Hotsumi, who also came back from China to the group "Ramsay" - as they called themselves - he even got to know the Japanese Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro . Richard Sorge was headed from 1936 by Boris Guds , who had been the embassy secretary in the Soviet embassy in Tokyo since 1934.

The year 1936 was a very decisive year for the work of the “Ramsay” group. A military coup took place in Tokyo in February and Richard Sorge prepared an extremely accurate analysis of the causes and possible consequences just a few days after the outbreak. On this basis, the military attaché Eugen Ott was able to inform his superiors in Berlin very quickly and realistically. There was uncertainty here because the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) was currently involved in alliance negotiations to conclude the so-called Anti - Comintern Pact . Richard Sorges' report was also on the table in Berlin with General Georg Thomas (1890–1946) - head of the military economics office in the German Ministry of Economic Affairs. Because of the explosive nature of the worry issue, he gave the order to immediately prepare a special study on the mutiny for his department. This study was then published in extracts in May 1936 in the "Zeitschrift für Geopolitik". In the embassy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge's reputation as a competent reporter was made available to him and the familiarity with other embassy staff, especially Eugen Ott, increased. Later he also edited the information sheet for the German embassy and received a letter identifying him as a member of the German embassy.

Richard Sorge was able to send his first top report to Moscow as early as 1936 on the Anti-Comintern Pact, especially regarding the background and actual goals. He knew how to name the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop , Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945), the Japanese General Ōshima Hiroshi (1886–1975) and the military attaché of the Japanese embassy in Berlin as driving forces . Even a certain number of the secret additional military protocols were available to him in full and provided information about the actual thrust of the treaty in the direction of Japan's strategic orientation towards the USSR. Ott had - as the then Counselor Alois Tichy reported to the Americans later - issued instructions to allow Sorge access to the files of the embassy. Further trips to China, Inner Mongolia in the same year and then in 1937/1938 to southern China, the Philippines and the USA completed the picture of these planned Japanese deployment areas. In 1937 Richard Sorge was able to report on activities during the second Sino-Japanese War and renewed combat operations by Japan around July 29, 1938 in the Mongolian border area.

A second top report from Richard Sorge's group, back in 1939, informed Moscow of the details and dates of the attack on Mongolia planned by Japan, which would later be aimed at the far east of the Soviet Union. The Japanese attack on Chalcyn Gol was repulsed by Mongolian and Soviet troops in July and August 1939 , and Japan had to sign an armistice with the Soviet Union in September after the defeat of its 6th Army on August 30, 1939. As a result, Japan, as an ally of the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis, was leveled out as a potential factor of uncertainty in the Pacific region.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded its neighboring country Poland. From this point on, Richard Sorge was entrusted with the constant maintenance of the embassy's war diary and the publication of the daily press bulletin by the meanwhile appointed ambassador, Eugen Ott. The third top report from Richard Sorge's group then referred to Germany's immediate preparations for war against the Soviet Union ( Operation Barbarossa ) with several specifications. As early as March 1941, the first reports on operational and tactical details of the war preparations were sent to Moscow. The date of the attack was then clearly specified on June 15 with the message: “The war will begin on June 22”. This message from Richard Sorges to the GRU with precise information about the day, the strength and the directions of the attack was ignored by Stalin and presented as enemy propaganda intended to induce the USSR to launch a military strike against Germany.

The fourth top report, dropped a short time later on September 14, 1941, took place immediately after the secret meeting of the Japanese Imperial Council of Thrones. This information referred to the fact that Japan would now attack the US and the English colonies in the Pacific as a strategic target, thus averting the threat to the Soviet Union in the Far East. With this information from Richard Sorges, Marshal Zhukov was able to withdraw the Soviet troops from Siberia and use them to stop the German advance 25 km from Moscow. The German defeat in front of Moscow let the Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union finally fail. Remembered at the site of most German encroachment in Khimki in the Moscow city limits the monument Jeschi . Another piece of information from the group "Ramsay", which has not yet been specified, referred to the planned attack on Pearl Harbor.

Since 1939 Richard Sorge and his radio operator Max Clausen had sent messages with over 65,000 words in 141 radio messages as well as numerous microfilms to Moscow by courier. The widespread opinion that Sorge's radio messages have been tapped is likely to be just as inaccurate as the suspicions against his radio operator. Their fate was rather the surveillance of Japanese communists in exile by the Japanese secret police Tokkō , which began in the autumn of 1941 for fear of regime enemies , during which one of his contacts was exposed. His assistant Ozaki was arrested on October 15, then Sorge himself on October 18, 1941. By Josef Meisinger , police attaché at the German Embassy in Tokyo, the unmasking Sorges to combat politically unwelcome German and "anti-Nazi" was exploited. Several arrests followed. An alleged "second Richard Sorge", the Austrian journalist Karl Raimund Hofmeier , was shipped to Germany by blockade breaker and shot on the crossing by SS man Herbert Ender at Meisinger's instigation.

In September 1943 the trial of Richard Sorge began in camera in the Tokyo District Court. On September 29, the death sentence against him and co-defendant Ozaki Hotsumi was announced. In January 1944, the Supreme Court finally rejected Richard Sorge and Ozaki Hotsumi's appeals. But it wasn't until November 7, 1944, that they were both hanged in Tokyo's Sugamo Prison . He was buried there too. Sorge's lover, Ishii Hanako from Japan, later moved his grave from Zōshigaya Cemetery to Sugamo Prison in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district . In the 1970s, however, the prison and its cemetery were demolished and Sorge's grave was relocated to Tama Cemetery, west of Tokyo, where a tomb commemorates him to this day.

After his rehabilitation during the thaw of the Khrushchev era, Richard Sorge was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union in 1964 in recognition of his achievements .

Honors

Dr. Richard Sorge medal
Concern on a GDR postage stamp (1976)
Worry on a Soviet postage stamp (1965)

The barracks of a reconnaissance unit of the National People's Army was named after him on October 7, 1971.

  • The German Post of the GDR honored Sorge in 1976 with the issue of a block of stamps , the Soviet Post in 1965 with the issue of a special stamp .
  • One station of the Central Moscow Railway Ring bears the name “Sorge” and was named after the 1964 so-called “Sorge Street” (Улица Зорге) that passed it. Stations of other metro systems in Russia also bear his name.

Fonts

Cinematic reception

  • 1955: Veit Harlan turned treason to Germany about Richard Sorge. One day after the Munich premiere, the one and a half million mark expensive film was canceled because the distributor had not submitted the film to FSK . The film only received approval after changes.
  • 1960: Who are you, Dr. Worry? (Qui êtes-vous, Monsieur Sorge?) , Screenplay and director: Yves Ciampi
  • 1970: The Sorge case . ZDF February 20, 1970. Director: Hermann Kugelstadt .
  • 1975: His most important radio message , DEFA documentary film, director: Eckhard Potraffke
  • 1977: Sonjas Rapport (DEFA feature film on the autobiography of Ruth Werner , with concern as one of the key characters), director: Bernhard Stephan
  • 2003: Spy Sorge (German title: Richard Sorge - a passionate spy ), director: Masahiro Shinoda
  • 2007: Top Secret: Heroes and Traitors . three-part documentary, first broadcast in 2009, last broadcast on ARD on April 5, 2014
  • 2017: Stalin's James Bond - Richard Sorge, the betrayed master spy, documentary, directors: Danielle Proskar , Michael Trabitzsch, 52 min.
  • undated: Standing in the Floating World , Astrakan Films, Santa Barbara, California

literature

  • FW Deakin and GR Storry: Richard Sorge - The Story of a Great Double Game . London 1965.
  • Sergei Golyakov and Vladimir Ponisowski: Richard Sorge - scout and communist - biography . New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1982.
  • Eta Harich-Schneider : Characters and disasters. Ullstein 1978 (with memories of Sorge in Tokyo).
  • Yuri Korolkov: The man for whom there were no secrets - Richard Sorge in Tokyo . Publishing house culture and progress, Berlin 1967.
  • Isabel Kreitz : The cause of concern - Stalin's spy in Tokyo . Carlsen Verlag, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-551-78743-9 . (With a documentation by Frank Giese )
  • Martin Kubaczek : Worry. A dream . Novel. Folio-Verlag, Vienna 2009. ISBN 978-3-85256-497-5 .
  • Julius Mader , Gerhard Stuchlik and Horst Pehnert : Dr. Sorge sparks from Tokyo - A documentary report on Scouts for Peace with selected articles by Richard Sorge . German military publisher , Berlin 1966.
  • Julius Mader: Dr. Sorge Report - A documentary report on scouts of peace with selected articles by Richard Sorge . Military Publishing House, Berlin 1985.
  • Julius Mader: On a secret front. Report on Richard Sorge , Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, Cologne, 1987
  • Hans-Otto Meissner : The Sorge case . Lingen Verlag, Cologne 1974. Revised and updated new edition (it is a novel-like version in which many names of the characters have been changed.)
  • Janusz Piekałkiewicz : The Battle of Moscow - The Frozen Offensive . Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1981, ISBN 3-7857-0290-6 .
  • Christiane Sorge: My husband, Dr. R. concern. In: Weltwoche. Zurich, No. 1622, December 11, 1964, p. 41 f.
  • Osamu Tezuka : Adolf 4: Between the fronts . Carlsen-Verlag, Hamburg 1983.
  • Heiner Timmermann , Sergei Alexandrowitsch Kondraschow and Hisaya Shirai (eds.): Espionage, ideology, myth - the Richard Sorge case. LIT-Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7547-4 .
  • GL Ulmen: J. Mader, Dr. Concern report (review). In: Telos. 68, Sommer 1986, pp. 173-178.
  • Robert Whymant : Richard Sorge - The man with the three faces . Europäische Verlags Anstalt, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-434-50407-9 .
  • M. Alexejew: Vaš Ramzaj. Richard Zorge i sovetskaja voennaja razvedka v Kitae 1930–1933. Original title: "Ваш Рамзай". Рихард Зорге и советская военная разведка в Китае. 1930–1933 гг. (Richard Sorge and the Soviet Military Intelligence Service in China. 1930–1933.) Moscow 2010 ISBN 978-5-9950-0084-6 .
  • Worry, Richard . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  • Peter Herde:  Worry, Richard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 600 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Richard Sorge  - collection of images
Wikisource: Richard Sorge  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mr Sorge sat at the table - Portrait of a Spy , Der Spiegel, June 13, 1951.
  2. ↑ Christiane Gerlach, b. Sandler (* 1887, died?)
  3. ↑ Christiane Sorge worked at the Marx Engels Institute in Moscow from 1925 to 1926, then went back to Germany and lived in Berlin. Their marriage with concern ended in divorce in 1932. She emigrated to the USA and became a teacher at a women's college.
  4. ↑ Sergej A. Kondraschow: Richard Sorge and his group In: Heiner Timmermann, Sergej A. Kondraschow, Hisaya Shirai (ed.): Espionage, Ideologie, Mythos - der Fall Richard Sorge LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7547 -4 , pp. 125-149, p. 127.
  5. ↑ Sergej A. Kondraschow: Richard Sorge and his group In: Heiner Timmermann, Sergej A. Kondraschow, Hisaya Shirai (ed.): Espionage, Ideologie, Mythos - der Fall Richard Sorge LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-7547 -4 , pp. 125-149, p. 125.
  6. ^ Journal of geopolitics, 13th year, issue 5, Kurt Vowinckel Verlag
  7. ↑ Clemens Jochem: The Foerster case: The German-Japanese machine factory in Tokyo and the Jewish auxiliary committee Hentrich and Hentrich, Berlin 2017, p. 52, ISBN 978-3-95565-225-8 .
  8. ↑ Ian Kershaw: Turning Points. Key decisions in World War II. DVA, Munich 2008, p. 358 f.
  9. ↑ Clemens Jochem: Your murderer - I am innocent! On the fate of the journalist Karl Raimund Hofmeier in Japan . In: OAG Notes . No. 04, April 1, 2020, ISSN  1343-408X , pp. 8-36.
  10. ↑ Memorial to Dr. Richard Sorge (portrait head) on www.deutschefotothek.de
  11. ↑ Peter Michel: Germany as a cultural nation? Disputes against the modern vandals , Berlin 2013, p. 31.
  12. ↑ New memorial plaque for Dr. Richard Sorge
  13. ↑ His most important radio message , on defa-spektrum.de
  14. ↑ Top Secret: the history of espionage - heroes and traitors , on programm.ard.de/
  15. ↑ Forever a stranger, fleeing from myself… (Richard Sorge), Standing in the Floating World (film title), Astrakan Films, undated (English)
personal data
SURNAME Worry, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sonter, R. (pseudonym); Ramsay (GRU alias)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and spy for the Soviet Union in Japan
DATE OF BIRTH October 4, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Sabunçu , Ujesd Baku , Russian Empire , today Azerbaijan
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1944
Place of death Toshima , Tokyo City (today: Tokyo ), Japan