Christoph
Rehage: The
German Nazi Spy
Who
is Christoph Rehage?
In
November 2007,
Christoph
Rehage
set
foot from Beijing, China with a goal of walking to Berlin, Germany, a
distance of over 4,500 miles. He created a short video called “The
Longest Way 1.0“,
documenting his journey over the course of a year and featuring self
portrait photographs he took each day on his trip that shows his hair
and beard getting longer.
As
Christoph states in the opening of his video, “The initial plan was
to walk from Beijing to Germany. I started in the fall of 2007. After
one year of mountains and blazing hot deserts I realized… I had
grown a mighty long beard.”
After
walking for an entire year, Christoph was only able to complete 2,900
miles of his journey, ending in
Ürümqi,
China.
Where
is he from ?
Rehage
originally attempted to walk from Beijing to his hometown of
Bad
Nenndorf,
Germany, but never completed the journey.
Bad
Nenndorf
is
a small town in the district of
Schaumburg,
Lower
Saxony,
Germany.
Its population is 10,210 (2005). It is situated approximately 12 km
east of
Stadthagen,
and 25 km west of
Hanover,
at the southern edge of the North German Plain and the northern edge
of the
Deister
ridge.
The area of the town includes the outlying villages of Riepen,
Horsten and Waltringhausen
Between
June 1945 and July 1947, Bad Nenndorf was the site of a British
Combined
Services Detailed Interrogation Centre
(CSDIC)
through
which several hundred Nazi and suspected Communist prisoners passed.
The
camp became the focus of controversy after allegations of
mistreatment of prisoners emerged. One
British
Army
officer
was convicted by a
court-martial
in
1948 for his part in the affair. The controversy surfaced again in
December 2005 with the publication of an article in British newspaper
The
Guardian
[1]
In
2006
[2]
under
Freedom of Information the UK newspaper reported on starvation of
prisoners. Photos were destroyed, but a few remained hidden.
What
was the purpose of this journey?
Chinese
spy agency MSS has this to say - so far - about Christoph Rehage’s
suspicious journey inside China :
