![Sample our Computer Science journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5928/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Computer-Science.jpg"})
Notes
1Klaus Schmeh was a presenter at each of the 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017 biennial Symposiums on Cryptologic History organized by NSA’s Center for Cryptologic History.
2A review of the first edition of Versteckte Botschaften, written by this author, appeared in Cryptologia (Strasser Citation2010).
3The material was first presented by this reviewer in Strasser (Citation2012).
4Unbeknownst to Schmeh, Friderici was immediately accused of plagiarism in Hamburg and northern Germany. A musical cipher of his appears (p. 149) but is not really new; the engraving (p. 22) in which apples and people’s eyes count as dots, copies Johannes Walch’s encoded landscape pictured on page 23 (Walch Citation1609). Illustration 8 (p. 16) is often incorrectly attributed to Friderici; it is actually taken from Gaspar Schott’s Schola steganographica, as Schmeh correctly states. Friderici frequently just reused information that was first compiled in the standard work in the field for most of the 17th century: In 1624, and under the pseudonym of “Gustavus Selenus,” Duke August the Younger of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel published Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae Libri IX (Duke August 1624).
5Schmeh’s source is a 10-line article by John Foster (Citation2004), a “collector of self-taught art and vernacular photography” that introduces a visually attractive selection of geometric poems from Rabanus Maurus’s De laudibus sanctae crucis. This article certainly does not justify inclusion among null ciphers. Reliance on such a single source indicates a shortcoming of Schmeh’s second edition (which was produced within a bit more than a year, although much of the primary material had certainly already been at his disposal)—namely a more than occasional lack of thorough research in areas that are outside of the author’s special fields.
6Schmeh discusses Trithemius’s much more controversial earlier work Steganographia in a separate later section.
7Schmeh’s reference to an incorrect London City map in a board game (p. 114) could be supplemented with the intentional falsification of regional maps by the GDR government that showed incorrectly changed roads leading to the border of the Federal Republic (or omitting them completely) to thwart any escape attempts to the West (“Gefälschte Landkarten” Citation2010).
8See footnote 4.
9Ernst had originally published his findings much more extensively (in German) (Ernst Citation1996, 1–205); he also made available to Schmeh an unpublished manuscript (Ernst Citationn.d.).
10Among the persons trying to decipher Liber tertius, Schmeh briefly mentions (p. 130) Duke August the Younger’s attempts in his Cryptomenytices (see footnote 4) and incorrectly states that he “pretended to have solved the third part of Steganographia.” Schmeh’s source misrepresents the Duke’s reaction: He clearly could not solve the mystery (as his manuscript would show, where his numerous comments in the first two books are absent in the third one) and decided to reprint this controversial third book from his manuscript so that others might be able to decipher it. Thomas Ernst has shown that the Duke’s manuscript in itself was a falsification (Ernst Citation2001, 513–595).
11Schmeh originally published this test in 2016 in his blog, Klausis Krypto Kolumne: The message, “PLANEN FLUCHT AM DIENSTAG UM 18 UHR. WIR SIND 10 PERSONEN. WOLLEN SCHWEIZ ERREICHEN” (Planning escape Tuesday 18 hours. We are 10 people. Want to reach Switzerland) ultimately is hidden in a letter (translated) to “Dear Mary, It was pretty cold on Sunday. It will become uncomfortable when the temperatures will drop below zero, as in Switzerland. If all the prisoners want to come inside some will have to remain outside. Sometimes that leaves more than 10 people out in the cold […]. Best wishes, Your Joseph.” Some of the secret text can already be gleaned in the rather clumsy “Dear Mary” letter, which contains the entire steganographic message (p. 194). Schmeh is sure that over time the POWs could have improved on the awkward wording of his letter.
12On p. 204 of the 2017 edition, the author even repeats the opening of a paragraph first penned in 2009 (“While I was writing this book, I heard on the radio of a similar, but much more topical example …”). This is another instance when the wholesale reuse of earlier materials should have been analyzed more carefully.
13Once more, five references in a row (pp. 260–261) to Kahn’s Codebreakers (Citation1996, 879–885) would only be acceptable with a German readership in mind.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Gerhard F. Strasser
Gerhard F. Strasser retired in 2004 from Penn State University as a professor emeritus of German and Comparative Literature. Among his fields of interest are emblematics, cryptology, and universal languages of the Early Modern Period. He now lives in Germany.