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Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: freiburger on May 31, 2013, 2:30 p.m.

So here is my suggestion:

Friedrich Gottlieb Julius von Bülow (1760 - 1831 bzw 1836)

So why him?

As I mentioned above, I think it is a 6 letter chiffre and not 7. So ignoring the dot "." it looks like that 123425.

I don't know many names in German with that look. Julius is one. Although it is a first name it is not uncommon to use it as signature, especially in this case.

So how did I find him?

I had a look through the directory of important people of Leipzig around 1800 and found only the name Julius which fits in the scheme.
Scanning his background it got even better:

Julius von Bülow was judge at the upper court of Sachsen at the city of Leipzig (Oberhofgericht). His title was Regierungsrat at that time. getting back to my profile mentioned above, his job is close to politics, crime and conspiracy. There is a link.

Julius von Bülow was a book addict. He collected the so called Bibliotheca Büloviana a great library of tenth of thousand books. So for sure he had knowledge of the book of the "vermeinte Gräfin …". Also his library contained alot of scientific books from all different fields.

Julius von Bülow took over a large part of a benedictian (Benediktiner) library of Erfurt. So that would suggest that he was quite close to the church and might underline his interest in Iluminati.

Julius von Bülow had the right age and so far this name is the only one fitting in the above mentioned scheme.

Although he did not use his last name but one of his first names, his bio would fit in the profile.

So what do you think?

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: be on June 2, 2013, 9:57 p.m.

So what do you think?

Hello freiburger,
this sounds reasonable. The author of the challenge will come back to you soon.
Normally, the solution shouldn't be published in the forum. But this is a special level-X challenge where we probably never will be 100 % sure what's the name of the author of the book. So, as an exception, an open discussion about the concrete solution in the forum is ok for this challenge, and we award the suggestions and thoughts.
Best regards, be

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: tosch on June 4, 2013, 11:23 a.m.

Hello freiburger,

after reading through the sources you sent me in a pm, I am happy to accept your proposed solution of "Friedrich Gottlieb Julius von Bülow" as a possible solution. Congratulation.

However, the presented solution is likely but not certain. Therefore, we decided to award 50% on a basis of 1.000 points.
On top, you will get an additional 10% to dignify your work – the revealed sources cover far more than Google and Wikipedia.

All others are still invited to work on that challenge. As you can see, other solutions might be possible and likely as well and will also be rewarded.
The full points will be awarded if a given solution leaves no space for doubts or further possibilities.

Kind regards,
ToSch

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: Veselovský on June 14, 2013, 3:10 p.m.

everybody was working on a 7 character chiffre, but I think it is only 6. The last dot is no chiffre. It is simply a dot used to seperate name from date and place. Can be found elsewhere too.

Could be. But the dot used in (or after) signature is different than the dot used in normal text, which suggests that the dot is a part of the cipher.

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: Veselovský on June 14, 2013, 3:25 p.m.

It looks like the book "Schicksale der vermeinten Gräfin Julie von Ortenburg" has survived. I just got an email from Széchényi National Library in Budapest, Hungary:

"The book is available in the Széchényi National Library under the signature 236.328/1-3. Reading of the book is possible only in readingrooms."

Does anybody here live in Budapest or has its journey to Budapest anytime?
It would be great to have a look at pages 223 and 245 to see if there are any clues to solve the author's name of "Die Kunst, geheime Schriften zu entziffern". I am interested in knowing whether the enciphered letter looks exactly same as in "Die Kunst, geheime Schriften zu entziffern" or are there any differences. I suspect, that in "Schicksale der vermeinten Gräfin Julie von Ortenburg" there could be the same symbols used but a different substitution key and that we have use this key to substitute for author's name not the key from "Die Kunst, geheime Schriften zu entziffern".

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: tosch on June 17, 2013, 10:38 a.m.

Hello,

thanks for finding that copy - and a good idea to get a closer look on these pages as well.

My haidresser is from Hungary and she is going home to Budapest for vacation in July.
She said, she would go into the library and make pictures or buy xerox copies of these pages.
She will be back end of July, so we need to be patient.

All the best,
ToSch

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: Veselovský on July 3, 2013, 3:16 p.m.

I sacrificed 20€ for copies of mentioned pages of "Schicksale der vermeinten Gräfin Julie von Ortenburg". I have just received them in email.

The cipher uses pretty much the same symbols as in "Die Kunst, geheime Schriften zu entziffern". The only difference is in using cross "✝" instead of plus "+". The substitution key is also the same.
There are also lots of mistakes in transcription, which do not look like intentional so I guess they do not bear any information.

The original cipher separate words while the transcription in "Die Kunst…" masks the spaces between words.

So I guess there are no clues in the book "Schicksale der vermeinten Gräfin Julie von Ortenburg" that would help to identify the author.

Maybe a professional linguist could compare both books if there is any evidence that both books were written by the same person. But even if we could say that both books were written by the same person it would not help since we do not know author's name of the first book neither of the second one.

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: tosch on July 19, 2013, 6:44 p.m.

Hello,
Oh somehow your post did not reach me. My haidresser just came back mentioning that she was unable to make pictures and photocopies were not available at the day she was there.
So I am happy to hear you have gotten some. I would be willing to share your cost, if you would be willing to share the pictures with me as I would like to add them to my database of crypto books.
Happy to hear from you,
ToSch

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: Veselovský on July 19, 2013, 8:11 p.m.

…if you would be willing to share the pictures with me…

I will ask them whether it is OK to publish the copies here. As this is not for commercial use I think they should have no problems with it… but in any case I will ask.

By the way… it is not just one book… it is like "trilogy" …series of three books
This particular cipher was in the first book ("Erstes Bändchen").

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: tosch on July 20, 2013, 3:42 p.m.

Thank you - that would be wonderful.
Kind regards,
ToSch

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: Veselovský on July 21, 2013, 12:22 a.m.

I realized that publishing the copies would reveal solution of the level 1 challenge "Letter from the Alleged Countess Julie von Ortenburg". So I will send them to you in mail.

Re: Challenge  

  By: Scryer on Dec. 5, 2013, 6:37 p.m.

Lots of interesting speculation. I'm not a native German speaker, so anything I say should be taken less seriously than it otherwise might.

I'm not convinced by the "single letter for CH" idea - although that was used in Enigma messages, the examples I noted in the "Julie" letter used two separate letters for C and H. If the publisher/typographer is the same in each case, wouldn't it be done the same? While "JULIUS" does fit with the assumptions, I don't find it compelling because (a) you need to remove a letter of the ciphertext; and (b) identifying an author with just one of his forenames seems unlikely on its face - the idea ought to be to identify the author unambiguously but reasonably securely.

I like the vertical mirroring idea, but I didn't see anything useful there either.

I also Caesared the signature. I conjecture that we should be using a 23-letter alphabet, omitting WXY and the umlauted letters: W and at least two of the umlauts were done with digraphs. I too noticed the similarity to "DUQUESNE", but the extra T seems to me to make it unlikely.

"Normal" Caesar is three letters down in the alphabet. For the 23-letter alphabet, this would be VPOLPNI. While this doesn't mean anything to me, it has a respectable division of vowels and consonants. The best anagram I could see here is "von Lipp" – I don't like "von Pilp" as much, since I can't find anyone with that name (although the phrase appears in Alexandria 2.0:
http://archive.org/stream/neuespreussis ... g_djvu.txt

There was a Bischof Josef von Lipp (1794-1869), so at 16 years old he would be too young for this document. His father died in 1796, so he wasn't the author either. Are there any other von Lipps in the author database that somebody's been working on?

Another possibility: it might be short for something, like "von Lippmann".

Does this go anywhere?

Re: Challenge  

  By: Sugambrus on March 21, 2014, 2:35 a.m.

We should take in consideration that it could be the name of a place rather than of an author. This has not been my idea but the idea of the user "Kasstor" in a German genealogy forum. He proposes two German cities: ERFURT or LIPSIA (the Latin name of Leipzig).

This seems to make a lot of sence because it is very usual to have the name of a place if a date follows.

Sugambrus

Re: Challenge "Unknown Author"  

  By: bgr on July 31, 2014, 9:43 a.m.

As for now I want to try to find out more about the so called “Konkordientag”.

I read this term two days ago in the Krypto blog of Klaus Schmeh, Tobias Schrödel mentioned it. As I have never heard this word before, I tried to find more information. Seems that someone working on the 'Unknown author' challenge already asked about the meaning of this word in this forum here:
http://forum.ahnenforschung.net/showthread.php?t=99924

There are a lot of resources in the net about the Konkordientag or Concordiä:
http://books.google.de/books?id=TkkAAAA ... 22&f=false
http://books.google.de/books?id=Asc_AAA ... 46&f=false

inclusive the information that Luther died the same day:
http://books.google.de/books?id=_vs7AAA ... ia&f=false

But whether the Concordia day is really the 18th of February was already discussed in 1750, without a real result:
http://books.google.de/books?id=4eo4AQA ... 22&f=false

As the city of Leipzig was often taken into consideration and the name often appears in the books above, I don't think that the name of the author is encrypted. I like much more the idea some posts before that only the city and the date was written here and not the name. I would be fine with the latin "Lipsia".
The only thing which does not fit is the point "." behind it. Normally you write (until today!) the city followed by a comma and then the date. Maybe in former times this was done different, but I found no examples.

Re: Challenge  

  By: Veselovský on July 31, 2014, 3:26 p.m.

He proposes two German cities: ERFURT or LIPSIA (the Latin name of Leipzig).

I would be fine with the latin "Lipsia".

There is written on the first page of the book "Leipzig" in plaintext, so writing it five pages later in cipher does not have to much sense to me.


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