Germany’s Most Famous Woman Spy

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 904, 22 February 1930, Page 18

Germany’s Most Famous Woman Spy

“ Mile. Docteur,” Once Terror of French and English Counter Espionage Services, Dies in Private Asylum For the Insane.

REE me from this prison immediately or I shall j have you all courtmartialled! once! The Emperor and the great general staff want me to find out when the French are going to launch their next offensive and whether those cursed Americans are still coming.” A wreck of a young woman —only 35, but looking 65—is continually raving like this In a private insane asylum near Zurich, Switzerland, alternately cursing and entreating to be released. She is the famous German spy, '•Mademoiselle Docteur,” once the terror of the French, English and American counter-espionage services, and now a pitiful human wreck owing to the use of narcotics. Her mind is entirely gone. She believes that she is still the star performer of the formidable German spy service; that the war is still going on; that the “All Highest” is impatiently awaiting her latest reports from France, as he once did; that hundreds of thousands of Teutons are waiting to plunge into battle for the Fatherland when she gives the signal. Was there a single Allied espionage chief who did not sense the presence of the mysterious “Dame Blonde” around him day and night, hovering behind his shoulder like an ironic phantom, watching his slightest movement, countering his every move? “Who is she?” a French or British spy chief would ask some miserable Greek, Swede, Spaniard or Dutchman •who had been caught in their net. “Simply tell me her name, tell me what she looks like, tell we where her headquarters is and I shall see that yolir life is spared,” but the wretch would only burst out sobbing, as he pictured a gray dawn before a certain post in the Vincennes barracks, and stutter incredible tales of being taken to a mysterious villa near Antwerp, where a beautiful, masterful, blonde young woman, with a revolver in one hand and a hunting crop in the other, got such a domination over him that he lived under the spell of terror and fascination until the crack of twelve rifles ended his life. Now, more than ten years after the Armistice, a German author, Hans Rudolf Berndorff, has published at Berlin a book called "Espionage,” in which he clears up the mystery surrounding this remarkable woman spy. The book has been reprinted and read with avid interest in France. It is a typically true spy story—a girl plunging into this dangerous work to forget an unhappy love affair, utterly indifferent whether she lived or died. Anne Marie Lesser was the daughter of a rich Berlin antiquary. When only 16, she fell violently in love with Karl von Winanki, a handsome young Hussar officer of one of the Kaiser’s guard regiments. One night, after weeping out a confession to her father, he kicked her from his home and never pardoned her. This caused a scandal and Lieutenant von Winanki was forced to resign from the army. "NOTHING TO LIVE FOR” Von Winanki accepted and, taking creditors, finally got a post with some irregular troops serving on the Russian frontier, where he developed brilliant talent as a railway specialist. His creditors still pursued him and his colonel, who was forced to make him resign, confidentially recommended von Winanki to the German army spy service, which was always on the lookout for officers whose careers had been broken. “I shall give you 10,000 marks to pay your debts and 1,200 marks monthly salary,” Mattessus, the German Bpy chief, told him. "Your job is to study the French and Belgian strategic railways.” Von Winanki accepted and, taking Fraulein Lesser with him, went to France in 1912. Disguised as tourists, they spent several months in a village near Verdun, drawing plans of the defences there, and then went north along the frontier. One night Anne Marie woke suddenly and declared that she knew they were being watched. Von Winanki had so much confidence in her intuition that the two of them dressed, walked a long distance in the darkness to Charlevilie and bought tickets there for Cologne. While waiting for the train they .noticed police suddenly appear at both ends of the platform and realised what that meant. The girl never lost her wits. “Hurry over to the other platform,” she said, walking up to the police at one end of the station. “We are trying to catch two German spies over there. I am from the French SurdtA Be careful; the spies are well armed.” As the French police hurried to the other side, the two German spies jumped into a motor-car and dashed across the frontier before they could be caught. It was a great success for von Winanki, but the next day he was struck down by an attack of acute appendicitis at Cologne and died while being operated on. Anne Marie, who was only 18 then, was left alone in the world. Von Winanki’s family even forbade her to attend the funeral, and she was just getting ready to commit suicide when an espionage officer arrived from Berlin and asked if she could help decipher the notes written by her companion. She had a pistol when the officer stepped into her hotel room. After the crisis of sobbing the girl agreed to go to Berlin, and there she read her lover’s notes with such ease and precision that Mattessus, the spy chief, asked her what she intended to do. “X have nothing to live for; I shall die.” she replied calmly. “And if I offered you work that was intensely absorbing and that exposed you to great danger?” he asked. Anne Marie burst into tears, thinking of her lover, but she eventually agreed to be a spy and became 1-14 A-G. The French army was holding its manoeuvres near the Alsatian frontier . that year, and the young spy, who was

actually a painter, went ostensibly as a young Swiss artist and made many interesting sketches of French guns and other material on her bristol, covering them up with harmless little pastoral scenes. In the spring of 1914 she went to study the new Belgian forts at Liege. A young Belgian lieutenant, who had fallen in love with Anne Marie, took her everywhere she wanted to go and was simply fascinated by the pretty little paintings she made of windmills, but one day a scrap of paper with figures on it dropped out of her pocket. She had to tell her chauffeur to dash for the Dutch frontier. The lieutenant and gendarms pursued, but she beat them by two minutes. It is said that the report she made about the Belgian fortifications proved of great value to the German army. Worth a Division In the beginning of July. 1914, Fraulein Lesser arived in Paris from Milan, travelling on a German passport. As the clouds of war were gathering already, Pissar, German spy chief in the French capital, faked a Belgian passport for her, and as a Belgian army nurse she travelled all over Northern France for several weeks. She was in Brussels the day war

broke out, reported to Berlin about the Belgian mobilisation, and on the night of August 2-3 she was arrested by a patrol of the advancing German armies.

“You are a spy and will be courtmartialled,” a colonel of the division staff told her severely. “Idiot!” Anne Marie replied. "Obviously I am a spy, and you don’t have to be clever to discover that. But it happens that I am a German agent.” The colonel did not want to believe her, as she was still dresed as a Belgian nurse.

“Telegraph immediately to the great general headquarters that you have arrested 1-14 A.G., and that she has very vital information,” she demanded, “otherwise it is you who will be courtmartialled.” An hour later a high espionage officer from headquarters dashed up in a motor-car, cursing loudly. “All the movements of this army depend on the woman’s report,” he shouted at the divisional staff. “You should have sent her to us at once. She Is more important than your whole division.”

After the big German offensive was finally halted Anne Marie travelled back and forth between Germany and the allied countries many times, always bringing back important information. One of her most spectacular feats was in the summer of 1917. By this time the French counter-espionage had succeeded in smashing the entire German spy organisation in France and no news was leaking out. The Kaiser himself sent word that he was anxious to know what was going on in Paris. One day a stupid-looking Norman servant girl. with several good references from alleged former employers. went to No. 3 Rue Francois 1., Paris, and asked for a job. This house had all the appearances of being a sort of family hotel. In reality, it was the headquarters of the French counter-espionage service. The janitor had never seen such a dumb-looking girl, but he finally gave her a Job scrubbing and polishing the floors. There were three charwomen on duty. It was a rule that one must work at night and, as the other two disliked night work, the now girl took on the job and actually seemed to like it. On Sundays a young non-commis-sioned officer was the only employee on duty. He never paid any notice to the dirty young scrubwoman, but on the fourth Sunday she cleaned up, put on some pretty clothes . . . and took the guard’s breath away. He tried to kiss her She put a wad of cotton with chloroform under his nose and he went to sleep. Like a flash the new charwoman — Anne Marie —went through the confidential files and extracted a list of all the French spies operating in Germany and other foreign countries. She immediately jumped into a motor-car with a confederate, dashed toward Switzerland and crossed the frontier by a little-known mountain route, while all the gendarmes of France were searching for her. A PHYSICAL WRECK Again in 1918, the Kaiser wanted some reliable information from France and Anne Marie suddenly appeared at Barcelona—she had arrived there by submarine —in the guise of a rich Argentinian.

She organised a Red Cross delegation of wealthy women ffeom Barcelona to visit the French military field hospitals and give presents to the wounded. In this way the spy visited the most important parts of the French front, but in one hospital she was recognised by the Belgian officer who had fallen in love with her before the war and had to make a mad dash to her motor-car, with many French soldiers in pursuit. She got away in the darkness, crossed the front line during a heavy rainstorm and was picked up half dead by a German patrol. At other times “Mademoiselle Docteur” directed a spy bureau at Antwerp, where she trained many persons whom she sent into the allied countries.

During one visit to Paris, where she went to give the chief agent, M. Coudyanis, direct instructions, she was denounced to the French authorities by M. Coudyanis’s jealous fiancee, but escaped. She returned to Paris a few months later and received valuable documents from the Roumanian dancer, Rene Coloseu, which she decided to take to Berlin personally. She was stopped at the Swiss border and was escorted by a soldier. When out of earshot of the soldier’s companion she drew a revolver and shot the guard dead. The next morning she appeared on the Swiss side and another guard was found dead at the border.

A high French officer, who was one of the directors of his country’s coun-ter-espionage service, smiled bitterly when I asked him for his memories of this remarkable woman. “It was like playing a game of chess against an invisible opponent,” the officer explained. “We felt her activity. We realised that on the other side there was a clever, energetic, highly trained woman who was pulling the strings behind the scenes, who was playing with her hundreds of subordinates like a master plays with his puppets. “In innumerable cases the strings we picked up led directly to her. We could even study her methods, her character, her implacable ruthlessness, for when some poor assistant tried to tyick her, had she not literally thrown nim into our hands, as much .as to say: ‘Here is a wretch who is no longer of any use to me. I hand him over to you. If you shoot him you will be rendering me a service.’ But these were the exceptions. We knew enough about this mysterious master spy to realise that she was highly dangerous to the allied cause. If we had only been able to Identify her, to get an exact description of her, to know where she was stationed, we might have done something about It. You can imagine how hard we tried. But it was futile. She kept herself hidden behind such an impenetrable veil that hut for her activity we would have doubted her existence.”

When the Armistice finally came, the woman was a physical wreck. She had commenced to take narcotics to strengthen her, especially when she was working as a charwoman in the French spy headquarters in Paris, and had never broken herself of the habit. It grew on her until finally she took scarcely any food at all. 11 For four or five years she lived in this craied state in a small Berlin suburban villa, supported by officers who had worked under her, but finally her condition became so bad that she had to be sent to a private asylum in Switzerland.