Jean-Louis Jeanmaire

Jean-Louis Jeanmaire, 1990

Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (also Jeanmaire-dit-Quartier ; born March 25, 1910 in Biel ; † January 29, 1992 in Bern ; resident in Les Brenets and Mont-Tramelan ) was a Swiss officer . As a brigadier , he was the highest-ranking convicted Swiss traitor of the twentieth century.

prehistory

Jeanmaire completed his architecture studies at the ETH Zurich in 1934 . In 1940 he became an instructor in the infantry, in 1943 in the general staff , in 1948 major, 1957 colonel, 1969 brigadier and head of the Federal Office for Air Protection Forces . From 1939 to 1976 he had a teaching position at the military schools of the ETH Zurich.

Jeanmaire married Marie-Louise Burtscher in 1943, the daughter of linguistics professor Jules Burtscher , who had been expelled from the Crimea in 1919 . From 1961 he became friends with Colonel Vasily Denissenko , the military and air force attaché at the Soviet embassy in Bern from 1959 to 1964, who was also the representative of the GRU military intelligence service . He repeatedly passed classified information on the Swiss Army to him and his successors.

Jeanmaire affair and trial

Jeanmaire after his conviction at the first instance in Lausanne, June 17, 1977

In the mid-1970s, a foreign intelligence service warned the Swiss authorities about an information leak. Jeanmaire was arrested in August 1976, brought before the Division Court 2 in Lausanne and sentenced on June 17, 1977 for treason to 18 years in prison, demoted and expelled from the army. His wife, who was also accused, was acquitted. Jeanmaire appealed, whereupon the Military Court of Cassation upheld the judgment on February 3, 1978. The very strict judgment (the auditor had asked for 12 years) has to be seen in the context of the Cold War . In addition, there were fears that Swiss imports of high technology from America would be restricted; public opinion also expected an exemplary judgment.

During Jeanmaire's trial, the prosecution took the view that he had acted not out of financial or ideological motives, but out of vanity and resentment that he had felt ignored in promotion.

After the judgment

Jeanmaire requested a revision of the judgment in 1984 and 1985, but this was rejected. In 1988 he was released early from prison. He fought for rehabilitation until his death. In 1990 Jeanmaire gave an August 1st speech at the Vue des Alpes .

The Jeanmaire affair is the subject of Urs Widmer's play Jeanmaire: A Piece of Switzerland (1992) and John le Carré's report A good soldier (1991).

literature

• John le Carré : A good soldier . Translated from the English by Werner Schmitz . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-462-02140-0 (report).
• Urs Rauber : The Jeanmaire case. Memoirs of a «traitor». The ex-brigadier in the crosshairs of politics and secret services. Weltwoche-ABC-Verlag, Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-85504-134-2 (non-fiction book, contains the annotated memoirs of Jeanmaire and the full text of the judgment).
• Jürg Schoch: Jeanmaire case, Switzerland case. How politics and the media fabricated a “traitor of the century”. «Here + now», publishing house for culture and history, Baden 2006, ISBN 3-03-919026-1 (non-fiction book).
• Urs Widmer : Jeanmaire: A piece of Switzerland. With comments on the Jeanmaire case by Urs Rauber. Publishing house of the authors, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-88661-136-1 (play).
• Franz Kasperski: The Treason of Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (2014)
• Peter Beutler : Bern Minster Fall. Detective novel. Emons Verlag GmbH [1] , 2015, ISBN 978-3-95451-711-4

Web links

• Hervé de Weck : Jeanmaire, Jean-Louis. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Jean-Louis Jeanmaire in the archive database of the Swiss Federal Archives

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gen. Jean-Louis Jeanmaire, 81, Swiss Spy , New York Times , January 31, 1992 (obituary), accessed April 13, 2013
2. ↑ Affair Jeanmaire: On the wall with this guy! In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from August 9, 2016
3. ^ The treason of Jean-Louis Jeanmaire In: SRF January 27, 2016