Ivar Lissner

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Ivar Arthur Nicolai Lissner (born April 23, 1909 in Lievenhof , Vitebsk Governorate , Russian Empire , today Latvia ; † September 4, 1967 in Chesières sur Ollon near Montreux in Switzerland ) was a German publicist and author.

Life

Lissner was a German Baltic with Jewish ancestry. His parents were of Commerce Dr. Robert Lissner, a businessman who owned cork factories, among other things, and Charlotte Lissner, b. Gensz. The family moved to Moscow before World War I , were exiled to the Volga region during the war, and did not return to Moscow until 1917. Avoiding the political unrest of the post-war period, the family first moved to Riga and then on to Berlin , where Lissner attended high school. He studied languages, history, ethnology and law in Greifswald , Berlin , Göttingen , Erlangen , Lyon (1931/32) and at the Sorbonne in Paris and received his doctorate in Erlangen in April 1936 on foreign commercial law.

On April 1, 1933, he became a member of the NSDAP . A book published by the Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt in 1935, in which he presented what he saw as the achievements of National Socialism against an international background ( Blick nach Draußen ), led him to work as a travel writer in the USA and Canada in 1936 on behalf of the publisher. This resulted in his book Peoples and Continents , which was a bestseller at the time. Lissner now also wrote for the Hanseatic Service, the press service of his publisher, and, according to Heinz Höhne , some of his articles were also reprinted from the attack . He went on a trip around the world to Asia (from which his book People and Powers on the Pacific arose), but was shocked when he found out on his return in January 1937 that his father had been accused of denouncing the evidence necessary for the Aryan proof Church registers of the ev.-luth. To have forged St. Peter's Congregation in Riga with the help of the local pastor. The Gestapo that arrested him suspected Lissner of being a Jew, but could not initially prove anything, so he was released. Lissner began to distance himself from National Socialism inwardly, but after his experience in Russia he retained an anti-Soviet attitude. This representation by Höhne is contradicted in an article published on the Lissner website. Accordingly, Lissner always knew of his Jewish origin. At no point did he have a pro-National Socialist attitude.

In 1938 Ivar Lissner got to know Vice Admiral Canaris and the then Lieutenant Colonel Oster and became an agent of the Abwehr . Disguised as a "correspondent" he was supposed to travel to Tokyo and report on Japan and Manchuria. The journalist Heinz Höhne, who wrote the epilogue for the 2nd edition of Lissner's memoirs, turned against this representation of Lissner's in 1975. Höhne states that Lissner's collaboration with the Abwehr took place much later (after June 5, 1940). This came about through a school friend of Lissner's, a captain Werner Schulz. However, the historians Hans Coppi and Winfried Meyer prove that Höhne's account is incorrect. Captain Werner Schulz was neither responsible for Lissner in the defense , nor could he have been a school friend of Lissner. An article published on the Lissner website comes to the conclusion that “Captain Werner Schulz” is “almost certainly” a “fictional construction by Heinz Höhne”. This was created with "apparently fictitious" quotations and "alleged [m] detailed knowledge" on the "basis of historical biographies". In fact, it is clear from the sources mentioned in the article that "Hauptmann Schulz" is a combination of the biographies of the defense staff Dr. Julius Berthold Schultze and Gideon Richard Werner Schüler. Neither of them could have been Lissner's school friends, nor was one of them - as Heinz Höhne claims - in Shanghai to recruit Lissner. The article also uses telegrams from the German Foreign Office to show that Ivar Lissner was already working for the defense well before the recruitment date mentioned by Höhne. Lissner had traveled to East Asia, disguised as a correspondent for “attack” and “VB”. This also explains how Lissner was able to publish articles without having been a member of the compulsory organization Reichspressekammer . This fact had been concealed by Höhne "by deleting all relevant passages and assertions to the contrary by Ivar Lissner from his memoir and his own inadequate research". In addition, Höhne had in this context a quote from Lissner from a letter to the British historian Deakin "torn out of context in a distorted form" and "cited as evidence that Ivar Lissner had untruthfully denied any press activity for the" VB "." only denied membership in the Reich Press Chamber - the prerequisite for an actual activity as a correspondent - and granted an alleged 33-day activity for the "VB".

Due to the inadequate published sources on the circumstances of Ivar Lissner's entry into the defense, it is unclear whether the following account of the historical processes based on Heinz Höhne is correct or not. This applies in particular to the question of whether Lissner's activities up to September 1940 are causally related to his defensive activities (camouflage as a correspondent, access to defector Genrich Samoilowitsch Lyuschkow ). It can be stated that Heinz Höhne denies this possibility in his afterword to the Lissner memoirs and gives as justification Lissner's ambition and literal quotations from an alleged school friend of Lissner, Captain Werner Schulz. In addition to the arguments already cited by Hans Coppi and Winfried Meyer in their book review about the lack of validity of Höhne's argument, there is also published sources that his dating of the literal quotations of Captain Schulz (June 1940) and the recruitment meeting (June 5, 1940 in Shanghai ) contradict the files on the release of Robert Lissner from prison. This took place on October 10, 1939.

In 1938 Lissner went to East Asia for the Hanseatic Publishing House, where he a. a. reported on the Japanese fighting on the Korean-Soviet border. He was also interviewed for Japanese newspapers and provided information to the German envoy. During his stay in Manchuria in the summer of 1938, Lissner acted as an interpreter for the defeat of the NKVD chief for the Far East, Genrich Samoilowitsch Lyuschkow . In July 1938 he wrote an article about Lyushkov which was printed in "Attack".

In 1939, Lissner traveled back to Japan as a correspondent for the attack and also the Völkischer Beobachter . He also made contacts with the German embassy in Tokyo . This had taken him, “without knowledge” of his Jewish origin, “into the propaganda service of the embassy.” At that time he was a respected member of the (Nazi-oriented) German community in Tokyo. In September 1939 the Gestapo investigated again against Lissner's father and arrested him, since they believed they had solid evidence. Lissner subsequently lost his post in Tokyo and a party expulsion process was initiated. Ambassador Ott employed him for four more months "for reasons of expediency" after he had informed the Foreign Office that this was "the only way to prevent him [Lissner] from going into the enemy camp." He also informed the embassy in Shanghai and the regional group leader of the NSDAP even kept track of the status of the proceedings regarding Lissner's Jewish origin and started an attempt to have Lissner expatriate. With this he laid “the foundation stone for the later persecution of Lissner in Manchuria.” Josef Meisinger later spread allegations of alleged Soviet espionage , apparently based on Otts idea.

After three weeks in prison, the army judge Karl Sack and Hans von Dohnanyi obtained the release of Robert Lissner in October 1939. In the months that followed, Ivar Lissner's mother, Charlotte Lissner, had the entire furniture auctioned and then traveled to Shanghai with her husband in mid-1940. Percy Lissner, who worked for AEG, already lived there. Lissner's sister stayed behind in Berlin despite the Abwehr's promise and was killed by the Gestapo in the first half of 1941. According to Heinz Höhne, Sigrid Lissner only died in 1943 "under unexplained circumstances".

With the help of German merchants and exiled Russians, Lissner set up a spy network in Harbin that reached as far as Siberia and gave him an excellent reputation with Admiral Canaris in Berlin. He was able to provide detailed information about the Soviet troops and commanders in the Far East. According to the words of Admiral Canaris, who, with the help of Lissner's information, was able to shine at the briefing at the Fuehrer's headquarters in March 1943, he was their only source in the Asian Soviet Union and the area of Manchuria . In August 1941 he was even rehabilitated by a direct letter from the Reich Chancellery and received a medal. However, as Lissner had requested, he was not allowed to continue writing for National Socialist magazines, and he was also not re-accepted into the NSDAP. His lack of official status was a problem for Lissner vis-à-vis the Japanese, within the German community in Harbin and his Russian informants, but the defense could no longer reach him.

As a result, Lissner tried to build up his own legend as a high-ranking Gestapo officer (to the Japanese in Manchuria he even described himself as Gestapo chief for the Far East .) When this was brought to the German official authorities in Tokyo, the actual " Gestapo chief " was in particular “In Japan (police attache at the embassy) SS-Standartenführer Meisinger angry. Lissner was observed and it was found that he regularly visited the Soviet consulate in Harbin. Lissner operated a double game, he provided this information about the Japanese army and received game material for it.

When Lissner heard of the danger that threatened him, he fought back with all possible means. In October 1941 Richard Sorge had been arrested in Tokyo, who had previously had excellent relations in National Socialist circles in Tokyo, including Ambassador Ott, who had tried to downplay the Affaire Sorge as a Japanese police intrigue, but was one of Sorges' informants. Lissner released this version in a radio message from March 23, 1942, which caused a scandal in the Foreign Office in Berlin and led to Otts being recalled. But that also led to Lissner's work being sabotaged in the Foreign Office. The defense could only intervene to a limited extent, but Canaris wrote a direct letter to Himmler against the obstruction of her agent Lissner. Meisinger then decided to leave the pursuit of Lissner to the Japanese secret service, where he denounced Lissner as a Soviet spy.

In June 1943, Lissner was arrested, along with his journalist colleague and friend Werner Crome , his Japanese secretary and his German secretary. Lissner spent a year and eight months in a Japanese prison where he was severely tortured and attempted suicide. At first it was in the hands of the notorious Japanese military police Kempeitai . He was later acquitted of Soviet espionage charges by a Japanese court. In January / February 1945, Lissner was transferred from prison to a hotel. He was completely paralyzed on the left side, suffered from backbone pain and heart problems and was almost blind in the right eye. When the Allies arrived, Lissner was finally released in August 1945.

Ivar Lissner was editor-in-chief of the illustrated magazine Kristall from Springer Verlag after the war from 1949 . He stayed that way until the beginning of 1956. Then he went to Munich and then to Paris, where he became an author at Paris Match (with the title Grand Ecrivain Historique ), but he was best known as the author of several books on cultural history, such as Wir sind das Abendland , We are all looking for Paradise and Enigmatic Cultures that have been translated into many languages ​​and become bestsellers. Shortly after the war, he also wrote memoirs in English in Japan, but they were unfinished when he died (they only last until 1940) and were edited in the 2nd edition by Droemer Knaur in 1975 by Heinz Höhne and provided with an afterword.

Lissner had been married to actress Ruth Niehaus since 1950 and had a daughter Imogen Lissner, now Imogen Jochem. His grave was in Huémoz near Chesières sur Ollon and was leveled in the summer of 2014. In 1965/66 Irm Hermann worked as his secretary in Chesières.

Publications (selection)

  • Look outside. France, USA, England today . Hanseatic VA, Hamburg 1935.
  • Belief, myth, religion . Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1990, ISBN 3-8112-0641-9 .
  • Limitation of liability of the sole trader under foreign law . Pöppinghaus Verlag, Bochum 1936 (plus dissertation, University of Erlangen 1936).
  • My dangerous way. Forgive, but don't forget . Droemer Knaur, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-426-00396-1 (autobiography; with an afterword Der Fall Lissner , by Heinz Höhne, pp. 221-272).
  • Man and his images of God . Walter-Verlag, Olten 1982, ISBN 3-530-52709-2 .
  • People and powers on the Pacific . 5th edition. Hanseatische VA, Hamburg 1943.
  • The riddles of great cultures . Dtv, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-423-01498-9 (former title Mysterious Cultures ).
  • That's how you lived. The great cultures of mankind . New edition Dtv, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-423-01242-0 .
  • This is how the Roman emperors lived. Of the power and madness of the Caesars . Dtv, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-423-01263-3 (former title Die Caesaren ).
  • This is how the primitive peoples lived . Walter-Verlag, Olten 1975, ISBN 3-530-52708-4 (former title Aber Gott was there ).
  • We are all looking for paradise. a legacy . Ullstein, Frankfurt / M. 1977, ISBN 3-548-03329-6 .
  • We are the West. Figures, powers and fates through 7000 years . Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1993, ISBN 3-8112-1065-3 (reprinted by Walter Verlag , Olten 1966).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ after Höhne, Der Fall Lissner , in Lissner My Dangerous Way , Knaur 1975, p. 221, sometimes Les Ecovets sur Ollon is also given.
  2. ↑ Höhne The Lissner case , p. 223.
  3. ↑ Register of students at the Univ. Gain; Erlangen University Archives , also Höhne The Lissner case , p. 225.
  4. ↑ Höhne, The Lissner case , p. 225. At the same time, his brother Percy joined the NSDAP.
  5. ↑ Höhne The Lissner case, p. 226.
  6. ↑ Höhne The Lissner case , p. 229, he quotes a friend of Lissner, Werner Crome, who, like him, was a correspondent in Tokyo during World War II.
  7. ^ "The alleged" school friend "of Lissner:" Captain Werner Schulz "A construct of the journalist and historian Heinz Höhne?" , published on https://ivar-lissner.de/Projekt-Ivar-Lissner/ , accessed on December 18, 2016.
  8. ↑ p. 282 in Ivar Lissner "Forgetting but not forgiven" 1970 Ullstein Verlag
  9. ↑ p. 204 in Ivar Lissner "Forgotten but not forgiven" 1970 Ullstein Verlag
  10. ^ Heinz Höhne "The Lissner case" in Ivar Lissner "My dangerous way" 1975 Knaur Verlag
  11. ↑ p. 242 in Heinz Höhne "The Lissner case" in Ivar Lissner "My dangerous way" 1975 Knaur Verlag
  12. ↑ see the book review “The Lord of the Rings; Helmut Roewer's upheaval in the history of the Second World War ”by Hans Coppi and Winfried Meyer pdf
  13. ^ "The alleged" school friend "of Lissner:" Captain Werner Schulz "A construct of the journalist and historian Heinz Höhne?" , published on https://ivar-lissner.de/Projekt-Ivar-Lissner/ , accessed on December 18, 2016.
  14. ↑ Only Heinz Höhne gives information on Ivar Lissner's entry into the defense in his afterword to the Lissner memoirs; see "The Lissner case" in Ivar Lissner "My dangerous way" 1975 Knaur Verlag
  15. ↑ p. 495, footnote 234, communication from the 156th police station in Berlin to the asset management office at the regional finance president Berlin-Brandenburg: Robert Lissner "on September 1, 1940, moved unknown" in Winfried Meyer "Company Seven: a rescue operation for those threatened by the Holocaust the Foreign Office / Defense in the High Command of the Wehrmacht ”. Verlag Anton Hain GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-445-08571-4
  16. ↑ p. 204 in Ivar Lissner “Forgetting but not forgiving” 1970 Ullstein Verlag
  17. ↑ p. 238 “[…], but at that time it does not seem to have come to a firm agreement between him [Lissner] and the Abwehr. He had found another client: He let the 'Völkischer Beobachter' […] hire him as a correspondent ”in Heinz Höhne“ The Lissner case ”in Ivar Lissner's“ My dangerous way ”1975 Knaur Verlag
  18. ↑ p. 239 “That was exactly the job that globetrotter Lissner had dreamed of.” In Heinz Höhne “The Lissner case” in Ivar Lissner “My dangerous way” 1975 Knaur Verlag
  19. ↑ p. 243 "Schulz wrote back, not without impatience:" Have you nothing else to do? "In Heinz Höhne" The Lissner case "in Ivar Lissner" My dangerous path "1975 Knaur Verlag
  20. ↑ “The Lord of the Rings; Helmut Roewer's upheaval in the history of the Second World War ”by Hans Coppi and Winfried Meyer pdf
  21. ↑ p. 494, footnote 222, office 83, detention list 1937–1944, entry 52/1939 in Winfried Meyer “Company seven: a rescue operation for those threatened by the Holocaust from the foreign office / defense in the high command of the armed forces”. Verlag Anton Hain GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-445-08571-4
  22. ↑ Höhne The Lissner case , p. 234.
  23. ↑ p. 494, footnote 219, “Intrigue struggles in the Kremlin. “Molotov or Voroshilov successor of Stalin” says Lyuschkow “, The attack, no. July 22, 1938, p. 2. in Winfried Meyer "Operation Seven: a rescue operation for those threatened by the Holocaust from abroad / defense in the high command of the Wehrmacht". Verlag Anton Hain GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-445-08571-4
  24. ^ "The alleged" school friend "of Lissner:" Captain Werner Schulz "A construct of the journalist and historian Heinz Höhne?" , published on https://ivar-lissner.de/Projekt-Ivar-Lissner/ , accessed on December 18, 2016.
  25. ^ "The alleged" school friend "of Lissner:" Captain Werner Schulz "A construct of the journalist and historian Heinz Höhne?" , published on https://ivar-lissner.de/Projekt-Ivar-Lissner/ , accessed on December 18, 2016.
  26. ↑ p. 242 in Heinz Höhne “The Lissner case” in Ivar Lissner “My dangerous way” 1975 Knaur Verlag
  27. ↑ "Short biography Ivar Lissner for the years 1933–1945" , published on https://ivar-lissner.de/Biografie/ , accessed on December 23, 2016. For Sack and Dohnanyi see also p. 278 in Ivar Lissner "Vergessen aber not awarded "1970 Ullstein Verlag. For the date of Rober Lissner's discharge, see p. 494, footnote 222 in Winfried Meyer “Company Seven: a rescue operation for those threatened by the Holocaust from the Foreign Office / Defense in the High Command of the Wehrmacht”. Verlag Anton Hain GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-445-08571-4
  28. ↑ p. 243 in Heinz Höhne “The Lissner case” in Ivar Lissner “My dangerous way” 1975 Knaur Verlag
  29. ↑ Miron Rezun The Soviet Union and Iran , 1981, p. 361, Heinz Höhne Krieg im Dunkel , p. 435.
  30. ↑ Höhne, The Lissner case, p. 250. The Führer has decided that the writer Dr Ivar Lissner, ...., should be equated with people of German blood .
  31. ↑ Höhne The Lissner case, p. 251.
  32. ↑ After Himmler had acquired the surname "Butcher of Warsaw", he was transferred to East Asia by Himmler for corruption and was supposed to be watching Sorge, but became his drinking companion and one of Sorge's best sources
  33. ↑ Höhne The Lissner case, p. 246.
  34. ↑ Höhne, Krieg im Dunkel , p. 439 with the wording of the radio message.
  35. ↑ p. 496, footnote 256, Lissner report no. 92, telex from the Hsinking legation to the Foreign Office, March 23, 1942, PA AA, Pol IM, vol. 36, p. 270121 f. in Winfried Meyer "Company Seven: a rescue operation for those threatened by the Holocaust from the Foreign Office / Defense in the High Command of the Wehrmacht". Verlag Anton Hain GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-445-08571-4
  36. ↑ Höhne The Lissner case, p. 258.
  37. ↑ Höhne, The Lissner case , p. 269
  38. ^ According to Höhne, the relocation took place in January 1945 (Höhne, Der Fall Lissner , p. 269). Werner Crome dates the process to February 1945 ( The Lissner case in Ivar Lissner Forgetting but not forgiven , Ullstein, 1970, p. 335).
  39. ↑ Höhne, The Lissner case , p. 269
  40. ^ FW Deakin, GR Storry, Richard Sorge - The story of a large double game , German Book Community, 1966, p. 352
  41. ↑ Christian Sonntag Media Careers - Biographical Studies on Post-War Journalists in Hamburg , Martin Meidenbauer Verlag 2006, p. 175. From 1949 to 1959 he was editor-in-chief of Kristall.
  42. ↑ Imprint of the magazine "Kristall" No. 9 1956. Here Ivar Lissner is no longer named as editor-in-chief.
  43. ^ Memoirs by Corleis, who worked for him at Kristall in Hamburg from 1954.
  44. ↑ Lissner planned to emigrate to the USA after the war, but did not receive an entry permit and even had to leave Japan in 1948 because he was classified as a Nazi Embassy Official . Höhne, afterword to Lissner's memoirs, p. 270.
  45. ↑ Otherwise, Lissner didn't like talking about this time. British historians FW Deakin and GR Storry, who were interested in the Sorge case, tried to interview Lissner, but were turned down by him. Höhne, epilogue to Lissner's memoir, p. 271. The British historian John Chapman also examined Lissner's secret service activities in the 1960s. In his book War in the Dark, Höhne quotes a manuscript The case of Dr Ivar Lissner in Manchuria , London.
personal data
SURNAME Lissner, Ivar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lissner, Ivar Arthur Nicolai (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German author and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 23, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Lievenhof , Latvia , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH 4th September 1967
Place of death Ollon