Harald Siewert

Harald Alexander Siewert (born November 24 ^{. Jul} / 6. December  1887 ^greg. In Jacob City , Kurland; † 7. May 1945 ) was a Russian-German intelligence official and political functionary ( NSDAP ).

Life and activity

Siewert grew up as a Baltic German in Tsarist Russia . His parents were the lawyer Jeannot Werner Siewert (1846–1913) and Franziska, geb. Sun. His older brother Kurt Leo Siewert (1882–1958) was a civil engineer. After attending school in Riga , Harald Siewert studied chemistry from 1907 to 1913. He later became an officer in the tsarist army. During the First World War Siewert was an intelligence officer in a Russian army corps. After the Russian October Revolution of 1917, Siewert fled to Germany.

In 1919 Siewert founded an anti-Bolshevik news agency in Berlin under the name Deutsches Ostbüro (Dobro) . This not only supplied the newspapers, but also the political police with information on what was going on in the Bolshevik territory in Eastern Europe. The office put together a correspondence sheet that was supplied to the authorities and large companies such as Krupp and Thyssen. Siewert also supplied authorities with alleged Soviet secret documents, such as B. Alleged letters from the head of the foreign department of the OGPU , which later turned out to be forgeries, which a certain Orlov had produced and sold to Siewert. In the late 1920s, Siewert was involved in the Chervonzen Affair, an attempt to destabilize the Soviet economy by printing large numbers of counterfeit Chervonzen (Russian banknotes) in order to contribute to the collapse of the Soviet state.

In the early 1930s Siewert worked for the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP under Alfred Rosenberg , whom he knew from their youth together in Russia. He also wrote articles for the Völkischer Beobachter . During the Second World War , Siewert worked in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories , headed by Alfred Rosenberg, as head of the Reich Main Office. He also acted as editor of the magazine Deutsche Post aus dem Osten .

Siewert was married to Frieda von Berkholz, daughter of Arend Berkholz . The marriage resulted in a son (1934–1945). Siewert and his family committed suicide on May 7, 1945 when the Russian army approached. Wife and son died in Hermsdorf in the Ore Mountains , where the family was also buried.

Fonts

• "The GPU's murder system in Europe", in: Völkischer Beobachter from June 12, 1938.
• "The organization of the British secret service. Structure and work of the largest criminal organization in the world", in: Völkischer Beobachter of November 27, 1939.

literature

• Album academicum of the Riga Polytechnic, 1862–1912 , 1912, p. 611.
• Michael Garleff (Ed.): Baltic Germans, Weimar Republic and Third Reich , Vol. 1, Cologne 2001.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Siewert, Harald Alexander. In: Woldemar Helb: Album Rubonorum 1875-1972. No. 231, Neustadt an der Aisch 1972.