lieutenant in the imperial navy when his light cruiser, the Dresden,
sank off the coast of Chile during an encounter with British forces
in March 1915. Interned in Valparaiso, he escaped to San Francisco,
where Franz von Bopp, the German consul and spymaster for West
Coast operations, recruited him as a courier. Recommended in turn
to Karl Jahnke, Witzke worked under his tutelage to help stem the
flow of munitions from New York to the Allies. Both emerged as
prime suspects following the explosion at Black Tom Island and
underwent interrogation.
The entry of the United States into the war in April 1917 caused
Witzke to shift his operations to Mexico. One scheme sought to sabo-
tage the Tampico oil fields, a vital source of fuel for the British navy,
but it was never implemented. For a venture planned at the Arizona
border, Witzke formed a new team, unaware that its two leading
members, Paul Altendorf and William Gleaves, were reporting to the
Americans and the British respectively (although neither knew of the
other’s affiliation). On 1 February 1918, carrying a Russian passport
under the name Pablo Waberski, Witzke was arrested in Nogales by
U.S. authorities. Incriminating evidence found in his Mexican hotel
room included a codebook and a coded message, which was deci-
phered by the military cryptanalytical unit in Washington, D.C. On
17 August, despite his protestations of innocence, a military tribunal
at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, sentenced him to death by hanging.
Concerned, however, about the legal procedures followed in the
trial, President Woodrow Wilson commuted the sentence to life
imprisonment in May 1920. Intense pressure by the German gov-
ernment ultimately secured Witzke’s release in November 1923.
He returned to Germany and was awarded the Iron Cross First and
Second Class. According to Nicholas Ritter, Witzke occupied a
position in the Abwehr beginning in 1938. After World War II, he
lived in Hamburg and served as a temporary member of the munici-
pal parliament.WOLF, CHRISTA (1929– ). A prominent East German writer whose
connections with the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS) led
to a major post-reunification controversy, Christa Wolf was born in
Landsberg on the Warthe (now Gorzow Wielkpolsky, Poland) on
18 March 1929. Her parents owned a grocery store. Much critical
WOLF, CHRISTA • 497