ESPIONAGE CASE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22824, 7 March 1936, Page 13

ESPIONAGE CASE

TRIAL OF HERMAN GOERTZ

ACCUSED GIVES EVIDENCE

(United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright)

LONDON, March S.

The trial of Herman Goertz was continued at the Old Bailey. He was indicted on two counts —first, with making a sketch plan or note of the Mansion Royal Air Force station calculated to he useful to an enemy; secondly, with conspiring with Marianne Emil, a young German woman, to commit offences against the Official Secrets Act, 1920.

After the court had heard three Crown witnesses, secretly, Goertz gave evidence in good English. He said that he had joined the German army at the outbreak of war and had served in East Prussia and the western front. He was Borne time in the Prussian Guard. He was wounded and tranferred to the Air Force in -1915. He received the Iron Cross in 1917 and was invalided and sent to Germany as a flying school instructor. He returned to the front as an intelligence officer for duty in interrogating British, French, and American pilot prisoners. Counsel: You have been described as a dangerous intelligence officer? Goertz: My method was successful. I generally treated every pilot as a gentleman and comrade, and entertained him at dinner or lunch. They, in the excitement of being brought down, generally told me more than I wanted to know. After the war he practised law in the United States for 18 months. He returned to Hamburg and wrote 3 book on his experiences and also law books, and was engaged between 1929 and 1931 in the preparation of the Siemens arbitration case which occupied 40 sittings in the London Law Courts. His claim for remuneration against Siemens failed in Germany; consequently he was in debt, and having had a wife, three children, and an office to maintain in Germany while in London, he sought admission to the German Ail Force as a flying officer, but was refused because he was over 40. His letter of application (read on March 4) referred to intelligence woik such as was done by officers attached to the Embassy at London or Washington. He had never applied for secret service employment, which was quite a different matter. Goertz had not finished hie evidence when the court adjourned. His counsel, in a previous speech, said Goertz conceived the idea of writing post-war story scenes laid in Germany and East Anglia. He intended to show what would happen in the future. He and the girl (Marianne Emil) went to England for the sole purpose of collecting information for a book.