In 1993 they had to be abandoned by the Berlin State Prosecutor’s
Office for insufficient cause.REDL, ALFRED (1864–1913). The notorious Austro-Hungarian intel-
ligence officer who conveyed voluminous information to Russia on
the eve of World War I, Alfred Redl was born in Lemberg in Austrian
Galicia (now Lviv, Ukraine) on 14 March 1864, the son of a railway
freight clerk. An exceptionally able and ambitious student, he passed
the entrance examination for cadet school at the age of 14. Two years
later, he enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian army and was promoted to
battalion adjutant at 25. At the urging of admiring superiors, he at-
tended the Imperial War College and graduated a first lieutenant.
In 1901, Redl became head of espionage and counterespionage
and, seven years later, deputy chief of the General Staff’s Evidenz-
büro. He initiated innovative techniques, including the use of hidden
surveillance cameras and interrogation rooms with phonograph discs.
He also apprehended a network of Russian spies based on secretly
gathered fingerprints and concluded an intelligence-sharing agree-
ment with Germany. His career reports repeatedly noted his loyalty
to senior commanders as well as his popularity among his fellow
officers. Redl, however, had a strong attraction to extravagant liv-
ing and homosexual affairs. Following his recruitment by Russia in
1907, his first handler was Colonel Mitrofan Marchenko, the Russian
military attaché in Vienna, whose early report described Redl as a
cynic—“more clever and false than smart and talented”—but made no
mention of his homosexuality, quite contrary to many subsequent ac-
counts alleging blackmail as a primary enlistment device. In exchange
for exceptionally large sums of money, Russian authorities managed
to acquire the details of Austro-Hungarian mobilization plans, particu-
larly concerning the network of fortresses along the eastern Galician
frontier, as well as numerous other secret documents. In 1910, when
Redl was promoted to colonel and transferred to Prague as chief of
intelligence with the army’s VIII corps, his sphere of knowledge con-
tracted somewhat, but his reports continued unabated.
Unknown to Redl, German intelligence officers of Abteilung
IIIb had intercepted some of the payment envelopes addressed
to “Nikon Nizetas” and alerted their Austrian counterparts to the
possibility of an undercover arrangement. An investigative team
362 • REDL, ALFRED