Paul Fidrmuc

Paul Georg Fidrmuc (born June 28, 1898 in Jägerndorf , † October 20, 1958 in Barcelona ) was a German journalist and spy with the code name "Ostro".

Life

Paul Fidrmuc was born in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and at the end of the First World War he became a prisoner of war in Italy, from which he fled after a short time. In his now Czech homeland, he took part in the German resistance, was arrested and sentenced to a long prison sentence, from which he was also able to escape.

In 1920 Fidrmuc began to study philology in Vienna , which he had to abandon when his family lost their fortune due to inflation in Austria. Fidrmuc went to Lübeck and was active in the metal export sector.

Fidrmuc joined the Lübeck rowing club and became German champion in Trier in 1922 with eighth rowing . In the mid-1920s, Fidrmuc was also active as a journalist and wrote a. a. for British and American journals.

In 1935, Fidrmuc was arrested by the Gestapo on suspicion of being a Czech agent. Around this time Fidrmuc began to work for the German Abwehr . According to his own statements, he worked in Vienna before the annexation of Austria , provided Canaris with the deployment plans of the Polish General Staff before the attack on Poland and procured the production plans for the Ploiesti oil refineries before the occupation of the Balkans .

In May 1939 Fidrmuc became a member of the NSDAP .

Before the occupation of Denmark , Fidrmuc went to Copenhagen with his Danish wife . Both were arrested here in November 1939, but were released in exchange with Scandinavian spies.

In 1940 Fidrmuc went to Lisbon with his wife and is said to have built an association of like-minded people (the so-called "Ostro-Ring") for espionage against England and the USA. He refused recruitment attempts by the British. The British then tried to turn him off, but failed.

On June 3, 1944, he correctly predicted the landing of Allied troops in Normandy. His message to the German secret service headquarters in Berlin read as follows: “The La Manche plan is favored. It includes an air and a water operation against the Channel Islands, landings east and west of the La Manche department, probably near Isigny. ”This is roughly how it happened on June 6, 1944, the so-called D-Day. Due to various false reports from him, the leadership disregarded his warning.

In mid-March 1945 Fidrmuc went to Spain, but was deported to Germany in 1946. Here the Americans interrogated him and classified him as "one of the most successful and potentially dangerous German agents of the war". An extradition request from Czechoslovakia was rejected and Fidrmuc was released.

He went back to Barcelona , wrote detective and agent novels and began to work again as a journalist. He wrote for the Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung , Die Zeit and from 1950 for the Spiegel . At the age of 60, Fidrmuc died of bone cancer .

According to Graham Greene's biographer Norman Sherry, Fidrmuc was the model for the literary character James Wormold in the novel “ Our Man in Havana ”.

literature

• Thomas Hüetlin and Hauke ​​Janssen: Our man in Barcelona . DER SPIEGEL 23/2014, pp. 120–129