In 1935, he published his first astronomy papers. These were critiques of Edwin Hubble's studies made at Mount Wilson Observatory on the distribution of spiral nebulae.[2] In 1939, while resident at the Göttingen Observatory, he received his doctorate with a thesis titled Influence of a resisting agent in the dynamics of dense stellar systems (Einfluß eines widerstehenden Mittels in der Dynamik dichter Sternsysteme). He obtained a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, which was arranged with the help of British theoretical cosmologistDr George C. McVittie,[2] which was due to start on 1 October 1939[2]:2 but had to be cancelled because of the start of World War II in September 1939. On 1 May 1940 he started work at Hamburg Observatory, and later in that year was drafted into the Signal Corps (Nachrichtentruppe). On 15 May 1941 he was posted to Inspektorate 7, the cipher bureau of the Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces) high command,[2] although as an astronomer he knew nothing about cryptography and cryptanalysis. Professor Otto Heckmann, director of the Hamburg Observatory, tried to lure him back to continue working on problems specifically related to war work that he had been occupied with before he was drafted: tables of air and ship navigation, aerodynamic problems for aeroplanes traveling at speeds over 1300km/hour as well as rockets flying at speeds of more than 3000km/hour. These were purely solutions to differential equations which were allocated to various institutions for solving.[2]
A minor planet discovered on 15 February 1941 by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth in Heidelberg was named "1561 Fricke" in his honour.[4] In 1942 he was appointed the assistant astronomer at the Hamburg Observatory at Bergedorf, but could only take the position up in 1946 due to conscription.[1]
In 1943 Fricke married Marianne Fricke (née Traute). They had a daughter, Maxi-Marianne Fricke. His wife Marianne died in 1987.
Fricke served as president of the International Astronomical Union Commissions 4 (1958–1964) and 8 (1970–1973), and as vice president of the IAU from 1964 to 1967.[5]
On 1 April 1983 he retired as professor emeritus. Dr. Dr.h.c. mult.[1] Fricke stayed on as Director of the Institute until 30 September 1985, and continued his scientific work until he was hospitalized with cancer in 1987.[1]
Scientific work
Fricke had a wide interest in astronomy. His first publications dealt with problems in theoretical and observational astronomy. Then for the next two decades, from the time of his thesis onwards, his interests focused on stellar dynamics, working from the observatory in Bergedorf. His favourite subject was the photographic surface photometry survey of the Andromeda Nebula.[1]
After being appointed to the Astronomical Calculation Institute, Fricke concentrated on fundamental astrometry. He worked specifically to improve the fundamental reference system, a series of measurements of the position and motions of a series of fundamental stars that is important for study of kinematics and dynamics of objects within the Galactic system.[1] The production of this kind of fundamental catalogue, which provided the astronomical representation of an inertial system, was part of the institute's important work. His finest contribution to astronomy was the derivation, together with his colleagues and his predecessor August Kopff, of the Fourth Fundamental Catalogue (FK4), published in 1963.[1] The FK5 catalogue was strongly associated with his name, but he was unable to view it when it was published; it used a new constant of precession which he derived himself[7] and adopted by the IAU in 1976.[1]
While in the military, Fricke studied German cipher methods and devised new ones.[2]
Fricke's initial task was working on the solving of the double stop system, NS 42, code named the Double Playfair (Doppelkastenschlüssel).[2] The Army, Air Force and Police used the Double Playfair system as a medium-grade hand cipher in World War II. The Playfair TS 42 single stop system had already been broken at that point if there were more than 3000 letters of traffic a day. After a year's work, they solved the problem by using vertical bigram frequencies. As the text was written in double lines of 17 or 21 and the substitutions taken vertically, plain text bigram frequencies could not be used. Combined frequencies of pairs of single letters showed a sharp drop after the top three values, EE, EN and NE (the last two had the same frequency). Of a text length of 10000, they could place the three values only initially. Hollerith counts (frequency analysis) were undertaken against messages from the Polish War, but as these were of a stereotypical nature, words could only be guessed after high-frequency digraphs (i.e. pairs of letters) had been created. Using this method led to the recovery of more pairs, and the guessing of words. However, the solution was never used, as even though they believed 3000 letters would be enough to break a message, the Army never informed them what the actual volume of traffic was, so the system continued in use.[2]
Around the same time, he worked on the French C36 cipher machine with fixed lugs, designed by Boris Hagelin, which was solved by cribs. He later heard from others that cribs were no longer needed.[2]
The head of his section at OKH/Chi (Army Cipher Office) was Hans Pietsch, who managed eight mathematicians in the group. He remained there until 1 November 1944, when he was transferred to the OKW/Chi. At this time Inspektorate 7 was forbidden to create new systems, which was strictly restricted to OKW/Chi.[2] At OKW/Chi, Dr Fricke managed Section IIb of Chi II (Group 2), the main group managing OKW/Chi's interception services. Section IIb, which developed German code and cypher systems (camouflage, codes and cyphers, and telephone secrecy) and also advised on the production of keys and the supervision of production, had a staff of 14. OKW/Chi cipher bureau was a strictly military organization.
In 1942, he developed the codebook (Schlüsseltafel) for enciphering tables for 3 letter field codes. Before that were used without encipherment. Daily changing trigraphic substitution tables were introduced, initially made by Hollerith machines. He stated in his TICOM interview that there were two master decks of 500 cards each, with a trigraph on each card. Late in the war, the Hollerith machine section moved to Weimar, so Walter Fricke told the printer to make up a set of three-letter slugs of type corresponding to the code groups, which were called Logotypen. The printer had the plain code values in alphabetical order in a form, with blank spaces for the encrypted values. He was told to draw two logos from the mixed batch and place the second one opposite that plain value which was the same as the first. This procedure was repeated until the reciprocal table was created. It also had the effect of enabled untrained workers to make fewer mistakes.[2]
He went on to design and develop the raster key hand cipher (Rasterschluessel 44), which was to replace the double playfair cipher. A study was made on the British cipher raster, Cysquare which was created by John Tiltman in 1941. The Cysquare cipher had been pinched from Britain, when Rommel'sAfrika Korps overran British units and captured the Cysquare[8] and pads with their instruction booklets. Fricke found it to be excellent, a very secure and practical hand cipher, but he didn't know if it had been broken, with the English using 40 letters and large number of abbreviations. He knew that if German forces used the cipher as it was, it soon would be broken because of longer messages.[2] In order to use longer messages, 26 rows were created, of which 24 were used at any one time. The requirement was to choose all rasters from a systematically constructed field, and to satisfy the following requirements simultaneously:
All rasters should have a fixed number of columns with 20 white cells, a fixed number with 18 and so on.
Vertically adjacent white cells should be kept to a minimum.
And when they did not occur, they must not be less than eight nor more than 12 white cells apart.
These conditions were difficult to achieve, since as soon as one requirement was achieved the others would go wrong. The purpose of making all from the same field was to avoid special cases. However, they were eventually required to be made from 20 to 40 master fields. As regards changing keys, the printer was given lead strips bearing the pattern of each of the 36 rows, of which 24 were chosen for each raster. The minimum message length was initially set to 60 characters but was lowered to 45 by the army after some use.[2] Fricke asked the TICOM interrogators
whether the cipher was ever solved, because he was convinced if properly used it would be unbreakable, but they never knew whether mistakes were made which rendered it soluble. They replied it would be impossible for them to give him an answer. Fricke stated that they always wanted to work on their own traffic just as they would on foreign material, but were never allowed to. He never understood how the army actually used the cipher and never saw any real traffic.[2] When they asked for real traffic, they were offered specially prepared messages, one of which read
We are standing in Berlin and see the Polish infantry coming down the Frankfurter Allee.
They reflected on the fact that the work on Russian systems showed that these systems were secure if properly used, but if the cryptographers in Moscow could only see how they were used they would be very unhappy.
TICOM was a secret Allied project formed in World War II to find and seize German intelligence assets, particularly in the field of cryptology and signals intelligence.
The Two-square cipher, also called double Playfair, is a manual symmetric encryption technique. It was developed to ease the cumbersome nature of the large encryption/decryption matrix used in the four-square cipher while still being slightly stronger than the single-square Playfair cipher.
The B-Dienst, also called xB-Dienst, X-B-Dienst and χB-Dienst, was a Department of the German Naval Intelligence Service of the OKM that dealt with the interception and recording, decoding and analysis of the enemy. In particular, it focused on British radio communications before and during World War II. B-Dienst worked on cryptanalysis and deciphering (decrypting) of enemy and neutral states' message traffic and security control of Kriegsmarine key processes and machinery.
The Astronomische Gesellschaft is an astronomical society established in 1863 in Heidelberg, the second oldest astronomical society after the Royal Astronomical Society.
Rasterschlüssel 44 was a manual cipher system, used by the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War. The cipher was designed by the astronomer and sometime cryptographer Walter Fricke while working as a conscript in Section IIb, of Group 2 of OKW/Chi and introduced in March 1944 and the Allied forces codebreakers had considerable difficulties in breaking it. Cryptanalysis, if successful, generally required a 40 letter crib and some two weeks, making the tactical information outdated before it could be exploited. The combination of strength and ease of use made RS 44 an ideal hand cipher.
The Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht was the Signal Intelligence Agency of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces of the German Armed Forces before and during World War II. OKW/Chi, within the formal order of battle hierarchy OKW/WFsT/Ag WNV/Chi, dealt with the cryptanalysis and deciphering of enemy and neutral states' message traffic and security control of its own key processes and machinery, such as the rotor cipher ENIGMA machine. It was the successor to the former Chi bureau of the Reichswehr Ministry.
The Research Office of the Reich Air Ministry was the signals intelligence and cryptanalytic agency of the German Nazi Party from 1933 to 1945. Run since its inception by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring, the Research Bureau was a Nazi Party institution rather than an official Wehrmacht-run military signals intelligence and cryptographic agency.
The Pers Z S was the signals intelligence agency of the German Foreign Office before and during World War II. It consisted of two cryptologic sections. Pers Z S was the cryptanalytic section which was called Special Service of Z Branch of the Foreign Office Personnel Department. Its mission was the solution of foreign diplomatic codes and ciphers. The other section, which was the Cryptography Section was called Personal Z Cipher Service of the Federal Foreign Office. The latter section was responsible for compilation, distribution and security of Foreign Office codes and ciphers. Both were colloquially known as Pers Z S. Though similar in nature and operation to the OKW/Chi cipher bureau, it was a civilian operation as opposed to the military operation at OKW/Chi and focused primarily on diplomatic communications. According to TICOM interrogators it evinced an extraordinary degree of competence, primarily driven by a consistency of development not found in any other German signals bureau of the period. Pers Z S/Chi was the symbol and the code name of the Chiffrierdienst, i.e. the Cryptanalysis Department of Pers Z S. Although little is known about the organization, in the final analysis, Pers Z S labored at diplomatic cryptanalysis for a regime for which there were no diplomatic solutions.
Wilhelm Fenner was a German cryptanalyst, before and during the time of World War II in the OKW/Chi, the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, working within the main cryptanalysis group, and entrusted with deciphering enemy message traffic (Cryptography). Wilhelm Fenner was considered an excellent organizer, an anti-Nazi, an anti-Bolshevik and a confirmed Protestant and was known by colleagues as someone who was keen to continue working in cryptology after World War II. To quote military historian David Alvarez:
Erich Hüttenhain was a German academic mathematician and cryptographer and considered a leading cryptanalyst in the Third Reich. He was Head of the cryptanalysis unit at OKW/Chi, the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht.
Peter Novopashenny was before and during the World War I, a Russian Marine Officer and who worked as a cryptanalyst during World War II for the German Wehrmacht (OKW/Chi) cipher bureau, working on the Russian desk, deciphering enciphered Soviet communications.
General der Nachrichtenaufklärung was the signals intelligence agency of the Heer, before and during World War II. It was the successor to the former cipher bureau known as Inspectorate 7/VI in operation between 1940 and 1942, when it was further reorganised into the Headquarters for Signal Intelligence between 1942 and 1944, until it was finally reorganised in October 1944 into the GdNA. The agency was also known at the OKH/Gend Na, GendNa or Inspectorate 7 or more commonly OKH/GdNA. Inspectorate 7/VI was also known as In 7 or In/7 or In 7/VI and also OKH/Chi.
Ostwin Fritz Menzer was a German cryptologist, who before and during World War II, worked in the In 7/VI, the Wehrmacht signals intelligence agency, later working in that was the cipher bureau of the supreme command of the Nazi party, and later in Abwehr, the military intelligence service of the Wehrmacht. He was involved in the development and production of cryptographic devices and procedures, as well as the security control of their own methods.
Otto Buggisch was a German mathematician who, during World War II, was a cryptanalyst working in the cipher bureau, the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW/Chi) responsible for deciphering of the opposing forces Communications. He also dealt with the security control of own key procedures. Through research and revelations exposed by two Polish officers, late in the war, he recognized the true cryptographic weaknesses of the Enigma rotor cipher, key machine used by the German armed forces to encrypt their secret communications, in World War II.
Rudolf Bailović was a Serbo-Croatian interpreter and cryptographer, of Austrian descent, who was head of the Balkan Referat of General der Nachrichtenaufklärung during World War II. Bailović held the civil service rank of civil servant and was promoted to senior civil servant or Oberregierungsrat in 1944. Bailović was considered an anti-Nazi, who held anti-Nazi views, and refused to wear German decorations when in uniform. Bailović was also a Turkish interpreter and spent significant time in evaluation, providing intelligence.
General der Nachrichtenaufklärung Training Referat was the training organization within the General der Nachrichtenaufklärung (GDNA), the military signals intelligence agency of the Wehrmacht during World War II. Initially established from May 1941, it continued teaching until September 1944. Until 1942, the work of the Training Referat was not fully exploited and only a small beginners course was taught.
The Schlüsselgerät 39 (SG-39) was an electrically operated rotor cipher machine, invented by the German Fritz Menzer during World War II. The device was the evolution of the Enigma rotors coupled with three Hagelin pin wheels to provide variable stepping of the rotors. All three wheels stepped once with each encipherment. Rotors stepped according to normal Enigma rules, except that an active pin at the reading station for a pin wheel prevented the coupled rotor from stepping. The cycle for a normal Enigma was 17,576 characters. When the Schlüsselgerät 39 was correctly configured, its cycle length was characters, which was more than 15,000 times longer than a standard Enigma. The Schlüsselgerät 39 was fully automatic, in that when a key was pressed, the plain and cipher letters were printed on separate paper tapes, divided into five-digit groups. The Schlüsselgerät 39 was abandoned by German forces in favour of the Schlüsselgerät 41.
Hans Karl Georg Heinrich Pietsch was a German mathematician who was most notable for being a director of the Mathematical Referat of the Wehrmacht signals intelligence agency, the General der Nachrichtenaufklärung during World War II.
German Army cryptographic systems of World War II were based on the use of three types of cryptographic machines that were used to encrypt communications between units at the division level. These were the Enigma machine, the teleprinter cipher attachment, and the cipher teleprinter the Siemens and Halske T52,. All were considered insecure.
↑ "Famous Stephaneer". Offene Ganztagsschule Stephaneum - History and Famous Stephaneer. Europe Gymnasium Stephaneum Aschersleben. 2013. Retrieved 28 August 2016.
↑ Heckmann, Otto Hermann Leopold; Jordan, Pascual; Fricke, Walter (1951). "Zur erweiterten Gravitationstheorie. I." [Toward an extended theory of gravitation]. Zeitschrift für Astrophysik (in German) (28): 113–149.
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