ILSE STÖBE.
Ilse Stöbe, alias ALTA, or ALTE, may have been used by the R.U. since 1932; in that year she introduced Ilse Samuel, then Seinfeld to Harry I, probably in the capacity of recruiting agent.
Between 1928 and 1930 she had begun to associate with R.U. agent Rudolf Herrnstadt, for whom she is known to have worked as an agent at least from 1936 until her capture in 1942.
By 1930 she was an employee of Herrnstadt, editor of the "Berliner Tageblatt" became his mistress and contracted venereal disease.
Following Herrnstadt's return from Moscow and posting to Warsaw by the "Berlinder Tageblatt" in 1934, Stöbe after undergoing a cure in Zakopano, joined him, at his bidding, in Warsaw and from then (not later than 1936) until September 1939 acted as cut-out between Herrnstadt and his source Scheliha.
With the withdrawal of German diplomats from Warsaw, Stöbe returned with Von Scheliha to Berlin, where he secured her employment in his section of the Foreign Office. Through a Tass representative, Herrnstadt, from Moscow directed Stöbe to report to te Soviet Commercial Attache in Berlin, and she was able to send intelligence from Scheliha through the Attache to Moscow until the outbreak of the Russian-German war. No alternative channel was available to her, and since she was independent of any R.U. group in Berlin, contact could only be re-established through Gurevich of the Belgian network.
On 28-08-1941, by WT Gurevich was ordered to visit Germany and among other assignments was asked to deliver a cipher key to Ilse Stöbe. He was unable to contact her on this visit, since her recurring illness had caused her dismissal from the Foreign Office and she had taken a commercial post in Dresden. However, in November 1941 Gurevich reported, following a second visit, the safe delivery of a cipher key to Kurt Schulze, a WT operator, for Ilse Stöbe. Schulze was evidently intended to provide a WT line to Moscow for Von Scheliha's material.
Stöbe's removal from berlin appears to have prevented the realisation of this plan, and for this reason, in May 1942, Erna Eifler was parachuted into Germany, equipped with a WT set, with instructions to find Stöbe and to re-establish aline for Von Scheliha. Following Eifler came Heinrich Koenen, in October 1942, woth simular instructions and with incriminating documents designed, if necessary, to blackmail Von Scheliha into resumption of his intelligence work. Both Eifler and Koenen were unsuccessful in their missions and were captured before locating Ilse Stöbe. Both had messages for her from Rudolf Herrnstadt.
Ilse Stöbe was located by the Germans shortly afterwards, through radio interception and WT playbacks of Eifler and Koenen and was almost certainly executed.
Addresses.
Sallosstrasse 36, Berlin.
Wilandstrasse 37, Berlin-Chatlottenburg.
Personal particulars.
Nationality: German.
Date of birth: 17-05-1911 in Berlin.
Description: Of humble birth, but highly intelligent. Chronic invalid through V.D.
Occupation: Press stenographer and reporter.
History.
Employed in the Mosse Verlag, Berlin on the staff of the "Berliner Tageblatt" between 1930 and 1933.
Employed as secretary to Theodore Wolf, a Jew, between circa 1933 and 1935.
Posted by Mosse Verlag, at Herrnstadt's instigation, to Warsaw between 1936 and 1939. Warsaw correspondent for a Swiss newspaper also.
Employed in information section of the German Foreign Office in Berlin between 1939 and 1941.
Held a commercial post in Dresden between 1941 and 1942.
Source: KV3/351.
Ilse Frieda Gertrud Stöbe (17 May 1911 in Berlin - 22 December 1942 in Berlin) was a German journalist and anti-Nazi resistance fighter.
Ilse Stöbe grew up in a working-class home in Berlin. Stöbe was the only daughter of carpenter Max Stöbe and his wife Frieda, née Schumann. She had an eight-year-older half-brother from her mother's first marriage, Kurt Müller. She grew up in Mainzer Straße 1 in Lichtenberg Berlin There is little information about their youth; many of them come from later interrogations of their half-brother accused by the National Socialists as traitors.
Stöbe attended a trade school to learn a profession as a shorthand typist. After school, she was first employed in the publishing house of Rudolf Mosse and then worked as secretary to the journalist and writer Theodor Wolff in the Berliner Tageblatt. Wolff wrote the novel The Swimmer in the US in 1937, in which he described his love of age to Ilse Stöbe and which he wanted to film. There she met Rudolf Herrnstadt, to whom she would later become engaged.
In 1929, Stöbe joined the Communist Party of Germany. From 1931, she worked with Herrnstadt, who built up an intelligence group of the Am Apparat (Military section) of the Communist International, which in addition to him and Stöbe, Gerhard Kegel and his wife Charlotte Vogt, at times also the publisher Helmut Kindler and the lawyer Lothar Bolz all belonged. Together with Herrnstadt in 1934, they moved to Warsaw, where she worked as a foreign correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung until September 1939 and also wrote for other Swiss newspapers. Stöbe was then a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) and in mid-1934 was appointed Cultural Attaché of the Nazi party's foreign office in Poland.
According to Helmut Kindler, she remained in contact with him as her childhood friend. During the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Stöbe met the Swiss publisher Rudolf Huber, who left her a major part of his fortune in his will when he died in 1940.
Shortly before the German invasion of Poland, she returned to Berlin from Warsaw and worked in the information department of the Foreign Office. There she met the journalist Carl Helfrich, with whom she lived until her arrest in 1942. According to her will, he was the tenant of her flat in Ahornallee 48 in Charlottenburg, Berlin.
Initially, from 1930, Stoebe was a member of the reconnaissance group of Rudolf Herrnstadt, where he was listed under the name of Friedrich Brockmann, and from that time began to volunteer for Soviet intelligence under the pseudonym Arbin. In Soviet intelligence, Stoebe received the pseudonym Arnim. During Herrnstadt's trip to Prague in 1930, she began to work directly with the Soviet resident in Berlin, Yakov Bronin, who was introduced to her as "Dr. Bosch."
Gerhard Kegel, who was an employee of the Foreign Office in Berlin from 1935 to 1943, supported Stöbe in her clandestine intelligence activities after returning from Poland. She allegedly continued this activity until her arrest in 1942.
She was arrested on 12 September 1942 by the Gestapo, allegedly for spying for the Soviet Union and for membership of the Red Orchestra (Die Rote Kapelle). A Gestapo report of November 1942, stated a radio message from the Soviet Union informed that a parachuted resistance fighter would come to her address. After seven weeks of torture she was compelled to confess to conspiratorial connections to the Soviet secret service and to people such as Rudolf von Scheliha. He was then also arrested on 12 October 1942. Both were sentenced to death for treason on 14 December 1942 by the Reichskriegsgericht, and executed on 22 December 1942 in the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin, she by guillotine and he by hanging from a meathook. The Soviet agent, Heinrich Koenen, who had landed in Germany by parachute, was arrested at her house by a waiting Gestapo official.
Her mother was also arrested and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she died in 1943. Stöbe's brother Kurt Müller was able to escape arrest and continue his resistance activities with the resistance group, the European Union Resistance. He was murdered in June 1944.
Stöbe (code name "Alta") repeatedly sent warning messages to the Soviet Union about the impending German invasion of the Soviet Union well in advance of the attack.
Source: Wikipedia.
Between 1928 and 1930 she had begun to associate with R.U. agent Rudolf Herrnstadt, for whom she is known to have worked as an agent at least from 1936 until her capture in 1942.
By 1930 she was an employee of Herrnstadt, editor of the "Berliner Tageblatt" became his mistress and contracted venereal disease.
Following Herrnstadt's return from Moscow and posting to Warsaw by the "Berlinder Tageblatt" in 1934, Stöbe after undergoing a cure in Zakopano, joined him, at his bidding, in Warsaw and from then (not later than 1936) until September 1939 acted as cut-out between Herrnstadt and his source Scheliha.
With the withdrawal of German diplomats from Warsaw, Stöbe returned with Von Scheliha to Berlin, where he secured her employment in his section of the Foreign Office. Through a Tass representative, Herrnstadt, from Moscow directed Stöbe to report to te Soviet Commercial Attache in Berlin, and she was able to send intelligence from Scheliha through the Attache to Moscow until the outbreak of the Russian-German war. No alternative channel was available to her, and since she was independent of any R.U. group in Berlin, contact could only be re-established through Gurevich of the Belgian network.
On 28-08-1941, by WT Gurevich was ordered to visit Germany and among other assignments was asked to deliver a cipher key to Ilse Stöbe. He was unable to contact her on this visit, since her recurring illness had caused her dismissal from the Foreign Office and she had taken a commercial post in Dresden. However, in November 1941 Gurevich reported, following a second visit, the safe delivery of a cipher key to Kurt Schulze, a WT operator, for Ilse Stöbe. Schulze was evidently intended to provide a WT line to Moscow for Von Scheliha's material.
Stöbe's removal from berlin appears to have prevented the realisation of this plan, and for this reason, in May 1942, Erna Eifler was parachuted into Germany, equipped with a WT set, with instructions to find Stöbe and to re-establish aline for Von Scheliha. Following Eifler came Heinrich Koenen, in October 1942, woth simular instructions and with incriminating documents designed, if necessary, to blackmail Von Scheliha into resumption of his intelligence work. Both Eifler and Koenen were unsuccessful in their missions and were captured before locating Ilse Stöbe. Both had messages for her from Rudolf Herrnstadt.
Ilse Stöbe was located by the Germans shortly afterwards, through radio interception and WT playbacks of Eifler and Koenen and was almost certainly executed.
Addresses.
Sallosstrasse 36, Berlin.
Wilandstrasse 37, Berlin-Chatlottenburg.
Personal particulars.
Nationality: German.
Date of birth: 17-05-1911 in Berlin.
Description: Of humble birth, but highly intelligent. Chronic invalid through V.D.
Occupation: Press stenographer and reporter.
History.
Employed in the Mosse Verlag, Berlin on the staff of the "Berliner Tageblatt" between 1930 and 1933.
Employed as secretary to Theodore Wolf, a Jew, between circa 1933 and 1935.
Posted by Mosse Verlag, at Herrnstadt's instigation, to Warsaw between 1936 and 1939. Warsaw correspondent for a Swiss newspaper also.
Employed in information section of the German Foreign Office in Berlin between 1939 and 1941.
Held a commercial post in Dresden between 1941 and 1942.
Source: KV3/351.
Ilse Frieda Gertrud Stöbe (17 May 1911 in Berlin - 22 December 1942 in Berlin) was a German journalist and anti-Nazi resistance fighter.
Ilse Stöbe grew up in a working-class home in Berlin. Stöbe was the only daughter of carpenter Max Stöbe and his wife Frieda, née Schumann. She had an eight-year-older half-brother from her mother's first marriage, Kurt Müller. She grew up in Mainzer Straße 1 in Lichtenberg Berlin There is little information about their youth; many of them come from later interrogations of their half-brother accused by the National Socialists as traitors.
Stöbe attended a trade school to learn a profession as a shorthand typist. After school, she was first employed in the publishing house of Rudolf Mosse and then worked as secretary to the journalist and writer Theodor Wolff in the Berliner Tageblatt. Wolff wrote the novel The Swimmer in the US in 1937, in which he described his love of age to Ilse Stöbe and which he wanted to film. There she met Rudolf Herrnstadt, to whom she would later become engaged.
In 1929, Stöbe joined the Communist Party of Germany. From 1931, she worked with Herrnstadt, who built up an intelligence group of the Am Apparat (Military section) of the Communist International, which in addition to him and Stöbe, Gerhard Kegel and his wife Charlotte Vogt, at times also the publisher Helmut Kindler and the lawyer Lothar Bolz all belonged. Together with Herrnstadt in 1934, they moved to Warsaw, where she worked as a foreign correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung until September 1939 and also wrote for other Swiss newspapers. Stöbe was then a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) and in mid-1934 was appointed Cultural Attaché of the Nazi party's foreign office in Poland.
According to Helmut Kindler, she remained in contact with him as her childhood friend. During the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Stöbe met the Swiss publisher Rudolf Huber, who left her a major part of his fortune in his will when he died in 1940.
Shortly before the German invasion of Poland, she returned to Berlin from Warsaw and worked in the information department of the Foreign Office. There she met the journalist Carl Helfrich, with whom she lived until her arrest in 1942. According to her will, he was the tenant of her flat in Ahornallee 48 in Charlottenburg, Berlin.
Initially, from 1930, Stoebe was a member of the reconnaissance group of Rudolf Herrnstadt, where he was listed under the name of Friedrich Brockmann, and from that time began to volunteer for Soviet intelligence under the pseudonym Arbin. In Soviet intelligence, Stoebe received the pseudonym Arnim. During Herrnstadt's trip to Prague in 1930, she began to work directly with the Soviet resident in Berlin, Yakov Bronin, who was introduced to her as "Dr. Bosch."
Gerhard Kegel, who was an employee of the Foreign Office in Berlin from 1935 to 1943, supported Stöbe in her clandestine intelligence activities after returning from Poland. She allegedly continued this activity until her arrest in 1942.
She was arrested on 12 September 1942 by the Gestapo, allegedly for spying for the Soviet Union and for membership of the Red Orchestra (Die Rote Kapelle). A Gestapo report of November 1942, stated a radio message from the Soviet Union informed that a parachuted resistance fighter would come to her address. After seven weeks of torture she was compelled to confess to conspiratorial connections to the Soviet secret service and to people such as Rudolf von Scheliha. He was then also arrested on 12 October 1942. Both were sentenced to death for treason on 14 December 1942 by the Reichskriegsgericht, and executed on 22 December 1942 in the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin, she by guillotine and he by hanging from a meathook. The Soviet agent, Heinrich Koenen, who had landed in Germany by parachute, was arrested at her house by a waiting Gestapo official.
Her mother was also arrested and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she died in 1943. Stöbe's brother Kurt Müller was able to escape arrest and continue his resistance activities with the resistance group, the European Union Resistance. He was murdered in June 1944.
Stöbe (code name "Alta") repeatedly sent warning messages to the Soviet Union about the impending German invasion of the Soviet Union well in advance of the attack.
Source: Wikipedia.