Gustav Steinhauer was born in Berlin c. 1870. He was an officer of the Imperial German Navy who in 1901 became head of the British section of the German Admiralty's intelligence service, the

Nachrichten-Abteilung The ''Nachrichten-Abteilung'', also known as N, was the naval intelligence department of the German Imperial Admiralty Staff or ''Admiralstab'' between 1901–1919. It focused its efforts on France, the United States and above all the United Kingd ...

, ('N'). He had trained at the

Pinkerton Detective Agency Pinkerton is a private security guard and detective agency established around 1850 in the United States by Scottish-born cooper Allan Pinkerton and Chicago attorney Edward Rucker as the North-Western Police Agency, which later became Pinkerton ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and spoke fluent English with an American accent. Steinhauer had been part of

Kaiser Wilhelm II Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 18594 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (german: Kaiser) and List of monarchs of Prussia, King of Prussia, reigning from 15 June 1888 until Abdication of Wilhelm II, his abdication on 9 ...

's bodyguard at the funeral of

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 21 ...

in 1901. During the visit Steinhauer foiled an assassination plot by a group of Russian anarchists on the Kaiser's life, working alongside British detective and spymaster

William Melville William Melville (25 April 1850 – 1 February 1918) was an Irish law enforcement officer and the first chief of the British Secret Service Bureau. Birth William Melville was born into a Roman Catholic family in Direenaclaurig Cross, Sneem, Co ...

. Steinhauer was responsible for the creation of a network of German spies in Britain in the period before the war. Steinhauer had mostly recruited his agents through writing to German businessmen resident in the UK inviting them to work for him.

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Go ...

soon clocked onto this activity and began intercepting the correspondence between Steinhauer and his agents, between 1911 and 1914 MI5 intercepted 1,189 letters relating to such German espionage. In late July, the week before the declaration of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Steinhauer toured Britain under the alias 'Fritsches' to make contact with elements of his agent network, although Mi5 knew he was present in the country they did not have the resources to mount sufficient surveillance to apprehend him.

Vernon Kell Major-general (United Kingdom), Major General Sir Vernon George Waldegrave Kell, (21 November 1873 – 27 March 1942) was a British Army general and the founder and first Director of the British Security Service, otherwise known as MI5. Kn ...

, head of MI5, claimed to have ordered the arrest of 22 of Steinhauer's agent ring at the outset of war, leaving no significant German spies in Great Britain; but modern research has exploded this claim, which appears to have been made to promote the hasty passage of the

Aliens Restriction Act Alien primarily refers to: * Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country ** Enemy alien, the above in times of war * Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth ** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...

of August 1914. Steinhauer later recalled the Kaiser's fury at the seeming obliteration of German surveillance of the British Navy screaming 'Am I surrounded by dolts? Who is responsible? Why was I not told!?'

Trivia

Historian Andrew Cook has suggested that Steinhauer's plot to blow up the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...

could have been

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...

's inspiration for the character and plot of

Auric Goldfinger Auric Goldfinger is a fictional character and the main antagonist in Ian Fleming's 1959 seventh ''James Bond'' novel, '' Goldfinger'', and the 1964 film it inspired (the third in the ''James Bond'' series). His first name, Auric, is an adjectiv ...

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Steinhauer, Gustav Spymasters Imperial German Navy personnel of World War I World War I spies for Germany 1870s births 1930 deaths