"My father was not a spy"
Helsingin Sanomat examined the security police files on Fritz Remmler
Friedrich Wilhelm Remmler
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By Kristiina Markkanen
"My father was not a spy. He served as a liason officer - Verbindungsoffizier - and he was a proud German", writes Friedrich Wilhelm "Fritz" Remmler's son Ingmar, now 80 years of age, by email from Canada.
The espionage accusations (see linked article below) also irritate Fritz Remmler's grandson (by his daughter Hilde), who lives in Helsinki.
"I have understood that among his best friends in Germany were the likes of Carl Hagenbeck, the founder of the Hamburg Zoo, and not representatives of the Nazi party or Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring", says lawyer Raimo Leppänen.
Suspicions of Remmler's Nazi connections have been voiced several times over the decades.
The life story - and quite some life it was - of the mysterious animal trainer has not been studied in any detail.
However, owing to the espionage allegations, there are files on Remmler in the archives of two earlier incarnations of today's Supo or Finnish Security Police, namely the "Central Detective Police" (Etsivä keskuspoliisi, "EK", 1919-1937) and "State Police" (Valtiollinen Poliisi or "ValPo", 1937-1949).
The files contain information supplied by the authorities and by agents on the person and movements of Remmler, his brother Hans, his wife Impi, and their three children Ingmar, Orvar, and Hilde.
Remmler began to be regarded as persona non grata in Finland immediately after the outbreak of the Winter War in November 1939, and he was deported shortly afterwards, as was reported in last week's article.
The EK file on Remmler contains a reference to the fact that he was not observed to be a Bolshevik sympathiser, but that he was thought to be swindling people in business deals.
EK had information to the effect that Remmler had spied for German intelligence in Sweden during the First World War.
Hence at the end of the 1930s, ValPo felt confident that Nazi Germany might put pressure on him to spy on their behalf in Finland.
"During the Continuation War [of 1941-44], Remmler was completely openly in the service of German military intelligence, but there is no binding evidence that he actually took part in espionage work", says history researcher Oula Silvennoinen.
Silvennoinen recently wrote a doctoral thesis on collaboration between the security police services of Germany and Finland between 1933 and 1944, and in the course of this he examined National Socialist Party archives in Berlin.
These provided no support for the claims that have also been put forward that Remmler was in the SS or was a Nazi Party member.
Equally, there has been nothing to corroborate the assertions that Remmler would have used his cinematic work as a cover, filming strategic locations secretly for the use of German military intelligence.
Silvennoinen and Remmler's grandson Raimo Leppänen agree that it is quite possible that Remmler did indeed meet Nazi leaders on his trips to Germany.
The connection with Göring, for example, is quite conceivable given that Göring had also taken on the title of Reichsforst- und Jägermeister (Reich Master of the Forest and Hunt), and that his first wife Carin was a Swedish baroness.
Remmler, for his part, was known not simply for having strange animals on his farm, but also as a very gifted falconer and trainer of hunting hawks, having learnt the skill in Kazakhstan from his wife's Russian relatives.
He is believed to have instructed Göring in the art of training hunting falcons on at least one occasion.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 27.4.2009
More on this subject:
 German doctor Fritz Remmler continued his animal farm activities in Canada
BACKGROUND: The story of a German-Finnish family
Previously in HS International Edition:
The mysterious Fritz Remmler: Dr. Doolittle or spy? (21.4.2009)
KRISTIINA MARKKANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
kristiina.markkanen@hs.fi
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