headed by Redl’s former protégé Maximilian Ronge was then
established. Although the surveillance officers missed Redl at his
next pickup at the Viennese post office, they found his penknife
sheath inside the taxi that had transported him back to the hotel.
When other incriminating evidence confirmed Redl’s guilt, Franz
Conrad von Hötzendorf, the army chief of staff, sought to limit
the damage by keeping the affair as secret as possible. A brief
interrogation in Redl’s room at the Hotel Klomser resulted in an
immediate confession, although he erroneously maintained that his
activity had begun only a year earlier and was fairly perfunctory
in nature. Given a revolver with which to shoot himself, he died
on 25 May 1913. An inspection of his Prague apartment revealed
the meticulous records of his long-term espionage work as well as
evidence of his homosexual liaisons. Austro-Hungarian officials
issued a terse communiqué, reprinted by Viennese newspapers,
stating that the “highly gifted officer” had suffered a nervous
breakdown. By 29 May, a more accurate version appeared in the
international press.
Not only Emperor Francis Joseph but many in the general pub-
lic expressed their consternation at Redl’s betrayal. One result
was the demotion of August Urbanski von Ostrymiecz, the head
of the Evidenzbüro, to reserve status the following year. Another
was the disruption of Russian and French undercover activities in
Switzerland utilizing the information in Redl’s records. Even so,
the Evidenzbüro’s large network of informants working in Russia
around 1900 had been eliminated by the time of Redl’s unmasking.
Although the General Staff knew that Redl had had nearly total
access to its secret files and that the war plans were in Russia’s
possession, they merely ordered some tactical revisions and left
the prewar strategic assumptions in place. Ironically, in the after-
math of the battlefield disasters experienced by the Habsburg army
in 1914, Conrad disavowed his own responsibility and pointed to
Redl as one of the main culprits.REHDER, HANS (1912–1985). A West German physicist in the em-
ploy of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), Hans Rehder
headed the department for small transmitters at the Telefunken elec-
tronics firm and was also a consultant to the East German Ministry
REHDER, HANS • 363