U.S. government posthumously awarded both Ruh and Lindner the
Silver Star for their wartime service in the OSS.RUMRICH, GÜNTHER (1911– ). The first Abwehr spy apprehended
by the U.S. government, Günther Rumrich was born in Chicago, the
son of the secretary of the Austro-Hungarian consulate. Although
raised in Europe, he returned to the United States in 1929 and drifted
from job to job. In March 1936, after deserting from the U.S. Army
and short of funds, he read the memoirs of Walter Nicolai and di-
rected a letter to him in Germany, requesting employment as a spy.
His application approved, Rumrich (code name crown) received
instructions to obtain detailed information about coastal defenses,
shipping and industry, and new developments in aviation. When very
little of substance materialized, more elaborate schemes were devised
by Rumrich and his associates.
In February 1938, he attempted to obtain 35 passport blanks in
New York City by posing as a top official from the State Department.
(The false passports would have been used primarily to penetrate the
Soviet Union with agents disguised as American sailors.) Having
been alerted by the British MI5 to the existence of an extensive Ger-
man spy ring, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Rumrich
along with Erich Glaser, Johanna Hoffmann, and Otto Herman Voss.
Fourteen others, including the key figure Ignatz Griebel, were in-
dicted but managed to escape. Rumrich pleaded guilty and received a
sentence of two years. Actual footage from his trial was incorporated
in the 1939 film Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Hollywood’s first major
anti-Nazi effort. Following the invasion of Poland, a confiscated
copy of the film was shown to Wilhelm Canaris and other members
of the Abwehr.
RUNDE ECKE. The popular name given to the former regional head-
quarters of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS) in Leipzig,
the Runde Ecke (Round Corner) on the Dittrichring was completed in
1913 and originally housed the offices of a fire insurance firm. After
World War II, the building was successively used by the U.S. Army,
the NKVD (Soviet People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs), and
the K-5 before its transfer to the MfS in 1950. On 4 December 1989,
the Runde Ecke was occupied by demonstrators led by the Leipzig
382 • RUMRICH, GÜNTHER