The German authorities, and many commentators following their lead, operated according to the simplifying assumption that the entire "Red Orchestra" was a coherent network directed by Soviet intelligence.
[2] According to other sources, it was not in Bern that Radó introduced himself to Bolli but, early in 1942, in Geneva, where she was working at the time as a cashier at the "Restaurant Stäffen".
[5] A little later Bolli relocated to Lausanne, a forty minute train ride along the northern lake-shore from Geneva, where during the early part of 1942 she lived for a time with relatives.
Edmond Hamel and his wife Olga (cover name "Maud") were already using a similar device in their own homebase, a "luxury villa" on the edge of the city.
It was significantly more than she could have earned as an out-of-work dancer taking work as a waitress, though Bolli's driving motivation, in the view of commentators, was not based on the money she was receiving.
[2][4][11] During the early or middle part of 1943 (sources differ over the relevant dates) Margrit Bolli met Hans Peters, a charming man from Germany who was living in Geneva, working as a hairdresser.
The code used for the messages involved using a novel called "Es begann im September" by Grete von Urbanitzky, both for encryption and for decoding.
It seems unlikely, in any case, that she was aware at the time that her "antifascist" lover was in frequent contact with Hermann Henseler, an apparently low-level consular worker at the German consulate in Geneva.
Bolli had become aware some weeks earlier that her apartment was under surveillance; and she had asked Radó to remove the transmitter and its "portable gramophone" disguise casing.
At the time of her arrest the transmitter had already been removed, but other pieces of tell-tale evidence - notably a set of headphones for the radio - were still in the apartment.
The Swiss government knew from their own intelligence sources that at the start of 1943, Hitler had ordered his generals to draw up a plan for the invasion of Switzerland.
Commentators with the benefit of hindsight can assert with confidence that those plans should not have been taken too seriously, but it is not clear that Roger Masson and the Swiss intelligence services which he led felt able to be so relaxed about the reports received during 1943.
Margrit Bolli was represented by Jacques Chamorel, a defence attorney from francophone Lausanne, who would later transfer into national politics as a Liberal.
[16] He paid for a guarantee on Bolli's behalf, described in an English-language CIA report as "her bail", as a result of which she never served her jail term.
Freedom remained conditional, to the extent that right up till the 1970s, Margareta Schatz (as she had become known following her marriage) was still being required to report regularly to her local police station.
[2] By the time she died, on 13 October 2017, Margarete Schatz was living at Therwil (Arlesheim), just outside Basel on its south side, behind Binningen.
The film includes interview material with the protagonist, who by the time it was made was the only member of Sándor Radó's little group of communications experts still alive.
One reviewer criticises the reluctance of Specogna (who in addition to her role as film-maker, also stars in the film as the interviewer), to probe more deeply in response to some of Schatz's non-committal explanations.
He also notes that the film's other principal interviewee, the wartime Soviet radio expert known to German-speaking audiences, by this time, as Ruth Werner, is conspicuously more willing to celebrate her work on behalf of Soviet intelligence, providing a "liberating counterpoint" to Margarete Schatz with her inclination to present herself as a "victim of history".