A Hungarian Cryptological Manual in Berlin Stefanˇ Porubsky´ Institute of Computer Science of the Czech Academy of Sciences Pod Vodarenskou´ veˇzˇ´ı 271/2, 182 07 Praha 8 Czech Republic [email protected] Abstract 2 Stephanus Petrikovics vs. Istvan´ von Petrikovits This is a report on some activities of the Hungarian SIGINT department and a Istvan´ Petrikovits was born on September 24, 1888 Hungarian cryptographic manual written in the town of Hlohovec (Galgoc´ or Galgocz´ in by the head of its Department X Istvan´ Hungarian or Freistadt an der Waag in German Petrikovits as found in the Archive of the or in its Slovak colloquial variant Frastˇ ak,´ at that German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. time) which today lies in Slovakia. In that time 1 Introduction it also was a predominantly Slovak town. In the church register of the local Roman Catholic Archive file TICOM Box No. 3843 in the Archive church written in Latin we can read that he was of the German Federal Foreign Office (Politis- baptized on September 30 as Stephanus Rober- ches Archiv des Auswartigen¨ Amts) in Berlin con- tus Matheus Petrikovics. Here Petrikovics is a tains a cryptographic typewritten manual entitled more usual Hungarian transcription of the Slavic Rejtjel – Segedlet´ (A Cipher Aid) written by the surname Petrikovic.ˇ His god-father was certain head of the Hungarian military cryptological cen- Robertus Petrikovics an engineer (geometra) from ter Istvan´ Petrikovits. The (slightly damaged) Pard´ any,´ a village today lying in Serbia. It is pre- characterization of the file by a TICOM officer dominately a Serbian village nowadays, but in that says: “??y general notes on code and cypher, and time it had originally two parts: Serb Pardanj and ??tography, in Hungarian, undated. Includes let- Slovak Pardanj. In the middle of the 18th century, ter frequencies counts to depth of 100,000 let- Germans and Hungarians settled here, mainly in ters of following languages: Hungarian, German, Slovak Pardanj and so its name changes in accor- Roumanien, Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovak, dance with the structure of the population.3 Czech. From the Hungarian Crypt. Unit, Eggen- felden.”1The document is not dated, but from the given author’s military rank “General Major” we can deduce that it was written after May 20, 1943, the date when Petrikovits was “exception- ally and of mercy” awarded this honorary rank (vezer´ ornagy˝ in Hungarian). There are no details at disposal on the prehistory of the manuscript or about the way how it got to the TICOM Archive. One possible indication is the fact that between Figure 1. Borders of Slovakia 1939-1945. 2 May 1945 and 28 July 1946, Petrikovits was a prisoner of war, detained by the USA (Szakaly,´ Stephanus’ father registered as Mathiasˇ Ignatius 4 2016).2 Franciscusˇ Petrikovics (born April 4, 1852) came 1Notice that according to the last pre-Trianon 1910 cen- 3Two villages (the former Serb Pardanj and the former sus there lived numerous ethnic minorities within the board- Slovak/German/Hungarian Pardanj) united into a single vil- ers of the “Hungary-proper”, i.e. excluding Croatia-Slavonia: lage in 1907 today called Meda. According to the 1910 cen- 16.1% Romanians, 10.5% Slovaks, 10.4% Germans, 2.5% sus there lived 3,213 inhabitants in both settlements with the Ruthenians, 2.5% Serbs and 8% others. following ethnicity: German - 1,874, Serbian - 1,052, Hun- 2See also (Jakus, 2013) where however the author names garian - 243. him as Viktor Petrikovits instead. 4His given names are written in this form in the local Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology, HistoCrypt 2020 116 from the village of Bory (Bori in Hungarian) on the ruins of the old Empire one. The struc- in Slovakia which was predominantly Hungarian ture of the later corresponded to that of the polit- with a strong Slovak minority. His mother Natalia ical framework of the country. The Empire army Maria Stephana Juliana Biroczy´ (born October 8, had three branches: the joint one, called the Impe- 1866) came from the village of Dedinka (Fajkurt¨ rial and Royal and recruited from the whole Em- in Hungarian) which at that time was a small pre- pire, and then two brances recruited from each part dominantly Hungarian village with a small Slovak separately, the Imperial-Royal Landwehr for the minority. Austrian part and the Royal Hungarian Landwehr Mathias’ father Eduardus had six children and (Honved)´ for the Hungarian one. From our point his surname in their local church registers is writ- of view, the directorate of military intelligence ten in three different ways: once Petrikovich, four – the k.u.k. Evidenzbureau headquartered in Vi- times Petrikovics and once Petrikovits. When enna, was a whole Empire unit. Thus the inde- Stephanus (Istvan´ in Hungarian) decided to write pendent Hungarian national military intelligence his surname employing the older Hungarian ortho- and counter-intelligence services have been built graphic possibility5 with -ts instead of -cs at the out of its own and based mainly on the Hungar- end of his name to stress his noble descent6 is not ian staff from various military intelligence units known to the author.7 On the list of the officers of the Monarchy army. The basic structure of the of the 15th Honved Infantry Regiment (Honved- Hungarian new unit undergone numerous struc- Infanterieregiment Nr. 15 / Trencseni´ 15. honved´ tural changes since its establishment in 1918. At gyalogezred)8 which was intended for the front in the beginning, after the Aster Revolution already Galicia against Russia and existed till the end of on November 1, 1918 to build up such a unit was WWI, we can find this form of his surname on entrusted Dimitrije (Demeter) Stojakovic´ (or Sz- the list of 31 regiment Captains. Surprisingly,9 tojakovics)11 who in period 1917-1918 was the his direct superior Istvan´ Ujszaszy´ 10 also writes head of the Balkan section of the Evidenzbureau his surname in the form Petrikovics or even as in Baden near Vienna. The primary aim ot the Petnikovics (Ujszaszy,´ 2007). Petrikovits died on newly established unit was the intelligence service April 16, 1947 in Budapest several months after against the antagonistic neighbor states Czecho- his return from the PoW camp. He is buried in Slovakia,12 Romania and Serbia13. Farkasreti´ cemetery in Budapest. In 1919 the first Minister of Defense (MoD), the Hungarian Social Democrat Vilmos Bohm¨ 3 Hungarian Military Sigint founded an intelligence department headed by Sztojakovics at MoD. Under the short- After the collapse of the Austria-Hungary Monar- lived14 communist Hungarian Soviet Republic chy the new Hungarian military structure rose up (Hungarian: Magyarorszagi´ Tanacsk´ ozt¨ arsas´ ag´ church register contrary to the surname which is not writ- or Magyarorszagi´ Szocialista Szovets¨ eges´ ten in the form Petrikovic.ˇ For his photo cf. (Sziklay and Tanacsk´ ozt¨ arsas´ ag)´ the department changed only Borovzsky, 1898, p. 441). slightly and served as a subordinate unit called 5Older Hungarian texts are heterogenous due to the ab- sence of the generally accepted spelling norms. For the 11Born 1883 into a Serb family. He Magyarized his name phonem [tS] non existing in Latin (in the south Slavic de- to Sztojay´ Dome¨ on November 4, 1935. In his birthplace Ver- noted as c´ or in the west Slavic as c)ˇ there were used the sec (Serbian: Vrsac,ˇ German: Werschetz) a half of inhabitans digraphs ts, cs or ch. were Germans and one third the Serbians in 1910. Sztojay,´ an 6To stress this fact he also used to write Istvan´ von avid supporter of the National Socialists, served as a military Petrikovits. attache´ in Berlin from 1925 to 1933. From 1933 to 1935 he 7In the second half of 19th century and later many inhabi- served in the Ministry of Defence and from 1935 to 1944 as tants of Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary Magyarized their the Hungarian ambassador to Germany. Between March and names. August 1944 he was appointed the Prime Minister and Minis- 8The nationality structure of the regiment was 85% Slo- ter of Foreign Affairs of a pro-German goverment. After the vaks and 15% other nationalities and its recruitment was dis- war he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against the trict of Trencˇ´ın (Trencsen´ in Hungarian and Trentschin in Hungarian people, sentenced to death, and executed in 1946. German) in north-west Slovakia. District of Trencˇ´ın was pre- 12Czecho-Slovakia, later Czechoslovakia, split into Protec- dominantly Slovak. torate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic in 9Laxity or merely an indication of a not close service in- March 1939, a division which lasted till the end of WWII. terrelationship between both of them? 13More precisely, The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and 10Istvan´ Ujszaszy´ served as the head of the Hungarian Slovenes from 1918 to 1929, and after October 3, 1929 The General Staff’s counter-espionage department VKF-2 from Kingdom of Yugoslavia. 1939 to 1942. 14March 21, 1919 till August 1,1919 Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology, HistoCrypt 2020 117 Figure 2. Austria-Hungary and its neighbours borders history ((a) state borders of Austria-Hungary around 1900; (b) states borders around 2000). (https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d2/be/e3/ d2bee3efc7fac13e655bd305788d3c4d.jpg) Figure 3. Hungary borders history 1900-1945. (https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/ europe/images/hu-map-1921-2.jpg) Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Historical Cryptology, HistoCrypt 2020 118 Department II (or VK II group) of the Gen- 1882 into a German family in Kromeˇrˇ´ız,ˇ (Ger- eral Staff (Hungarian: VK II. csoportja, VK for man: Kremsier), a Moravian town in a historical Vezer´ Kar).