Ivar Arthur Nicolai Lissner (23 April 1909 – 4 September 1967) was a German journalist and author, and a Nazi spy during World War II.
The political upheavals of the postwar period resulted in the family fleeing to Riga and then to Berlin, where Lissner attended high school.
He studied languages, history, anthropology and law at Greifswald, Berlin, Göttingen, Erlangen, Lyon (1931–1932) and at the Sorbonne in Paris.
In 1935 he published his first book (Blick nach Draußen, "Looking Outside") which was commercially unsuccessful but achieved the desired goal: creating the perception that he was loyal to the Nazi regime.
[4] One year later, in 1936, Ivar's father Robert Lissner was able to get hold of a forged Aryan certificate from the St. Peter's Church in Riga.
Ivar Lissner started a trip around the world on behalf of his publishing house "Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt" and visited the US, Canada, the Far and the Near East.
Only after this episode Lissner, who, according to Höhne, never knew about his Jewish descent until the arrest of his father, began to distance himself from Nazism, but maintained an anti-Soviet attitude as a result of his experiences in Russia.
He also initiated contacts between the Japanese and German military intelligence, and during his stay in Manchuria in 1938 he acted as interpreter at the defection of the KGB chief for the Far East, Genrikh Samoilovich Lyushkov.
The German Embassy in Shanghai and the leader of the NSDAP in Japan ("Landesgruppenleiter") were continuously informed by Ott about the lawsuit against Lissner.
It seems that Josef Albert Meisinger later circulated the false accusations that Lissner was a Soviet spy based on Ott's idea.
[10][11] In the summer of 1940 (according to Höhne) "Werner Schulz" recruited Lissner for the Abwehr after they promised to release his father from prison and let him move with his wife to Shanghai where his brother Percy was working for AEG.
In September 1940 Lissner was instructed by Admiral Canaris to supply all information he had available to prevent an invasion of the Soviet Union.
Canaris thought very highly of Lissner's work which provided him with detailed information about Soviet troops and commanders in the Far East.
But despite the detailed information he received from Lissner, which showed the pointlessness of a war with the Soviet Union, he was unable to convince Hitler's headquarters.
[14][15] After the murder of his sister in Germany, Lissner urged the Abwehr to get an official decision that he and his family in Shanghai were equivalent to German citizens.
His agent controller, Captain Friedrich Busch, sent a telegram that informed Lissner that his demands were fully granted.
He had maintained excellent relations in Nazi circles in Tokyo, including Ambassador Ott, who then tried to downplay the affair as a Japanese police intrigue.
Lissner sent these facts in a radio message on 23 March 1942, to eliminate his greatest adversaries and the most dangerous opponents of his family in Shanghai.
This was reported by German officials to the government in Tokyo, and to the actual head of the Gestapo in Japan, SS-Standartenführer Meisinger.
[20] After the war, from 1949 Lissner was editor in chief of the illustrated magazine Kristall, published by Axel Springer Verlag.