Max Schulz - German Spy

Following on from the earlier blog post, here's the full story concerning Max Schulz.
Long before the First World War, there were German spies operating in Britain. One such spy was Max Schulz who was arrested in Plymouth in 1911. He was said, at the time, to be living on a houseboat, The Egreton, on the River Yealm.
Some newspapers of the time doubted whether Schulz was a spy at all. The Derby Daily Telegraph of Tuesday 22nd August 1911 reported:
'According to the 'Berliner Tageblatt,' the man Schulz, who has been arrested at Plymouth on a charge of espionage, is identified with a young man who disappeared some years ago from an institution at Frankfurt, where he had been placed by his parents. Schulz has had a university education and for some time earned a living as a tutor. The correspondent thinks that a sense of misguided vanity may have led him to masquerade as a German spy.'The authorities, however, took the matter very seriously and Shultz was sent to trial.
On Thursday 31st August 1911, the North Devon Journal reported:

'At Plymouth on Tuesday, Max Schulz, who is stated to be an ober-lieutenant in the German army, was committed for trial at the Exeter Assizes on charges under the Official Secrets Act, it being alleged that he had offered large sums of money to a solicitor named Duff and another man named Tarren for the supply of information, as to the state of the ships of the Home Fleet, and the opinion of English naval officers on the possibility of war between England and France on the one hand and Germany on the other over the Moroccan affair. The prisoner was refused bail and the bench also declined to allow a sum of £110, held by the police, to be handed over to Schulz for the purposes of his defence. A number of documents found on the accused and the cipher code in his possession were described and evidence was given as to the importance of the information, which his questions to the two chief witnesses were intended to elicit. When committed for trial, Schulz stoutly denied the charge and reserved his defence.' The story was reported up and down the country and on 3rd November, it was reported that Schulz had sent letters and telegrams to a man called Tobler in Ostende requesting money for information. Tobler had written back: 'Confidential works and reports are what is wanted and what you must procure at all costs if our relations are to continue. Your constant telegrams will undoubtedly lay you open to suspicion and endanger your safety and your business.'
Documents in code where found in Schulz's possession. He claimed that he was a journalist looking for new stories.
By Saturday 4th November 1911, newspapers all over Britain were reporting 'Officer Sent to Prison.' The Aberdeen Journal of that day reported:
'The trial opened at Exeter yesterday of Max Schulz, described as a lieutenant in the German Army, charged with espionage at Plymouth. The prisoner pleaded not guilty. For the defence, Mr Lawrence submitted that the information given to the prisoner was not such that publication would be detrimental to the interests of the state. What the prisoner attempted to do was nothing more nor less than journalistic enterprise. The Attorney-General said that the defence was destroyed by the fact that one of the letters contained a cipher. The prisoner was sent to obtain first-hand information. The jury found the prisoner guilty. In passing sentence of twenty month's imprisonment in the Second Division, the Lord Chief Justice said he was thankful that the relations between England and Germany were most friendly and amicable at present. He was sure that no-one would condemn or repudiate practices of which the prisoner had been guilty more strenuously than the leading men of Germany.'Schulz was released from prison in Bristol in April 1913 and thanked the authorities for his kind treatment while at Bristol and Exeter.
Meanwhile, a British spy, with a very similar sounding name, Max Shultz, was sentenced, along with others, in Leipzig, Germany for espionage, just one month later, in December 1911. The British spy received seven years penal servitude. Both cases featured heavily in the British press at the time and it would be very easy to confuse the two especially as Schulz's name was regularly reported as 'Shultz.' Incidentally, the photo of Max Schulz in court comes from the Evening Telegraph and Post of Wednesday 30th August 1911 and this is the first time it's been published in over a hundred years.