Christian Schneider (editor)

Christian Schneider (born October 15, 1896 in Wiesbaden-Schierstein , † October 31, 1962 in Geneva ) was a German editor and intelligence courier in Switzerland.

Life

Christian Schneider was born into a Catholic family as the son of a winery owner. As an eight year old, he lost both parents within a year. During the First World War , he passed a secondary school diploma before he was recruited for military service. In 1921 he received his doctorate. rer. pole. in Würzburg with the study The Arbitration and Mediation Law of the League of Nations Acts .

Then he became editor of the Gladbecker Zeitung . From 1926 to 1939 he worked as a translator at the International Labor Office (ILO) in Geneva . Shortly before he moved to Geneva, he married the young writer Elisabeth Schneider (pseudonym Elisabeth Behrend). In Geneva he met Rachel Dübendorfer and Paul Böttcher . When the ILO's staff was reduced after the start of the Second World War , he applied for a cipher advertisement from Rudolf Rößler as his assistant. From 1940 he also worked for the Office Ha of the Swiss military intelligence service founded by Hans Hausamann . Rößler, Hausamann and Max Waibel then commissioned him to look for ways to be able to forward militarily relevant messages to the Soviet Union , which he then achieved with the help of Dübendorfer and Böttcher.

The information he passed on was sorted by Sándor Radó according to the areas of origin due to the enormous amount of data. Werther stood for the OKW , Olga for the OKL , etc. Through the decryption of some of these morest reports by the Red Chapel Special Command of the RSHA and the radio defense in the OKW Office Abwehr , which were published in the post-war period, it came in particular from the apparent source Werther on various speculations.

People of the "Red Chapel"

→ Main article : People of the "Red Chapel"

literature

• Peter Kamber: Secret Agent. BasisDruck, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86163-097-5 . ( Internet attachment , PDF file; 4.2 MB)
• Peter Kamber: Csatorna Berlinbe - Rachel Dübendorfer, Christian Schneider és Rudolf Roessler. [Canal to Berlin - Rachel Dübendorfer, Christian Schneider and Rudolf Roessler.] In: Hegedüs, Ábel / Suba, János (ed.): Tanulmányok Radó Sándorról. A Budapest 2009. nov. 4-5-én rendezet konferencia elöadásainak szerkesztett anyaga. [Studies on Alexander Radó. Edited versions of the lectures on the 4th – 5th November 2009 in Budapest organized scientific conference]. HM Hadtörténeti Intézet és Múzeum [War History Institute and Museum of the Hungarian Ministry of Defense]: Budapest 2010, pp. 45–73
• Ten little negroes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 4 , 1967 ( online ).