I managed to get hold of this very rare UMF Ruhla Gardé chess clock. It is a (or perhaps "the") chess clock of the former Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic (Ministerrat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik), bearing the Council's stamp on the front, bottom and on the original carton box. The clock itself is from 1970 and is a rare hybrid of the various generations of the Gardé model. The wooden case is that of the first generation of Ruhla Gardé clocks with a brown wooden rim and a cream coloured stripe in the rim, as introduced in 1960. The clock face logo, however, is already that of the second generation. The first generation had a "UMF Ruhla" logo, whereas the second generation only had "ruhla" imprinted on the clock face. All in all, the clock is in pristine condition.

A bit of background information for those of you who are interested. According to the guarantee slip the clock was distributed by "HO" with the address "Unter den Linden 36/38" in Berlin. "HO" stands for Handelsorganisation, which was the governmental retail organisation, which ran the state owned retail shops in the GDR. "Unter den Linden 36/38" is a very famous address in Berlin. Apart from being located on Berlin's most prestigious street, in walking distance from the Hotel Adlon and the Brandenburg Gate, and being the first building with an exclusive office use, the house with the numbers 36/38 is also known as "Zollernhof". After the war, it was the headquarter of various GDR organisations. In particular, from 1951 it was the headquarter of the Central Committee of the Free German Youth (Zentralrat der Freien Deutschen Jugend, FDJ), the founder and chairman of which was Erich Honecker until 1955, before becoming a driving force in the erection of the German Wall in 1961 and before becoming the chairman of the State Council (i.e. the head of state) in 1971. On the ground floor of the building, the HO operated a shop, which inter alia sold leisure and sports equipment. Today, it is the Berlin headquarter of ZDF, a German TV station.