With my research on nuclear espionage, I had worked on an art historian who was a Soviet spy. Then I came across a Soviet spy who was posing as an artist in New York. Emil Robert Goldfus worked from 1952 in the studio house at 252 Fulton Street in Brooklyn, New York, where he was designated by his artist friends as an amateur in the most positive sense of the word. But in 1948, his betrayal by an assistant revealed that many identities were linked to the artist. Thus this person was also known as William Genrikowitsch (August) Fischer, Andrew Kayotis, or Martin Collins Frank. It fact, it was a matter of the master Russian spy Rudolf Ivanovich Abel.
The many identities and the disguise as an artist made this historical case particularly exciting for in-depth research. For the spatial essay I had developed several elements, Pitch and Ross refers to the hollowed out coin that started the Abel case, Drops to the dead letter boxes I was looking for in New York and X to the studio.

The spatial essay was completed by the book Amateur.

2013