Gustav Wölkerling

Gustav Wölkerling (born May 4, 1882 in Perleberg , Westprignitz , † October 23, 1954 in Heidelberg ) was a spy .

Life

Career and espionage activity

Wölkerling's parents lived in poor circumstances. So it was a social advancement for the intellectually gifted Gustav Wölkerling when he found a job as a clerk in the district office Perleberg after elementary school in 1896 . He later worked in the same function at the city police administration in Perleberg.

In October 1903, Wölkerling received its convocation in the 11 1st West Prussian Foot Artillery Regiment. After Thorn . He was quickly promoted to sergeant and already after two and a half years of service he was employed as a "regular clerk" at the Thorn fortress command. After another three years, he met the then 18-year-old saleswoman Minna Sommer. The wedding took place after just six months . They moved into an official apartment in Artillery Barracks II in Thorn.

Gustav Wölkerling, who had meanwhile been promoted to sergeant , wanted to offer his wife more than his moderate salary as a sergeant . On the basis of a newspaper advertisement published in 1908, he came into contact with Colonel Nikolai Stepanowitsch Batjuschin from the Russian military intelligence service , one of the most successful Russian agent leaders based in Warsaw.

Colonel Batyushin had Wölkerling superiors make duplicate keys for the safes based on templates. From the cabinets filled with all kinds of secret material, Wölkerling delivered a vast number of copies and transcripts of confidential files, highly secret mobilization documents and other explosive military service regulations and plans to Russia within a few years. Because Wölkerling couldn't keep up with copying the files with his typewriter, he later switched to photographing the secret material .

After Wölkerling had already collected considerable sums at the end of 1911 and had a large supply of copied or photographed secret files, the sale of which guaranteed him a secure income for years to come, he asked to be released from military service on December 31, 1911 .

The Wölkerling couple moved into a luxurious apartment in the city of Bromberg in the province of Poznan in early 1912 .

Wölkerling had got in touch with the French intelligence service and immediately sold the secret documents copied for Russia. When he made contact with the Austro-Hungarian secret service in early 1912 for the same purpose, this resulted in his exposure. Wölkerling hadn't considered that Austria-Hungary and Germany were allies. A distribution stamp on a document, which Wölkerling also photographed, brought the German counterintelligence on its trail. Wölkerling was shadowed by officers of the Berlin Political Police in February 1912 on a tour to deliver news material to Warsaw, which was then still in Russia, and to Paris and arrested on February 23, 1912 in Berlin. In addition to large sums of cash, many securities and mortgage letters as well as about two hundredweight of military secret material were seized in his apartment.

Since Wölkerling did not show himself to be cooperative during the later investigation, the scope of his activity could not be fully revealed. What is certain, however, is that Wölkerling was one of the best-paid spies of the 20th century and, through his intelligence work between 1908 and 1912, achieved income in the current equivalent of around half a million euros. According to the extent of the betrayal, the Gustav Wölkerling case is likely to be the deeds of the much-mentioned k. u. k. Have surpassed Colonel Alfred Redl .

Although he forwarded important secret documents such as fortress plans and secret mobilization regulations, it cannot be seen that any of the information he disclosed would have had any effective use for the Russian or French warfare in the First World War , which broke out shortly afterwards .

Sentencing and serving the sentence

Gustav Wölkerling was after three appeal against his conviction in January 1914 in the fourth and final instance by the Reich military court to degradation , asset collection, a large fine and 15 years prison sentenced. On February 7, 1914, the German Emperor Wilhelm II , as the supreme court lord, confirmed the verdict, which fully exhausted the legally possible range of punishment. Gustav Wölkerling served his sentence in the Sonnenburg and Brandenburg penal institutions . Unlike other political prisoners, he was not released in the November Revolution of 1918 and was not released early during the 1920s, despite his constant urge. Since Bydgoszcz was now part of Poland , he tried to obtain his release by arguing that he was now a Pole. From a purely formal legal point of view, he could possibly even have been right, as an expert report prepared by the Prussian Ministry of Justice on this question shows. However, the Polish side was not interested in helping him and the Polish Consulate General he had written to did not respond to his requests. All other requests for pardon were also rejected. The Reichswehr Ministry stood behind the refusals , which Wölkerling's deed was so serious that failure to serve the sentence in full would be seen as a blow to counter-espionage and thus to the interests of national defense. It was not until July 1928, half a year before the regular release date, that Wölkerling was given amnesty as part of the so-called “ Koch amnesty ” for political offenders together with the communist Max Hölz and the Rathenau killers Ernst Werner Techow and Willi Günther.

The strongly aged and stubborn Wölkerling got involved in unsuccessful arguments with the Prussian Ministry of Justice after his release in order to have his trial resumed and to regain parts of his former property. In the 1930s the traces of the former spy are lost, who could only survive with the help of his siblings and who had a miserable existence.

The proceedings against his wife Minna Wölkerling were different. Initially, despite numerous circumstantial evidence, no sufficient evidence of complicity could be obtained against her, so that she was released in May 1912. In November 1912, however, charges were brought because there were strong suspicions that she must have known of her husband's betrayal. The trial did not take place at first because the final conviction of her husband was to be awaited. It was not until July 1914 that she stood before the district court in Bromberg, was acquitted for lack of evidence, but was imprisoned again for two months when war broke out in Perleberg. On January 16, 1915, she divorced Gustav Wölkerling, probably under public or official pressure. He himself remained addicted to her despite the broken contact and was still convinced in the 1920s that she would remarry him after his early release.

literature

• Jürgen W. Schmidt : The Perleberg spy Gustav Wölkerling. In: Mitteilungen des Verein für Geschichte der Prignitz , Vol. 5, Perleberg 2005, pp. 62-82 (preprint of Chapter 8.1 from Against Russia and France ).
• Jürgen W. Schmidt: Against Russia and France. The German military secret service 1890 - 1914. 3rd edition, Ludwigsfelde 2009, pp. 431–450 (Chapter 8.1).
• Verena Moritz / Hannes Leidiger: Colonel Redl. The espionage case - the scandal - the facts. St. Pölten 2012. (In the book, the Redl and Wölkerling espionage cases are compared and evaluated several times in terms of scope and importance.)

Web links

• Jürgen W. Schmidt: Colonel Redl of the German Empire. (PDF) Gustav Wölkerling earned at least five times as much as a spy than the much more famous Austrian. In: Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung . March 4, 2006, p. 21 , accessed July 22, 2018 .