Better Wrecker Than Spy
Scion of a Noble Prussian Family Who Failed to Deliver the Goods
Though he may not have been a conspicuous success as a spy, Gustav Constantin Alvo von Alvensleben had a very decided record as a wrecker. Through his directive genius many concerns, industrial and financial, went to utter smash, involving the loss of an unknown but huge number of millions of dollars and causing a suicide or two. In the brief span of years between 1904 and 1911 Alvo rose from the precarious state of a hobo to the lofty plane of millionairedom. That is a performance that requires some doing, and indicates a mental aptitude for the peculiar office of “playing your fellow man” considerably above the ordinary.
And Gustav, or, as he was more commonly named, Alvo, played with no mean counters. Among his clients was Kaiser Wilhelm himself, who, through Alvo, invested two and a half million dollars in British Columbia timber. Other clients were the ex-Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg, Gen. von Mackensen, the conqueror of Rumania; Emma von Mumm, the champagne queen; Bertha Krupp, the gun woman, and others of equal prominence in Germany. The companies he organized or coupled up with his enterprises—nearly all of which collapsed when the shadow of war blighted Alvo’s golden prospects—included the Alvensleben Canadian Finance and General Investment Company, the Standard Fish and Fertilizer Co., the Vancouver Timber and Trading Co., the Piercite Powder Co., the German-Canadian Trust Co., etc. Also with these went several of the Pacific Coast’s largest financial and industrial concerns, including the Bank of Vancouver, the Issaquah and Superior Coal Mining Company of Seattle, and the Dominion Trust Company, whose failure following the alleged suicide of its managing director, W. R. Arnold, was one of the greatest scandals in the history of the Dominion of Canada.
Two private banks of Seattle closed their doors as a result of their connection with the I. and S. Coal Company, one of the projects of the gambler-financier. The final liquidation of his original real estate and financial company in Vancouver disclosed liabilities of over one and a half millions, with assets of about $3,000, insufficient to satisfy the liquidator’s fees.