40 Facts About Ivar Lissner

Ivar Arthur Nicolai Lissner was a German journalist and author, and a Nazi spy during World War II.

Ivar Lissner's father was a Kommerzienrat and businessman who owned cork factories and other enterprises.

The political upheavals of the postwar period resulted in the family fleeing to Riga and then to Berlin, where Ivar Lissner attended high school.

Ivar Lissner studied languages, history, anthropology and law at Greifswald, Berlin, Gottingen, Erlangen, Lyon and at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Ivar Lissner obtained his PhD in Foreign Trade Law in April 1936 in Erlangen.

On 1 April 1933, Ivar Lissner joined the Nazi Party.

Only one year later Ivar Lissner claimed party membership since the beginning of 1932 and pretended to be a member of the SS since the end of 1932.

One year later, in 1936, Ivar's father Robert Lissner was able to get hold of a forged Aryan certificate from the St Peter's Church in Riga.

Ivar Lissner started a trip around the world on behalf of his publishing house "Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt" and visited the US, Canada, the Far and the Near East.

Ivar Lissner wrote for the Hanseatic Service, the press service of his publisher, and some of his articles were, according to Heinz Hohne, printed in Der Angriff.

When Ivar Lissner returned to Germany in January 1937, his father Robert was arrested by the Gestapo.

Only after this episode Ivar Lissner, who, according to Hohne, never knew about his Jewish descent until the arrest of his father, began to distance himself from Nazism, but maintained an anti-Soviet attitude as a result of his experiences in Russia.

Ivar Lissner reported on the Japanese fighting on the Korean-Soviet border, was interviewed by Japanese newspapers and provided information to the German ambassador.

Ivar Lissner initiated contacts between the Japanese and German military intelligence, and during his stay in Manchuria in 1938 he acted as interpreter at the defection of the KGB chief for the Far East, Genrikh Samoilovich Lyushkov.

Ivar Lissner was given exclusive rights to publish the story in the press.

Ivar Lissner established contacts with the Propaganda Department and the German Embassy in Tokyo and was at that time a respected member of the Nazi-aligned German community in Tokyo.

Ivar Lissner consequently lost his post in Tokyo and a proceeding was opened to exclude him from the NSDAP.

Ivar Lissner urged the Abwehr to release his Jewish father from Gestapo prison.

In mid 1940 Robert and Charlotte Ivar Lissner left Germany for Shanghai, where Percy Ivar Lissner worked for AEG.

An article published on the Ivar Lissner website concludes that "Hauptmann Werner Schulz" who, referring to Heinz Hohne, should have been responsible for Ivar Lissner's recruitment into the Abwehr, was most likely a "fictitious construction of Heinz Hohne".

Ivar Lissner's agent controller, Captain Friedrich Busch, was a sincere anti-Nazi who saved several social democrats from concentration camp and who often shut his eyes to the fact that agents working for him were working for the Allied intelligence services.

Indeed Ivar Lissner was recruited much earlier after the first arrest of his father.

Ivar Lissner then travelled to East Asia with the cover of a newspaper correspondent.

Ivar Lissner used this wrong quotation as a "proof" that Lissner had denied any connection with the "VB".

Actually Ivar Lissner only denied having been a member of the "Reichspressekammer", the prerequisite for working as a newspaper correspondent, and confirmed that he had pretended to work "for those gangsters" during a period lasting 33 days.

In September 1940 Ivar Lissner was instructed by Admiral Canaris to supply all information he had available to prevent an invasion of the Soviet Union.

Ivar Lissner had maintained excellent relations in Nazi circles in Tokyo, including Ambassador Ott, who then tried to downplay the affair as a Japanese police intrigue.

Ivar Lissner sent these facts in a radio message on 23 March 1942, to eliminate his greatest adversaries and the most dangerous opponents of his family in Shanghai.

Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop ordered that future telegrams from Ivar Lissner be censored who after the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union had to use the wireless transmission net of the German Foreign Office before the final transmission to the Abwehr.

Ivar Lissner was not allowed to resume his work as a correspondent and he was unable to regain his party membership.

Ivar Lissner tried to build up his own legend, claiming to be a high-ranking Gestapo officer.

Observers noted that Ivar Lissner regularly visited the Soviet consulate in Harbin.

In June 1943 Ivar Lissner was arrested along with fellow journalist and friend Werner Crome, his Japanese secretary, and his German secretary.

Ivar Lissner spent two years in Japanese prisons in the hands of the Kempeitai.

Ivar Lissner was severely tortured and at times wanted to commit suicide.

Ivar Lissner was later acquitted by a Japanese court and was released at the end of the war.

Ivar Lissner went to Munich and then to Paris, where he was a writer for Paris Match.

Ivar Lissner was the author of several cultural and historical books, including Wir sind das Abendland, Wir alle suchen das Paradies, and Ratselhafte Kulturen.

Ivar Lissner began writing his memoirs in English while in Japan shortly after the war but they were unfinished at his death.

Ivar Lissner was married to actress Ruth Niehaus and had a daughter, Imogen.