Erich Bärengrub – a schoolboy spy in the First World War
The recruitment of minors as spies during the First World War was common practice used by both belligerent sides. At the time of their recruitment in January of 1916, the Tallinn schoolboys Erich Bärengrub and Heinrich Friedrich Dunkel were 14 and 15 years old respectively. The boys had run away from home to Riga to enlist in the Latvian Riflemen regiments. They failed the military medical examination due to their age; however, they were offered an alternative form of service.
The boys were recruited by Second Lieutenant Andris Pekka, a Latvian serving in the counterintelligence section of the headquarters of the Russian Northern Front. After brief instruction, they were sent across the front line tasked with identifying the location of a German regiment. The Germans caught the boys. Importantly, German counterintelligence was well informed about the opposing side, possessing knowledge of the boys and of their recruiter, Andris Pekka. To avoid charges of espionage, Bärengrub and Dunkel were compelled to cooperate with the Germans, who sent them back to the Russian side with an assignment of their own.
It appears that Dunkel decided to return home thereafter, whereas Bärengrub received a new assignment and was once again sent toward the German lines in a different sector of the front. Bärengrub was caught again, and this time the German response was severe. He was accused of espionage and imprisoned. In 1917, after passing through several prison camps, Bärengrub arrived at a coal mine near Dortmund, from which he escaped to the Netherlands with two companions. Travelling via Rotterdam and The Hague, he reached Gothenburg and from there the Russo-Swedish border station at Tornio.
Bärengrub was interrogated at the General Headquarters in Petrograd, after which he travelled to Riga, where he was questioned again at 12th Army headquarters. The record of this interrogation has survived, but the protocol compiled in Petrograd has not been located. The Riga protocol consists of two parts: the first is Bärengrub’s narrative, and the second contains his responses to a series of questions.
Russian military intelligence focused on the mass recruitment of agents. At any given time, the intelligence section of the Northern Front managed several hundred agents, approximately half of whom had a profile resembling that of Bärengrub. Intelligence obtained by such inadequately prepared agents could scarcely have been of significant value, and it is likely that Russian army frontline units extracted the tactical intelligence they required from prisoners of war, who were captured almost daily under positional warfare conditions.
Little is known about Bärengrub’s ultimate fate; the last records concerning him date from 1917. His companion Dunkel survived the war but was repressed by Soviet authorities after the Second World War.
The service of Estonians within the Russian army’s intelligence structures during the First World War has not yet been studied. According to incomplete data, more than one hundred Estonians were connected in one way or another with Russian military intelligence during the war. This figure includes those directly involved in gathering intelligence and technical personnel within intelligence structures (interpreters, photographers, and clerks). The motives and activities of Estonians who cooperated with Russian military intelligence during the First World War remain largely unknown and require further scholarly investigation. When assessing these motives, it is necessary to consider that such decisions were shaped within the complex triangular relationship between Germans, Estonians, and Russians characteristic of the period.