in 1947. Three years later, she received the assignment of cultivating
male officials involved in the FRG’s rearmament program. When
her activities became known to West German counterintelligence of-
ficials, an undercover agent, using the name Dr. Petersen, convinced
Knuth of his disillusionment with the rearmament program and will-
ingness to obtain a position for her in his office. Bogus information
was conveyed to her, and she was arrested at a toter Briefkasten in
May 1952. Eight months later, a Cologne court sentenced her to four
years in prison, where she died of cancer.KOCH, HANS (1894–1959). An East European specialist who
worked for the Abwehr, Hans Koch was born in Lemberg (now
Lviv, Ukraine). During World War I, he served as an intelligence
officer with the Austrian army and saw combat against the Russians.
Taken captive after the Russian Revolution, Koch was released in
1921 and went to Vienna, where he earned doctorates in philosophy
and theology. His subsequent academic appointments included the
directorships of the East European institutes in Königsberg (now
Kaliningrad, Russia) and Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). With the
outbreak of World War II, Koch was assigned to the Abwehr because
of his expertise and charged with establishing contact with Ukrainian
nationalists and overseeing propaganda designed for enemy troops.
In 1941, he also became the liaison with the Reich Ministry for the
Occupied Eastern Territories. Koch’s postwar career included several
years as a Protestant minister in Austria before serving as director of
the East European Institute in Munich between 1952–1959.
KOEDEL, SIMON (1881–?). An unusually productive Abwehr agent
working in the United States during World War II, Simon Koedel
was born in Bavaria on 30 October 1881. After immigrating to the
United States, serving in the army for three years, and obtaining citi-
zenship, he was recruited as a Perspektivagent by the Abwehr dur-
ing a trip to Germany in the mid-1930s. His activation in September
1939 led him to join the American Ordinance Association, which
then gave him access to several otherwise restricted defense sites. A
movie projectionist by profession, Koedel occasionally posed as a
longshoreman to gather shipping information in the New York City
area. His 21-year-old daughter, Marie, was encouraged to mix with
KOEDEL, SIMON • 237