Philip Hagenbeck

Service

According to the description by the publisher Czarna Owca, Filip Hagenbeck is an intelligence officer and a veteran of long missions outside Poland – in “difficult and hot” areas, including in wartime conditions. The publisher gives neither the years of service nor the names of the countries.¹

The book is meant to show intelligence training, details of the work of Department I of the MSW and how intelligence headquarters functioned. The Polish Literary Bibliography assigns the following subject headings to the second volume: Department I of the MSW, Polish intelligence, special services, Africa.^1,2

The publisher does not explain whether “Hagenbeck” is a surname or a pen name. In line with the site's rules, we make no attempt to establish the author's identity.¹

Writing

The author presents “Zwyczajny szpieg. Wspomnienia” (An Ordinary Spy: A Memoir; Czarna Owca, released on 15 May 2019, 528 pp.) as personal recollections, not as a scholarly work or a history of civilian intelligence. It describes the path of an ordinary graduate who ends up in intelligence and – as the book promises – his adventures in Africa.¹

The second volume, “Zwyczajny szpieg. Powrót” (An Ordinary Spy: The Return), was published by Czarna Owca in 2020; the PBL classifies it as diaries and memoirs.²

Significance

This is one of the few memoirs by a Polish civilian intelligence officer published as a two-volume autobiography rather than as a novel. The facts of the author's life cannot be checked in official sources, so this card is limited to what the publisher and the bibliography state.^1,2