Fritz Duquesne

Uncommon card · No. 186852

Frederick "Fritz" Joubert Duquesne ( dew-KAYN; sometimes Du Quesne; 21 September 1877 – 24 May 1956) was a South African Boer and German soldier, big-game hunter, journalist, and spy. Many of the claims Duquesne made about himself are in dispute; over his lifetime he used multiple identities, reinvented his past at will, claimed family ties to aristocratic clans and famous people and even asserted the right to military titles and medals with no third-party verification. Duquesne fought on the side of the Boers in the Second Boer War and as a secret agent for Germany during both World Wars. He gathered human intelligence, led spy rings and carried out sabotage missions as a covert field asset in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Central and South America, and the United States. Duquesne went by many aliases, fictionalized his identity and background on multiple occasions, and operated as a con man. As a Boer spy he was known as the "Black Panther", in World War II he operated under the code...

Read on Wikipedia · Image The Library of Congress, Public domain