Max Victor Wenner (15 April 1887 – 4 January 1937) was a Briton of Swiss ancestry, textile business heir, country squire, wildlife photographer, citizen scientist (usually publishing as M.V. Wenner), and possible MI6 agent engaged in European espionage in the interwar period.[1] He fell, jumped or was pushed out of a plane flying over Belgium in 1937.[2] The exact circumstances of Wenner's death remain poorly understood but suggestions of Nazi involvement began shortly after the discovery of his body and have continued to the present day. News articles published in the wake of his death described Max Wenner as a "man of mystery".[3][4]
Biography
Max Wenner was born 15 April 1887[5][6] in Manchester, England[a] to a Swiss family with textile industry, transportation and machinery investments.[9][10] In 1891 at age four he lived with his parents, seven siblings aged 12 years to 12 months, and a governess, in a home staffed by three servants, on The Hill, near the village of Alderley Edge, in the administrative county of Chester.[11] His father Alfred Wenner listed his work in 1891 as "shipping merchant"[11] and in 1901 as "shipper of Manchester goods & machinery".[12] Alfred Wenner married twice, first to Louise Egloff and then to her older sister Malvine Egloff.[13] Max, along with Alfred Emil Wenner Jr. and Violet Beatrice Wenner, was a product of the second marriage, to Malvine, who was born in Austria but had Swiss residency.[8][14] Max Wenner spoke eight languages,[15] including fluent German and may have spent part of his childhood in Vienna.[16]
When he was 25 years old, Wenner reportedly "took out one of the earliest flying licenses" at Hendon Aerodrome in 1912.[4] He also served with the Royal Flying Corps during World War I,[9] having obtained Royal Aero Club aviators' certificate 1757 on 17 September 1915 on "Hall Biplane, Hall School, Hendon" as Victor Max Wenner.[23][b] Circa 1916, he was a "private in the 20th (3rd Public Schools) Batt. Royal Fusiliers, subsequently Flight Sub Lieut., Royal Flying Corps,"[26] and apparently served with the RFC until the end of the war in 1918.[6] Max's brother Alfred Wenner was a lieutenant of the Cheshire Regiment during World War I, ending his military career—due to ill health from wounds received—as a captain in October 1919.[27][28]
On 1 November 1922, at the age of 35, Wenner married Martha Alice Spinner, called Dolly or Dollie, at
Grade II listed building since 1967.[33] Wenner's photographs were again used to illustrate a T.A. Coward book, Bird and Other Nature Problems, published in 1931.[34]
Also in 1931, Max V. Wenner, age 45 of England, UK, height 5 ft 7 in (170 cm), light complexion, brown hair, crewed the SS Pan America of the Munson Steamship Line traveling round trip from New York to Hamilton, Bermuda as one of 15 waiters (et al) listed on a supplementary manifest.[35]
sheepwalk on the brow of the hill, on the grounds that the gliding interfered with Mr. Wenner's sporting rights and spoiled the grouse shooting."[41] Wenner apparently "entertained many shooting parties but rarely took part in them himself."[32] According to a New Zealand paper arguing the position that Wenner committed suicide due to overwhelming grief over his wife's death, the couple "enjoyed ideal happiness" at Batchcott Hall until Dolly was diagnosed with an unnamed serious illness. She received excellent medical care at home and "for three months Mr Wenner nursed his wife night and day." However, when it came time for Wenner's habitual summer fishing trip to Iceland "where he owned a river" he initially wanted to forgo it and stay with Dolly. She insisted, and he went, but she grew rapidly sicker after his departure. She had lapsed into unconsciousness before his return and died shortly after he arrived. According to the newspaper, "Mr Wenner never recovered from that blow, and he continually reproached himself for leaving his wife at such a critical time. He grew lonely and morose, and acquired the reputation in the neighbourhood of a man of mystery. He made himself very unpopular in the district by shooting foxes and ordering hounds off his land."[4] Wenner's wife Dolly, said to have been an "invalid",[42] died 27 July 1936.[43][44] Max was the principal beneficiary of his late wife's estate, reportedly worth £90,000, but he was already a "very wealthy" man and was said to have given "large sums" to charity in the months leading up to his death.[42]
A Limburg paper reported that Wenner was thought to be "secretive and sometimes strange" and that he frequently traveled by air, to "Iceland and Switzerland repeatedly, but especially Germany."[14] Writing in March 1937, a New Zealand paper reported, "In the neighbourhood he had the reputation of a man of mystery. He was reserved and uncommunicative and it was believed that he chose to live at Batchcott Hall because of its remoteness...There was one mysterious thing in Max Wenner's life—a room in his Shropshire mansion to which servants were denied access. A kind of attic, it was always locked. It is believed to have contained cases and boxes in which Wenner's private papers were stored."[42]
According to the history of Batchcott Hall, now on offer as a holiday-house rental property, "Max Wenner was a frequent traveller to and from Germany and often hosted shooting parties from Germany and Austria at Batchcott Hall. Guests included the German Ambassador to Britain in the 1930s,
gamekeeper based at Manor Cottage in Ratlinghope—mentioned Max Wenner in his book:[45]
One gets some fantastic winds up on the open moor. I think it must be the ideal spot for a gliding club; there seem to be very few windless days. A German [sic] gentleman, Max Wenner, was a leading light in this gliding idea there. He fell—or was he pushed?—out of a plane over the Channel [sic]. He was staying in a pub in Minsterley. Somehow Father was in on the search of his rooms. I remember seeing a gun in the shape and size of a fountain pen that fired a three-sided bullet.
— Bill Tuer, A Prince Among Poachers
A 2012 letter to The Daily Mirror in response to an article about the misadventures of murder suspect Lord Lucan brought up the tale of Max Wenner. The writer, a resident of Church Stretton, stated, "It was rumoured Wenner was flying wealthy Jews out of Germany for gold and that German foreign minister Ribbentrop was involved. Wenner lived at Batchcott Hall, Leebotwood, Shropshire, and it's said that Foreign SecretaryLord Halifax accompanied him shooting."[46] In 2015, Max's nephew, Michael A. Wenner [d], a World War II veteran and retired British diplomat living in Houston, Texas, told a news writer that he had never heard anyone in the family mention Max Wenner meeting with Joachim von Rippentrop.[16]
At the time of his death in 1937, Max Wenner had a 34-year-old German fiancée, Olga Büchsenschütz[f] from the Kupferdreh [de] district of Essen.[14][47] Described as "an attractive brunette", she was said to live in a "small but comfortably furnished house with her aged parents and married sister."[42] When they first met, apparently skiing at Lenzerheide in the Plessur Alps in Switzerland.[48] An Australian newspaper claimed Büchsenschütz had been working as the secretary of the Swedish Consul-General at Düren,[48] but "extensive research in German newspapers could not identify the existence of a Swedish consulate or consul in the city of Düren (which is closer to Aachen than Cologne). There were Swedish consuls-general in Aachen during the time under review (Fritz Mohren, a commodity trader) and Cologne (Richard v. Schnitzler, a banker and later Kurt v. Schröder, Schnitzler's son-in-law and also a banker)."[49]
In December 1936, Wenner had proposed to her and she had accepted; they were to be married in Switzerland in three weeks.[14]
In March 1937, Büchsenschütz recounted their relationship to a New Zealand newspaper:[42]
Two years ago, while at winter sports in Switzerland, she met Max Wenner, and after that they corresponded occasionally...When she heard about Mrs Wenner's death last July, Olga wrote him a sympathetic letter, and since then they have met occasionally. At one of these meetings Mr Wenner proposed marriage and was accepted. Before Christmas it was arranged that they should meet at Cologne to make the final arrangements for the wedding. At Mr. Wenner's suggestion the marriage was to take place in Switzerland, as he was a Swiss by birth, to be followed by a honeymoon round Germany. His fiancée met him at Cologne Aerodrome on New Year's Eve, and they had gone to the Swiss Consul to ascertain the necessary procedure to their approaching marriage. Afterwards they spent some days at her home in Essen. On the morning of his death she kissed him goodbye at Essen Station and then, at his request, telephoned Cologne Airport, asking them to delay the departure of the Croydonairliner until he arrived.[42]
At the time of Wenner's death Olga was reportedly a private secretary of a director at a large factory of weapons and machines in the
Ruhr area.[14][g] Another account claimed that she was "private secretary to a well-known artificial silk manufacturer, and has made many trips with him in this capacity to Switzerland and other countries."[42] At the time of his death, Wenner was said to have investments in spinning mills and other cotton manufacturing enterprises.[14]
Death
On the afternoon of 4 January 1937 Wenner caught a
Luchthaven van Haren (French: Aérodrome de Haren) airport in Brussels, Belgium.[5] He apparently arrived via taxi to the Savoia-Marchetti S.73 aircraft with just two minutes to spare before departure.[32][14]
The distance between Cologne to Brussels is less than 200 km (125 mi); the cruising speed of a S.73 was about 270 km/h (170 mph).
Disappearance
When the plane landed at Haren, Wenner was nowhere to be found. He was presumed to have fallen from a height of about 3,000 feet (910 m) over the Meuse River valley. He had been writing letters and then went to the back of the plane. Some torn fabric near the rear lavatory may have been evidence of a struggle.[32] One history said the torn fabric was the "outside canvas" of the plane.[50] Another said "the lavatory door had been considerably damaged."[32] Still another said "the door in the floor of the luggage locker in the tail of the machine appeared to have been damaged."[51]
A detailed account from within the plane was provided in March 1937 by "Mrs. J.V. Cain, formerly Miss Tinka Jackson, of Davenport [sic], Auckland."[4]John Vincent Cain was a British pilot and petty criminal who would later claim to have delivered weapons and planes in early 1937 to Francisco Franco's Nationalists and other factions of the ongoing Spanish Civil War.[52][53] Wenner's nephew, Michael A. Wenner, described Cain as "possibly a not too reliable witness" in his memoir.[52] Tinka Jackson Cain of Walton-on-Thames, who on 4 January 1937 had been traveling with Cain, their baby, and a nanny, seemingly provided the extensive biographical detail about Wenner appended to the article, in addition to her eyewitness accounting:[4]
MRS. CAIN'S STORY "We felt a slight lurch, and we immediately guessed something terrible had happened. Our nurse fainted, and I clutched my husband and asked him if there was anything we could do. Fortunately, my little daughter knew nothing." Mr. Cain and another passenger went through to the tail of the plane and found that Mr. Wenner had vanished.[4]
Mr. and Mrs. Cain or other informants had readily on hand the names of other inexplicable mid-air suicides, such as the "beautiful American sisters Jane and Elizabeth du Bois, who in 1935 leaped, in each others arms" out of a plane over Essex after the men they loved, a pair of RFC aviators, were killed in a crash.[4][54] Another article mentioned a pair of Swiss lovers jumping out of a plane over Basel in 1935, and a Canadian leaping from a plane over the Toronto airport the same year.[32] A contemporary researcher in Church Stretton has surmised that the Max Wenner incident was a copycat crime modeled on the 1928 disappearance of Alfred Loewenstein.[16]
The day after Wenner's disappearance an anonymous source was quoted in the London
He was a gifted man and spoke eight languages. He was also a good musician, naturalist, and a keen sportsman...I have known him entertain to dinner an English peer, the Prime Minister of Iceland, and officials of the Portuguese government, but he rarely talked about these people. He hated Hitler and all dictators and was terribly grieved when Italy conquered Abyssinia, for he was a keen supporter of the League of Nations. While he was so upset over the loss of his wife, I feel there is something more behind his death.
The Mirror also reported that Wenner's itinerary in Germany was secret.[55]
A single lantern lit the way of the searchers for what might have been a badly battered corpse. And then it suddenly lay before us, as in a quiet sleep: the eyelids half open, the arms stretched out beside the body, the garments thrown a little from the body, but in no way torn or soiled. The lantern-light shone miserably on the somewhat pale but clean-shaven face of the well-dressed fifty-year-old Englishman. He was neatly clothed in a greyish sports suit, modern brown shirt with white collar, brown silk scarf, colored socks and shiny black shoes. Nothing was damaged on the clothing. Only the buttons of the coat had been torn off, and the collar seemed to have torn slightly loose...On Saturday, January 21, 2012, Gerard Vanalken had a conversation with Louisa Bijnens Terboekt, about the incident 75 years ago: 'I still remember well how in January 1937 a horse with a cart and thereupon a coffin came from the Terboekt woods. It was a cold winter and the unpaved dirt road was hard and frozen...A certain Konings would later find a box with a ring.'[14]
A special correspondent of the London Daily Herald reporting from
eight-day watch, his birth certificate (stating that he was born 1887 in Manchester), his wife's death certificate, £75 in bills, and a letter in "fine, clear handwriting with no suggestion of haste" to Büchsenschütz, to whom he wrote, "Dear Olga—Thank you very much. You have been very kind to me. Without you I would have missed the plane."[58] Another report said it was £65 and two letters, "one of which had not been completed."[59] Per the Belgian researchers, Wenner's papers included a marriage permit.[14] A New Zealand paper added that his passport was also accounted for and that all of his papers had been taken into custody of the local magistrate in charge.[42] According to Belgian authorities there was no evidence of wounds received prior to the body falling through the tree cover and landing in the woods.[2] A gendarme returned to the site where Wenner's body landed and found a "box with gold pieces" on approximately 12 January.[14] According to a Belgian newspaper report on 13 January, suicide or accident were both unlikely; the paper speculated that someone familiar with Max Wenner's travel plans had hidden in a compartment in the tail of the plane. When Wenner went back to the lavatory he was injected with something that sedated or weakened him. After a brief struggle, the unknown assailant opened the exterior door and pushed him to his death.[14] A New Zealand paper testified, "Experiments have been carried out with the airliner from which he fell to see if it were possible to fall accidentally, and these have shown that it is extremely difficult to open an outside door of the aircraft by mistake."[42] As for the suicide theory, in addition to Wenner's active plans for a forthcoming wedding, "The housekeeper at Batchcott Hall says that before leaving home Wenner told her to have dinner ready to-night unless she heard to the contrary."[51] In favor of a suicide theory, Wenner's cook-housekeeper Miss E.C. Humphrey told a newspaper that Wenner had been unwell since the death of his wife and that "for some time his nerves had been bad."[32]