Robey Leibbrandt
| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Men's Boxing | ||
Representing  South Africa
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| British Empire Games | ||
 |
1934 London | Light Heavyweight |
Sidney Robey Leibbrandt (born 25 January 1913 in Potchefstroom, Transvaal – 1 August 1966 in Ladybrand, Free State province, South Africa), who was led by the German military intelligence under the pseudonym "Robert Leibbrand", was a South African Boer of German and Irish descent. Leibbrandt was an Olympic boxer and later a German secret agent and activist against the British influence and political power within South Africa.
Leibbrandt was the third of six children, his father was Sergeant Major Meyder (Meider) Johannes Leibbrandt. Leibbrandt senior fought with Jan Smuts in the Second Boer War. Later he wanted to become an officer in the South African Army, but when World War I broke out, he was ordered to invade German South-West Africa, an order he disagreed with due to his belief that "Germans should not war against Germans".
Following the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Leibbrandt returned to Berlin in 1938 to study at the Reich Academy for Gymnastics, and stayed on when war broke out. He joined the German Army, where he became the first South African to be trained as a Fallschirmjäger and glider pilot. Later other South Africans also joined the Wehrmacht. Leibbrand took a Brandenburgers sabotage training course at Abwehr II (Abwehrschool "Quenzgut") near Brandenburg an der Havel, west of Berlin. In 1940 Leibbrandt had a son by a German woman (Bernd).
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris ordered Operation Weissdorn, a plan for a coup d'état to overthrow the government of General Jan Smuts, who had led South Africa into the Second World War on the side of the Allies. Leibbrandt left Germany on 5 April 1941. In June 1941, under the code name Walter Kempf, Leibbrandt was dropped on the Namaqualand coast north of Cape Town by a boat under the command of an Abwehr agent Christian Nissen. The Operation Weissdorn was one of the most successful clouded in secrecy enterprises (German: Kriegsfahrt) of the Geistersegler. He made contact with a pro-German movement, the Ossewabrandwag, but the leader, Johannes Van Rensburg, was unsympathetic.
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