Otto Carl Robert von Rosen (11 May 1884–26 May 1963) was a Swedish military officer and

sport shooter Shooting sports is a group of competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms (firearms and airguns, in forms such as ...

who participated in sabotage attacks during the First World War. Baron Von Rosen was born in

Solna Solna Municipality ( sv, Solna kommun or , ) is a municipality in Stockholm County in Sweden, located just north of Stockholm City Centre. Its seat is located in the town of Solna, which is a part of the Stockholm urban area. Solna is one of the ...

, Sweden. He is reported to have been a charismatic individual who served as a lieutenant in the Swedish army. He represented his country in various shooting competitions and participated at the 1908 Summer Olympics in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. His best Olympic result was in the moving target small-bore rifle, where he placed 8th. In 1912, von Rosen moved to Finland, which, as a

Grand Duchy A grand duchy is a country or territory whose official head of state or ruler is a monarch bearing the title of grand duke or grand duchess. Relatively rare until the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the term was often used in the o ...

, then formed part of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

. Here, at the outbreak 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 ...

, he became embroiled in the movement for Finnish independence. In 1916, under the cover of his own trading company, covert links were established by von Rosen to the German General Staff. The latter provided him and his associates with explosives and sugar cubes containing tiny glass ampoules holding '' Bacillus anthracis'' (the causative agent of anthrax) spores in a liquid medium. These were shipped across the border to northern Finland where von Rosen and his guerrilla squad infiltrated remote Russian army garrisons and deposited the adulterated sugar cubes into feed troughs of horses and cattle. Entries in von Rosen's diary refer to the supply of anthrax cultures to rebels throughout northern Finland. In the winter of 1917, von Rosen was arrested in

Karasjok ( se, Kárášjohka ; fkv, Kaarasjoki) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Karasjok. Other villages include Dorvonjárga, Šuoššjávri, and Váljohka. Th ...

, Norway. In his confiscated luggage were found maps of Russia and Finland, explosives, bottles with the toxin

curare Curare ( /kʊˈrɑːri/ or /kjʊˈrɑːri/; ''koo-rah-ree'' or ''kyoo-rah-ree'') is a common name for various alkaloid arrow poisons originating from plant extracts. Used as a paralyzing agent by indigenous peoples in Central and South ...

, and anthrax bacteria hidden in sugar lumps. Twenty-one days after his arrest, von Rosen was deported to Sweden. Two of von Rosen's sugar lumps went unnoticed when they were displayed for approximately eight decades in a police museum in Trondheim, Norway. In 1997, after their rediscovery, they were sent to the Defence Evaluation Research Agency, Chemical and Biological Defence, in

Porton Down Porton Down is a science park in Wiltshire, England, just northeast of the village of Porton, near Salisbury. It is home to two British government facilities: a site of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl ...

, United Kingdom. Scientists here were able to confirm that the capillary tubes did contain DNA from ''B. anthracis''.

References

1884 births 1963 deaths Military personnel from Stockholm Swedish male sport shooters Olympic shooters for Sweden Shooters at the 1908 Summer Olympics World War I spies for Germany Prisoners and detainees of Norway Swedish people imprisoned abroad People from Solna Municipality Sportspeople from Stockholm County 19th-century Swedish nobility 20th-century Swedish people {{Sweden-sportshooting-bio-stub