Rudy de Mérode

At the start of 1944, the Abwehr charged him with secretly setting up an office in Spain. At first setting himself up in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, in mid 1945 he was initially to be found in San Sebastián before reaching Madrid, where he dubbed himself "the prince de Mérode". In 1953, he was still living in Spain, now 60 km north of Madrid in a brickyard. He was never brought to justice, and the date of his death remains unknown to this day, though 1970 has been suggested.

His speciality was bank convoys, of money gathered from different sources or in the form of gold, jewels, art objects or ingots. In 1941, he set himself up at 70 boulevard Maurice-Barrès in Neuilly-sur-Seine, but van Houten and de Mérode separated after a disagreement in 1942.

In July 1940, he returned to Paris and set himself up at German military intelligence's HQ in the Hôtel Lutetia. Attached to a supply office at 18 rue Pétrarque [fr] in Paris as a cover, he spied for the Abwehr alongside another SD agent, the Dutchman Gédéon van Houten [fr] (called the Baron d'Humières).

Originating in Luxemburg, his family emigrated to France and were naturalised as French citizens in the 1920s. He studied engineering in Strasbourg and then in Germany, where he was recruited by the Abwehr in 1928. In 1934 he participated in building works on the Maginot Line and passed on the plans (to which he had access) to the German intelligence services. Unmasked as a spy in 1935, he was condemned in 1936 to 10 years in jail (which he served at Clairvaux Prison) and 20 years' exile from France.

Rudy de Mérode, real name Frédéric Martin (1905 in Silly-sur-Nied, Moselle – ?, probably in Spain) was a French collaborator during the German occupation of France in the Second World War.