Gerd Ruge (9 August 1928 – 15 October 2021) was a prominent German journalist, author, and filmmaker whose career extended over five decades. He worked with notable public broadcasters including Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR), ARD, and WDR. Ruge's extensive reporting took him to various countries, such as the former Soviet Union, China, the United States, and Afghanistan. He made history as the first German journalist to obtain a visa to work in Yugoslavia and served as the first ARD correspondent in Moscow. From 1964 to 1969, Ruge was the ARD correspondent in the U.S., where he reported on significant events following the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. His experiences and insights were later documented in several books, including Sibirisches Tagebuch ("Siberia Diary"), Russland: Portrait eines Nachbarn ("Russia: Portrait of a Neighbour"), and Unterwegs: politische Erinnerungen ("On the way: political memories").

In 1961, Ruge co-founded the German chapter of Amnesty International and later became a professor of television journalism at Munich's University of Television and Film. His contributions to journalism earned him various accolades, including the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2014.

Born in Hamburg on 9 August 1928 to a physician, Ruge began his writing career in 1946 with a youth magazine called Benjamin. His journalism journey commenced in 1949 at NWDR in Hamburg. In 1950, he became the first German journalist with a visa to work in Yugoslavia. He served as the inaugural news correspondent for ARD in Moscow from 1956 to 1959, and later as the ARD correspondent in the United States from 1964 to 1969, ultimately becoming the chief political correspondent for ARD in 1970.

During his time in Moscow, Ruge developed a friendship with the Russian author Boris Pasternak, even naming his son Boris in his honor. However, Pasternak fell out of favor with the Kremlin and was compelled to return his Nobel Prize for Literature. Ruge departed the Soviet Union just two days before his anticipated deportation, receiving a twelve-year entry ban for having financially supported Pasternak. In 1968, while in the U.S., he reported on the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, whom he had personally known, as well as on the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. He also covered the launch of the Apollo 11 mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

In the early 1970s, Ruge became the station director at WDR in Bonn. From 1973 to 1976, he wrote for Die Welt from Beijing, where some of his articles on Chinese foreign policies during the Cold War were published in The New York Times. He also served as a guest lecturer at Harvard University during this period. His roles at ARD and WDR continued, including heading the ARD Studios in Moscow from 1987 to 1993, where he reported on the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. He developed a close relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who described Ruge as a person of high moral values. During the August 1991 coup attempt, Ruge reported for over 72 hours on the resistance to Gorbachev's opponents.

Ruge retired from ARD in September 1993. In a retrospective, Der Spiegel praised him as one of Germany's few distinctive reporters, noting his calm and explanatory reporting style. From 1997 to 2001, he taught television journalism at Munich's University of Television and Film, where he established a new chair for the discipline in 1998.

In addition to his journalism career, Ruge co-founded the German chapter of Amnesty International in Cologne in 1961 with fellow journalists Felix Rexhausen and Carola Stern. He and Klaus Bölling initiated the ARD program Weltspiegel in 1963. Ruge moderated the ARD magazine program Monitor from 1981 to 1983, and later co-hosted the 3sat discussion program NeunzehnZehn, which eventually became Ruge NeunzehnZehn, hosted later by Nina Ruge (not related). In the late 1980s, he served as the executive director of the Alerdinck Foundation for East-West Communications, aimed at fostering dialogue between journalists from Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War. Ruge was also a member of the PEN Centre Germany, an association for German writers.

Ruge was recognized for his engaging travel reports and foreign dispatches, characterized by precise interviews and insightful analyses that made complex topics accessible. He was known for beginning his travel reports with the question, "Und, wie ist das Leben?" ("And, how is life?"), emphasizing that journalists should not place themselves in the foreground of their stories. His political memoirs, Unterwegs: politische Erinnerungen ("On the way: political memories"), were published in 2013 and reflected his experiences in travel documentary filmmaking. He also authored biographies of Boris Pasternak in 1959 and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, as well as the book Russland: Portrait eines Nachbarn ("Russia: Portrait of a Neighbour") in 2012.

Since 2002, the Gerd Ruge Scholarship, valued at €100,000, has been awarded to documentary filmmakers in collaboration with the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW ("Film and Media Foundation NRW"), with Ruge presiding over the panel of judges for this grant. He received the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in 1999 and the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2014, among other honors.

Ruge's personal life included a marriage to Fredeke Countess von der Schulenburg, the daughter of a German resistance member, with whom he had two children: Elisabeth Ruge, a publisher and literary agent, and Boris Ruge (born 1962), a German diplomat. He later married author Lois Fisher, followed by journalist Irmgard Eichner in 1992 in Moscow. After his retirement, Ruge and Eichner resided in Munich until her passing six months before his own. He also enjoyed a beach house in Cyprus, where he spent two months each year.

Ruge passed away in Munich on 15 October 2021, at the age of 93.