I was helping my father clear out the attic the other day and came across a box of old books, one of which was "The Secrets of the Hohenzollerns" by Armgaard Karl Graves. The book was old, and in German, with a note written to someone in my family in German (have not translated it yet).
A quick Google search showed me that Mr. Graves was a German spy who played both the Germans and the British during WWI, but that was mostly what I could uncover. I'm looking for an English edition to read.
I'm intrigued by this book. Has anyone come across Mr. Graves in their research? Does anyone know any details of the book? And lastly, what kind of person would own such a book?
The book was old, and in German
Wait, you say that this book was in German? I could only find editons in English.
"The Secrets of the Hohenzollerns" (it was also published under the title "The red secrets of the Hohenzollers") is quite obviously only scandal literature, which pretends to be written by a person with great knowledge of Emperor Wilhelm II., but just retells all the stories and scandals of the German court of the 1880 to 1915. But most it just makes up. [For example, it recalls an affaire between Eugénie, the Empress of France and Friedrich Wilhelm (later Emperor F. III of Germany) - which is patently absurd; it also recalls that Rasputin swore revenge on Wilhelm II. for a slight, which is likewise nonsense. But it forgets to mention the greatest scandal in Germany during that time, the Eulenburg-Scandal.]
It has the framing device of the character of "Bertram von Ehrenkrug", which, as the book states, is supposed to be an amalgamation of the writer and his German spy friends in higher places, which, likely, didn't exist.
It's a sequel to a book Graves wrote the year before, which is titled "The Secrets of the German War Office". Which features his "exploits" as German/British spy, this time under his own name, most of it fabrication, a small part descriptions of his real little time spying for Germany and Britain. In short, Graves tried to cash in his "intimate" knowledge of German spycraft after WWI started. Which worked, despite being a talltale overall, and his knowledge of the Hohenzollers nothing else than fiction.
And lastly, what kind of person would own such a book?
People who succumb to the allure of promises of tabloid revelations of the Hohenzoller. Presumably it would make someone curious who emigrated from Germany.
Thomas Boghardt's book "Spies of the Kaiser" has a bit of information about Graves, who was, in essence, a small time criminal who was hired to be a German spy in 1911, gets captured on his first job and gets hired to spy for the Brits. After getting all the money he could out of this situation, he flees to the US and sells his story to newspapers and writes those books.