Karl Boy-Ed

Karl Boy-Ed

Tombstone in Lübeck

Karl Boy-Ed (1872 – September 14, 1930) was naval attaché to German Ambassador to the United States Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff during World War I.

He was born into a merchant family in Lübeck and entered the navy at a young age. After active duty Boy-Ed joined the cadre of young officers that Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz collected around him before World War I. As a Tirpitz protege Boy-Ed worked in Berlin under Rear Admiral Paul von Hintze. Also working with him around that time was Franz von Rintelen who became a notorious sabotage agent in the United States in World War I.

He became Naval Attache under German ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff in Washington DC in 1911. His area of responsibility also included Mexico, where the ambassadorship had just turned over to Paul von Hintze, Boy-Ed's former boss. As Naval Attache he was responsible for naval matters in North America, mainly intelligence gathering and supply of the German cruiser fleet. Well liked in the US he regularly was invited to observe American and Canadian naval maneuvers and established a thorough social network. He worked closely with Franz von Papen (later Chancellor of Germany) who took over the job of Military Attache in the United States and Mexico in 1914. Boy-Ed and von Papen established an effective a spy and sabotage ring in World War I to prevent the U.S. from sending aid to the Allies. Some of the more notorious members of this network included Franz von Rintelen, Felix A. Sommerfeld, Horst von der Goltz, Paul Koenig, and many more.

Together with von Papen he was expelled from the U.S. in December 1915 after several clandestine operations had been reported on in American papers. Back in Germany, Boy-Ed headed the Nachrichtenbuero, Department "N" of the German Navy. Department "N" was the pre-cursor of the German Naval Intelligence agency. The Nachrichtenbuero collected intelligence on naval affairs and disseminated German propaganda on her own navy. After the war, he married an American woman and settled in Hamburg.

He died as the result of a horse-riding accident on his 58th Birthday.

Sources

• Jones and Hollister (1918). The German Secret Service in America, 1914 to 1918. Boston, Massachusetts: Small, Maynard and Company.