Friday, July 13, 2012

Excerpts from 1948 Der Spiegel article about Laure Dissard


The following are excerpts from a Google translation of the article "Zielbewußte Unmoral" from the July 10, 1948 edition of Der Spiegel. The automated translation is far from clean but you can usually figure out the meaning. The original article in the magazine archive is here.
The body was the only capital of the beautiful Laure Dissard. With 15 years ago, the daughter of a Parisian chef to harvest as a dancer at Montparnasse cabaret their first success. In the "environment" and the rich guests, she was known by the name Anika Moor...

From Laure Dissard Anika alias Moor was Laura Kleinknecht. The man who was then aged 23, the German manufacturer Walter Kleinknecht, head of a bank in Amsterdam and agent of the Paris branch of the German intelligence service...

A year after their marriage, war broke out...  Kleinknecht operated now as a political refugee. He remained in Paris...   In 1940, behind the barbed wire of Bassens, near Bordeaux, he waited for the German armored spearheads...

When German soldiers bathed in Arcachon, Kleinknecht resided in officer's uniform as head of the headquarters in Bordeaux.

But it was only a transition. The IG Farben man and personal friend of Goering opened in Paris in a wider field of his activity. He was also reunited with Laure...

In their luxurious apartment in Neuilly, the Paris Dahlem, prominent German and Vichy wrong people. Madame Kleinknecht, long since outgrown the ballet shoes of Montparnasse entertained, as the "grande dame" of the SD chief Colonel Engelke and the German generals as well as Mr. Pierre Laval and Marcel Deat...

Valuable information came in this way from the capital of occupied France in Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. A large number of Germans and Frenchmen were arrested on Laure's messages out...

In 1944, Laure went to Berlin. It was during the hot summer weeks that the plot of 20 Followed in July. Laure had meetings with Hitler and Himmler. It seems that the discovery of the conspiracy in Paris played a decisive role...

The couple was arrested after returning Kleinknecht Laures to Paris by the Germans. Kleinknecht was shot. His wife remained in jail.  Here they found the French after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. As "victims of Himmler" Laure was given the freedom.

The authorities believed their stories they told about their exploits during the occupation and handed her the privilege card...

"Laure Dissard" was now back on the identity card of the widowed Mrs. Kleinknecht.

The shooting of her husband by the Germans seemed to be the best trump card at the Paris authorities. She was given a large twelve-room apartment in the Rue Montaigne in the 8th Arrondissement near the Champs Elysées...

In versatile initiative she founded four companies, is engaged in "Export and Import" and earned a fortune...

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