Christiansen-Clausen, Max

The son of a religious mason, Max Clausen grew up in North Frisia on the island of Nordstrand . After graduating from school in 1914, he wanted to study as a mechanic, but could not pay for his studies and was forced to work as a wage worker in a peasant farm. In 1917 he was drafted into the army and served in the communications unit in Neustrelitz , where he acquired the skills of an electrical engineer. Later he worked on the construction of radio masts in various cities of Germany and met with the Social Democrats who had an influence on him.

Klausen learned to be a signalman and was seconded to the front to France . During the German artillery shelling with gas grenades with a blue cross, when changing the direction of the wind, Klausen breathed gas. Having returned with a unit to Koblenz and received a refusal of demobilization, he deserted from the army and was arrested. Clausen later filed a report on dismissal due to his father's illness.

Max Clausen's father died in 1919, his mother died in 1902, and his brother died at the front a week before the end of the war. He worked as a sailor in Hamburg, visited many ports in Europe, North Africa and Asia. In 1922 he joined the Red Trade Unions. In Stettin in July 1922 he participated in a strike by sailors and was sentenced to three months in prison. Having lost work on the ship, he tripled as a propagandist and trade union agitator in the German Union of Sailors at the KKE. In 1924, he visited a sailing ship in Murmansk and Petrograd. The following year, Clausen joined the Union of Red Front-line Soldiers and the Red Aid of Germany . In 1927, Klausen joined the KKE .

In September 1928, Klausen received an invitation to Moscow, where he was to appear at the GRU with General Y. K. Berzin , head of the intelligence department. At the GRU, Klausen received the new name Max Schenck and learned to work with the radio. With his first assignment, Clausen went to Shanghai .

In Shanghai, Max Klausen met his peer Anna Wallenius, nee Zhdankova, a native of Novonikolaevsk , who became a citizen of Finland through marriage to a Finnish businessman. Anna met Wallenius in Semipalatinsk , and after the February Revolution, they fled together to Shanghai, where her husband died in 1927. Anna Wallenius subsequently married Max Clausen. They went to Guangzhou together, then worked in Mukden, where the headquarters of the Japanese army was located. In August 1933, Klausen returned to Moscow, where he was sent to a new school of radio operators on the Lenin Hills , then went on assignment to Odessa and in 1934 - to Red Kut to the Volga Germans Republic . In the summer of 1935, Max and Anna were sent to Tokyo to Richard Sorge. They were tasked with preventing a military conflict between the USSR and Japan. The direct leadership was entrusted to L. A. Borovich .

Clausen did the radio equipment for undercover communications at the place of work himself, so as not to risk on the road. He built the transmitters according to the simplest schemes, their separate parts were stored separately among the household rubbish and gathered together only for the duration of the session. Radio communication was carried out in the amateur bands , in order to mask encryption from Tokyo, they were flavored with harmless phrases in a conventional radio jargon .

On October 18, 1941, Max Klausen was arrested along with Sorge employees and on January 29, 1943 sentenced to life imprisonment. Anna Klausen was sentenced to seven years in prison (subsequently reduced to three years). Clausen was released by the Americans, in 1946, the couple left Japan. Through the USSR Embassy, ​​they flew to Vladivostok, where they were treated for four weeks.

Before leaving for the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany, Klausen received new documents in the name of Christiansen. Having settled in Wildau , Klausen joined the SED . He worked in the personnel department of one of the shipyards in Berlin, then worked at several large enterprises in Berlin. He was buried at the Socialist Memorial in the Central Cemetery of Friedrichsfeld .

In 1964 or 1965, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. His wife Anna was awarded the Order of the Red Star.

• Dem Morgenrot entgegen , in: Der Binnenschiffer, Nr. 8/1960 bis Nr. 17/1961, Berlin

• Franziska Ehmcke, Peter Panzer (Hrsg.), Gelebte Zeitgeschichte - Alltag der Deutschen in Japan 1923-1947 , München 2000
• Julius Mader, Dr.-Sorge-Report , 3. erweiterte Auflage, Berlin 1986
• Helmut Roewer, Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl: Lexikon der Geheimdienste im 20. Jahrhundert. München 2003
• Wladimir Tomarowski, Richard Sorge - Kein Geheimnis , in: Heiner Timmermann, Spionage, Ideologie, Mythos - der Fall Richard Sorge, Münster 2005
• Sergei Alexandrowitsch Kondraschow: Richard Sorge und seine Gruppe , in: Heiner Timmermann, ebenda
• Wolfgang Krieger, Die Bedeutung der Geheimdienste im Zweiten Weltkrieg , in: Heiner Timmermann, ebenda
• Jürgen Rohwer, Die Kenntnisse der alliierten Nachrichtendienste über die japanischen Planungen für die Flottenoperationen im Herbst 1941 , in: Heiner Timmermann, ebenda
• Charles A. Willoughby, Sorge - Soviet Master Spy , London 1952
• Max Christiansen-Clausen, Der Funker Dr. Richard Sorges , Leipzig 1982
• Robert Whymant, Stalin's Spy. Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring , New York 1996 (deutsch: Der Mann mit den drei Gesichtern - Das Leben des Richard Sorge, Berlin 2002)

• George Chliyants. The radio amateur is the radio operator of the legendary scout.
• Violetta Nichkova. Anna and Max Clausen. Meeting with radio operators Richard Sorge.