Spionage in Kiel im Jahre 1893: der Fall der französischen Marineoffiziere Degouy und Delguey-Malavas im Vorfeld der Affäre Dreyfus

Abstract

August 28, 1893: Two French tourists travelling on an English yacht in the harbour at Kiel, Germany are subjected to intensive police scrutiny and then arrested on suspicion of espionage. After a detailed investigation that involves General Staff military intelligence as well as the German embassy in Paris, the two apparent tourists Raoul Dubois and Jean Maurice Daguet turn out to be the French naval officers Robert Degouy and Jacques Marie Joseph Delguey-Malavas. Both had been active as spies in Germany earlier on, and this time were under orders from the French admiralty to investigate and sketch plans of the Dutch and German fortifications along the North Sea and Baltic coasts. In view of the strained political situation between the French Republic and the German Reich, the German chancellor Von Caprivi and Kaiser Wilhelm II were kept constantly informed of the progress of the legal investigation into the case. In December 1893, on the basis of the new German anti-espionage law of July 3, 1893, the two French naval officers were sentenced by the Leipzig imperial court to six and fours years’ imprisonment respectively. On July 1, 1894, however, the murder of French president Sadi Carnot prompted Kaiser Wilhelm II to grant the two officers sudden amnesty. Generous as it was, this gesture improved Franco-German relations only briefly. Feeling cheated, the French secret service wanted revenge, and a few months later it tried to compromise the German military attaché in France, an act which eventually developed into the famous Dreyfus case.