Wilhelm Vauck

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Wilhelm Vauck (born  October 8, 1896 in Dresden , †  December 8, 1968 in Bautzen ) was a German mathematician and physicist and a senior cryptanalyst in the Army High Command (OKH) during the Second World War .

Life

Born in Dresden city district Neustadt he laid in 1914 at the local secondary school , the High School from. Two years later, in 1916, he was called up for military service and served as an intelligence soldier . After the war he studied mathematics , physics and chemistry at the (then) Technische Hochschule (TH) Dresden .

The state exam for teaching he completed in these three subjects from February 21 1922nd He was Studienassessor (StudAss) at the secondary school Thum ( Erzgebirge ) and at the beginning of 1924 teacher (con) at the secondary school and Secondary School for Girls in Bautzen . In the same year he was awarded a Dr. phil. PhD . The title of his dissertation , supervised by Gerhard Kowalewski (1876–1950) , reads: “Attempt to generalize Bolzano's constant nowhere differentiable function ”.

He then worked as a teacher at the Wilhelm von Polenz - Oberschule for boys (today's Schiller-Gymnasium ) until he was called up for military service again in 1940. With the rank of first lieutenant from June 15, 1942 , he was in charge of the newly created Department  12 within the Wehrmacht communication links (AgWNV), responsible for "agent procedures", i.e. for radio reconnaissance and deciphering of agent radio. One of the operations of the " Vauck Unit ", as it was soon known, was the " England Game ". This was a German counter-espionage operation which resulted in dozens of agents from the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) being arrested by the security police immediately after their parachute jump over the German-occupied Netherlands .

After the war and his release from captivity , he returned to Bautzen. There he taught at the engineering school for materials handling technology as a lecturer in physics and electrical engineering . Dr. phil. Wilhelm Vauck died at the age of 72.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Short biographies ( please enter the surname “Vauck” in the search mask of the “ Short biographies of the DMV ”), accessed on July 5, 2019.
  2. ↑ Brief vita at tu-dresden.de , accessed on July 5, 2019.
  3. ↑ Frode Weierud and Sandy Zabell: German mathematicians and cryptology in WWII. Cryptologia, doi: 10.1080 / 01611194.2019.1600076 , pp. 25-26.
personal data
SURNAME Vauck, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mathematician and cryptanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1968
Place of death Bautzen