In the Shadow of Kim Philby: Litzi Friedmann and the ‘Chapter’ from her Life

Abstract

In his retracing of the life and intelligence story of Alice ‘Litzi’ Friedmann, the mother of the writer Barbara Honigmann, Thomas Riegler for the first time incorporates five dossiers from the British domestic intelligence service that were only declassified at the beginning of 2025. These papers provide new insights into a period in the 1930s and 1940s that made espionage history. As a young communist activist in Vienna, Friedmann married the famous British double agent Harold Adrian Russell (‘Kim’) Philby in 1934. She played a significant role in shaping his political orientation and subsequently worked for years as a courier for the Soviet secret service and the Comintern. Despite her important role, ‘Litzi’, who died in 1991, was previously treated as a minor character. Her biography now impressively underscores that espionage is a rarely told chapter of women’s history.