Isobel Steele

Isobel Lillian Steele (born September 24, 1910 in Toronto , Ontario, † November 14, 1998 in Boise , Idaho ) was an American journalist and actress. She became known when she was arrested in August 1934 at the instigation of the Nazi government on suspicion of espionage and held for several months in Moabit Prison in Berlin. She later processed her experiences in Germany in several publications. There was also a semi-documentary film based on the "Soul" case, in which Steele played himself.

Life

Steele was born in Canada. Her family later emigrated to California and Steele was naturalized as an American. In 1931 Steele, whose mother was of German descent, traveled to Germany, where she devoted herself to studying music as a violin player. In 1933 she turned to journalism and began as a journalist to report on the dramatic political events that were taking place in her host country at the time.

Since the spring of 1934, Steele was under observation by the security service of the SS (SD). In the memory book "13 Years of Power Rush" published in 1945 by the former SD agent Heinrich Pfeifer , a. a. reports on Steele's close relationships with members of Berlin's cultural high society, such as the actress Brigitte Helm .

The affair body

On August 10, 1934, Steele was arrested by the Secret State Police and then held in German prisons for several months.

The reason for this was that she was suspected of espionage due to the fact that she was in the house of the Polish military attaché in Berlin, Jurek von Sosnowsky. A few months before Steele was arrested in February 1934, Sosnowky had been exposed as a spy: with the help of two noble secretaries of the Reich Ministry of War, whom he had seduced, he had succeeded in getting parts of the German mobilization plans against Poland into his hands. Several dozen people were arrested during a raid on an evening party in his house in February 1934. Steele, who marginally belonged to the social circle around Sosnowsky and his two lovers, was not present that evening, although invited. However, she had recognized the sensational potential of the case and began to write a script for a film about the Sosnowski affair, whereby her knowledge of the people involved was an advantage. After the secret police became aware of Steele's project, they were arrested and her manuscript confiscated. From the regime's point of view, personal letters that were found on her in which she rejected the persecution and marginalization of the Jewish population and in favor of the freedom of the press, which has now been abolished in Germany, were further burdensome. After her arrest, Steele was first kept in prison on Alexanderplatz and then held for several months in Moabit, where she languished under Spartan conditions. She was also subjected to repeated interrogations by the secret police.

Only after sustained intervention by the US State Department , the American State Department , was Steele finally deported to her homeland at the end of 1934: She was brought to Hamburg and escorted on board the liner USS President Harding, with which she was on December 26, 1934 in New York arrived.

Processing of the case in the media

After Steele's return to her homeland, intense press hype unfolded about her person: Upon her arrival at the port, she was greeted by dozens of journalists and film cameras from American newsreels. The New York Daily News acquired the exclusive rights to her story for the then high premium of 1,000 dollars. In a New York hit, she dictated an extensive experience report, which the Daily News then distributed in serial form in various US newspapers nationwide.

Steele then began work on a memoir book, but it was never published.

In 1936 the semi-documentary film "I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany" was made instead, which recounted Steele's experiences in National Socialist Germany in 1934 in a dramatized way. Steele himself took on the leading role.

The German envoy in Los Angeles, Georg Gyssling , tried hard to thwart the completion of the Steele film in 1936, as he assessed it as a production that, when it came to the cinemas, would be perceived by the National Socialist state the American audience would naturally be highly detrimental. To this end, Gyssling summoned emigrated actors of German origin who were involved in the production as actors to his embassy and threatened them that the Nazi government would resort to reprisals against their relatives who had stayed behind in Germany if they agreed to participate in the "unrelated" Film project should not stop. Steele herself was threatened that, if the film were to be released, all future film productions in which she was involved would not be shown in Germany - the second largest film market in the world at the time. Although the film was finished, it was taken out of distribution after a short time, as no large studio - for fear that all productions it had distributed in Germany would be banned from showing - was ready to take over the distribution.

literature

• Kathrin Engel: German cultural policy in occupied Paris 1940–1944: Film and Theater , 2003, pp. 73f.
• "Isobel Steele Caught in Web of New Casanova," in: Oakland Tribune, December 28, 1934
• Doherty Thomas: "The Story of a Hollywood Girl in Nazi Land: I Was a Captive in Nazi Germany", in: Dies .: Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 , 2016.

Web links

• Entry for "I Was A Captive in Nazi Germany" in the Internet Movie Database
• Seven J. Ross "When Hitler's Henchman Called the Shots in Hollywood. Long before Russia subverted American social media, the Nazis did the same in Hollywood." (Article on Dailbeast.com)