Oskar Niedermayer

Oskar Ritter von Niedermayer (8 November 1885 – 25 September 1948) was a German General, professor and a German super-spy. Sometimes referred to as the German Lawrence (just like Wilhelm Wassmuss), Niedermayer is remembered for having led the 1915–1916 Persian and Indo-German-Turkish mission to Afghanistan and Persia during World War I in an endeavor to incite the Emir Habibullah Khan to attack British India, as a part of the Persian and Hindu German Conspiracy as an adjunct to the German War effort. Between the World Wars, Niedermayer was associated with the Universities of Munich and Berlin.

Oskar Niedermayer came from a Regensburg official and merchant family. On 15 July 1905 he joined the 10th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment (Erlangen) as an Officer Cadet. After being promoted to Lieutenant, he received within the Army the educational opportunity to study Natural Sciences, Geology and philology at Erlangen University. He was guided by Georg Jacob, a philologist of Semitic cultures, and picked up 'fairly fluent English and Russian, passable Arabic and Turkish and modern Persian.' Subsequently, whilst retained on full military pay he asked for, and was granted, a two-year research trip furlough (Разведка) from the Army during which he traveled through Persia and India. His stated intent was to carry out excavations and study Islamic practices in Persia - though military intelligence must have figured in the decision to give him two years of paid leave. He sketched relief maps of the area between Tehran and the Caspian. Niedermayer is the first known European to cross the Lut Desert. Having reached Asterabad in the spring of 1913 he spent nearly five months compiling a huge dossier on Shia practices for German intelligence. In May 1913 he met Percy Sykes, Britain's super-spy in Persia. Sykes did not believe Niedermayer's cover story that he was in Persia to carry out geological and anthropological investigations for a moment. Niedermayer travelled next to Isfahan, and then to Bushire. In February 1914 he was debriefed by Wilhelm Wassmuss who was so impressed by him that he recommended him, in August 1914, to Max von Oppenheim as the man to lead the German Afghan mission.

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