Friedrich Salomon Hall

His parents lived in Ethiopia and served its emperor until they fell out of favour and moved to the Middle East after being rescued by the 1868 British Expedition to Abyssinia.

Hall, born in the Middle East, moved to Ethiopia to join his mother who had returned there to serve the Royal Court.

Hall afterwards left to act as an assistant to Julius Löytved-Hardegg [de], a German consul to the Ottoman Empire.

The espionage mission was disguised as the Seventh German Inner Africa Research Expedition but was detected by Italian authorities en-route and the participants returned home.

Hall attempted a second mission to carry messages to the German legation at Addis Ababa in June 1915 but was captured by the Italians and imprisoned for the remainder of the war.

However the expedition never reached the country; it was discovered by the Italian authorities in Eritrea and the members escorted back to their home nations.

[5] Hall carried out a follow-up expedition to Ethiopia in June 1915, acting as a courier to deliver correspondence with the German legation in Addis Ababa.

[4][9] Hall spent the remainder of the war in Italian custody and through this period the German legation remained out of communication with the government in Berlin.