Photo: Deutsches Museum
Fritz Menzer – A secret life
A cryptologist extraordinaire and his cipher device 41. A web documentary in German and English language.
The cipher device 41 from the collection of the Deutsches Museum. Photo: Deutsches Museum | Konrad Rainer
There are stories for which a museum display case is simply too small. That's why filmmaker Robert Jahn and the Deutsches Museum have joined forces to present a documentary film series about the long and complex search for traces of Fritz Menzer. We visited the central places in Menzer's life for the seven short films, shooting in the Ore Mountains, Chemnitz, Berlin, Dresden and Oberursel, as well as in Werfen near Salzburg and in Bad Aibling.
Friends and relatives have their say in conversations and interviews. Together with Menzer's daughter Gudrun Jackson and Sir Dermot Turing, the nephew of Alan Turing, who once deciphered the Engima, we follow in Menzer's footsteps at Bletchley Park.
With animated images by Italian artist Cosimo Miorelli and previously unseen photos and documents, the secret life of Fritz Menzer is revealed clip by clip. The result is an entire film package about the cipher device 41 and its inventor.
The trailer for Fritz Menzer – A secret life
The web documentary "Fritz Menzer - A Secret Life" by the filmmaker Robert Jahn and the Deutsches Museum, illuminates the life of an inventor between Nazi dictatorship, liberation and the emerging Cold War.
From the Erzgebirge to the world of cryptology
Berlin 1935: Wehrmacht cryptologist Fritz Menzer negotiates with Boris Hagelin. How can Hagelin's machines be improved? A concept for the future cipher device 41 matures in Menzer's head. But how does a young man from the countryside end up in such a decisive position?
Advanced tech uncovers the secrets of the SG-41
For almost 80 years, the encryption mechanism of the cipher device 41 had not been fully revealed. And it was only detailed scan data from the 3D Cipher project that unlocked SG-41's last secrets.
Now Enigma must die
By the beginning of World War II, the Enigma was already obsolete technology. Fritz Menzer designs a new, secure machine to replace the Enigma. But how can this succeed?
British codebreakers on Menzer's trail
Towards the end of World War II, the Bletchley Park codebreakers become aware of the new German cipher device. However, the British secret services had already been keeping a close eye on the inventor Fritz Menzer long before.
Fleeing from the allied forces
In 1945, British and American special forces search for German crypto experts to prevent them falling into the hands of the Soviets. Target Intelligence Committee - TICOM for short - is the name of the secret project.
A double agent and the secret prison
In 1947, the struggle between the victorious powers of the Second World War for the leading German cryptologists is in full swing. Fritz Menzer finds himself caught between the fronts of the emerging Cold War.
New life, new secrets
Fritz Menzer's ideas are incorporated into the new cipher machines that dominate the world market in the post-war period. However, he himself seems to have left the world of cryptology forever - or has he?
Team, filming locations, research sources, and supporters
Fritz Menzer tells
1998, at the age of 90, he gives his niece insights into his mysterious life over the phone. Fritz Menzer talks about the conditions of his imprisonment, the double agent, his time in the Abwehr with Admiral Canaris and his new start in the punch card office of the Federal Debt Administration.
Fritz Menzer's voice
This recording is the only known surviving audio record of Fritz Menzer. Duration: approx. 12 minutes
Menzer's grandson Andreas Langer remembers
In the last years of Fritz Menzer's life, Andreas Langer was one of his grandfather's most important confidants. However, Fritz Menzer continues to try to keep his secrets.
Conservation research of SG-41
In a film series of the Leibniz Research Museums on materials research, the SG-41 played the leading role in the Deutsches Museum's contribution. This is because its keyboard is made of the problematic plastic nitrocellulose and therefore requires special attention for storage and display. The video is an inventory from 2018, when neither the inventor Fritz Menzer nor the mechanism of the device itself were publicly known.
Photo gallery - Fritz Menzer, the ciper device, and the film premiere
Photo: Carola Dahlke, Robert Jahn
Publication: The Making of Fritz Menzer - A Secret Life
A technical museum and a filmmaker joinfor a thoroughly researched documentary about Fritz Menzer, the widely unknown German inventor of cipher device 41. Ins even episodes, they uncover Menzers secret life, and identify his central role for German cryptology.