Alexander of Kryha

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Alexander von Kryha (born October 31, 1891 in Kharkiv ; † May 26, 1955 in Baden-Baden ) was a Russian-German cryptologist , inventor and businessman. One of his most famous inventions is the Kryha cipher machine named after him , which competed with the rotor key machine ENIGMA in the 1920s .

Life

Alexander was on 31 October 1891, the then the Russian Empire belonging to the Ukrainian city of Kharkov ( in Russian spelling; the Ukrainian spelling is Kharkiv ) born. During the First World War he served as a soldier in the Tsarist Army . After the October Revolution and the communist seizure of power that went with it, he decided to emigrate to Germany around 1920 and obtained German citizenship a short time later. He lived in the German capital Berlin for the next period up to the Second World War . After the cryptographic catastrophe of World War I became generally known in the 1920s , many inventors, including the American Edward Hugh Hebern , the German Arthur Scherbius , the Dutch Hugo Alexander Koch and the Swede Arvid Gerhard Damm, came up with the idea of the manual encryption methods used in the war, it is better to use machine methods for encryption.

Alexander von Kryha also had ideas for this and, in the hope of commercial success, developed his own encryption machine, to which he gave his name, the " Kryha Standard ". Unfortunately, his machine turned out to be cryptographically weak and easy to crack . His hopes for good business were also not fulfilled. According to the standard, he therefore developed a new machine called "Kryha-Liliput". It was much more manageable than the Standard, and therefore also more attractive, but unfortunately it was based on the same cryptographic principles and turned out to be no stronger than its predecessor. Even his third machine, the “Kryha-Elektroschreibende”, which was significantly faster than the previous models, was unsuccessful, although he tried to make his machines public through numerous trade fair appearances. This included presentations at the Great Police Exhibition in Berlin in 1926 , the International Press Exhibition in Cologne in 1928 and the International Office Exhibition in Berlin in the same year. Despite numerous additional press releases and publications with which he tried to support the marketing of his machines, he was not granted much success. In July 1930 his company, Deutsche Kryha-Maschinengesellschaft mbH, went bankrupt.

During the Second World War he served as a soldier on the Eastern Front and was used there as an interpreter. After the war, in 1945, he first settled in Bad Nauheim before moving to Wildbad in the northern Black Forest in 1949 . Due to financial hardship, he became a criminal and even had a brief jail in 1955. After his release he went to Baden-Baden and committed suicide there at the age of 63. He was buried on June 1, 1955 in Baden-Baden.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus Schmeh: Alexander von Kryha and His Encryption Machines . Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 34.2010,4 (October), p. 291. ISSN  0161-1194 .
  2. ^ Klaus Schmeh: Alexander von Kryha and His Encryption Machines . Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 34.2010,4 (October), p. 298. ISSN  0161-1194 .
  3. ↑ German Reich Gazette 1930/222
personal data
SURNAME Kryha, Alexander von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kryha, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian-German cryptologist, inventor and businessman
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Kharkiv
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1955
Place of death Baden-Baden