Assassination in Strasbourg

Sixty-six years ago, on 17 May 1957, Henriette Tremeaud, the wife of the Prefect of the French department of Bas-Rhin, was murdered. She was killed in the explosion of a tripwire device placed in a cigar box. It turned out later that the actual target of the assassination was her husband, and that it was an act of state terrorism which intended to disrupt the political rapprochement between France and Germany.

The parcel containing the cigar box had been delivered to the prefecture three days earlier, and the Prefect André Tremeaud took it to his private apartment on 16 May. The following day, just after noon, the box exploded when the Prefect’s wife tried to open it to offer cigars to guests at an afternoon reception. Subsequent investigations soon enough uncovered clues leading to the former Czechoslovakia and suggesting the involvement of its secret services.

Particularly through graphological analysis and an analysis of the materials used, a link was identified between the assassination, or rather the attempted assassination, and a leaflet campaign by the alleged neo-Nazi organisation Kampfverband für unabhängiges Deutschland, which was supposed to seek, among other things, the return of the territory of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany. The Czechoslovak intelligence attempted to create the illusion that such an organisation existed by sending threatening leaflets to French, German and American public figures. The intention was to link the Kampfverband to the Strasbourg assassination. However, it was also proven by graphological expertise that the leaflets, and thus also the package with the cigar box, were of Czechoslovak origin. For more details, see the attached document, which we have selected as the archival of this month.[1]

Source: Foreign Intelligence Headquarters collection, Files, reg. no. 40377/055 I. S including Permanent Value Materials 22300 I. S.

[1] For more details on the whole case see PETLÁK, Jakub. Útok StB ve Štrasburku v roce 1957 [online]. Brno 2014, Diplomová práce na Fakultě sociálních studií Masarykovy univerzity [cit. 2023-04-17]. Available on: https://is.muni.cz/th/tcm2c/.