Markus Wolf
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Markus Johannes Wolf (19 January 1923 – 9 November 2006), also known as Mischa, was a German spymaster who served as the head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (), the foreign
intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...
division of
East Germany East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...
's Ministry for State Security (, , commonly known as the ). He was the Stasi's number two for 34 years, which spanned most of the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
. He is often regarded as one of the best-known spymasters during the Cold War. In the West he was known as "the man without a face" due to his elusiveness.


Early life and education

Wolf was born 19 January 1923, in Hechingen, Province of Hohenzollern (now
Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg ( ; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a states of Germany, German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million i ...
), to a German-Jewish father and a non-Jewish German mother. His father was the writer, communist activist and physician Friedrich Wolf (1888–1953) and his mother was the nursery teacher Else Wolf ( Dreibholz; 1898–1973). He had one brother, the film director Konrad Wolf (1925–1982). His father was a member of the
Communist Party of Germany The Communist Party of Germany (, ; KPD ) was a major Far-left politics, far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period, German resistance to Nazism, underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and minor party ...
, and after the
anti-communist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when th ...
and anti-Semitic
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
gained power in 1933, Wolf emigrated to
Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...
with his father, via
Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
and
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
, because of their
communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...
convictions and because Wolf's father was Jewish. During his exile, Wolf first attended the German Karl Liebknecht School and later a Russian school. In 1936, at the age of 13, he obtained Soviet identity documents. He was a citizen of Germany, the Soviet Union (USSR) and, later, East Germany (GDR).


Career

After finishing school, Wolf entered the Moscow Institute of Airplane Engineering (now Moscow Aviation Institute) in 1940, which was evacuated to Alma Ata after Nazi Germany's attack on the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
. There he was told to join the Comintern in 1942, where he among others was prepared for undercover work behind enemy lines. He also worked as a newsreader for German People's Radio after the dissolution of the Comintern, from 1943 until 1945. After the war he was sent to Berlin with the Ulbricht Group, led by
Walter Ulbricht Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht (; ; 30 June 18931 August 1973) was a German communist politician. Ulbricht played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar republic, Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later in the early development ...
, to work as a journalist for a radio station in the Soviet Zone of occupation. He was among those journalists who observed the entire Nuremberg trials against the principal
Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
leaders. Between 1949 and 1951 Wolf worked at the East German embassy in the Soviet Union. That same year he joined the Ministry for State Security (Stasi).


HVA and MfS (Stasi)

In December 1952, at the age of 29, Wolf was among the founding members of the foreign intelligence service within the Ministry for State Security. As intelligence chief, he achieved great success in penetrating the government, political and business circles of
West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...
with spies. The most notable individual in this regard was Günter Guillaume, who was secretary to and close friend of West German Chancellor
Willy Brandt Willy Brandt (; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and concurrently served as the Chancellor ...
, and whose exposure as an East German agent led to Brandt's resignation in 1974. For most of his career in the HVA, Wolf was known as "the man without a face" due to his elusiveness. It was reported that Western agencies did not know the true appearance of the East German spy chief until 1978, when he was photographed by , Sweden's National Security Service, during a visit to
Stockholm Stockholm (; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, most populous city of Sweden, as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in the Nordic countries. Approximately ...
,
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...
. An East German defector, Werner Stiller, then identified Wolf to West German counter-intelligence as the man in the picture. It has also been suggested that elements within the CIA had identified him by 1959 from photographs of attendees at the Nuremberg trials.


Support for terrorism

Until 1986, Wolf was responsible for Department III which allegedly supported terrorism in what the GDR considered the non-socialist economic area (NSW) (), which were countries that were not a member of
Comecon The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, often abbreviated as Comecon ( ) or CMEA, was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc#List of states, Easter ...
, especially in the Arab world and had all information about terrorism sent directly to him. Terrorists who received training from Stasi at training camps in the GDR were from countries which were supportive of the GDR including
Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...
,
Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...
,
Mozambique Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Afr ...
,
Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...
,
Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
,
Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...
,
Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...
,
South Yemen South Yemen, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, abbreviated to Democratic Yemen, was a country in South Arabia that existed in what is now southeast Yemen from 1967 until Yemeni unification, its unification with the Yemen A ...
and
Palestinians Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenou ...
and all of whom stored very large caches of arms and explosives at their embassies in the GDR. Although the GDR provided direct support to these main countries, the Soviet Union's KGB required Wolf's Stasi to coordinate its efforts with the KGB and beginning in the 1970s they worked together as equals using data from all the Eastern European intelligence services stored at a center in Moscow to unify all the information about international terrorism from all GDR and USSR friendly security services. Wolf's Stasi trained the security brigade of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in counterintelligence and briefed PLO trainees about U.S. intelligence services and also protected terrorists from countries allied with the GDR from arrest through the Stasi's monitoring of western intelligence services. While the Red Army Faction (RAF) conducted terrorism in West Germany, Wolf's Stasi provided safe havens in GDR for the RAF. Wolf's Stasi provided direct training to intelligence services from Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, South Yemen and Ethiopia. Although Wolf's Stasi supported the pro Soviet Union Najibullah from Afghanistan during his stay in the GDR, all Afghan mujahideen organizations in West Germany that operated in Afghanistan during the Soviet Union's War in Afghanistan were infiltrated and high ranking KGB officers controlled operations against mujahideen centers in West Germany because the Soviet intelligence services, including the GRU and the KGB, allegedly considered operations in Afghanistan too sensitive to trust to Wolf's Stasi. Other terrorism related individuals, groups and events that Wolf's Stasi directly supported include
Yasser Arafat Yasser Arafat (4 or 24 August 1929 – 11 November 2004), also popularly known by his Kunya (Arabic), kunya Abu Ammar, was a Palestinian political leader. He was chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969 to 2004, Presid ...
, who headed the PLO, George Habash, who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Venezuelan Illich Ramirez Sanchez, whose code name was "Separat" but was known as "Carlos the Jackal" and often visited East Berlin and the GDR, the terrorists involved with the April 1986 La Belle discothèque bombing in West Berlin, Abu Nidal and Abu Daoud, who organized the Munich massacre during September 1972 at the Munich Olympics.


Retirement

Wolf retired in 1986 with the rank of Generaloberst, being succeeded by Werner Grossmann as head of the East German foreign intelligence service. He continued the work of his late brother Konrad in writing the story of their upbringing in Moscow in the 1930s. The book ''Troika'' came out on the same day in East and West Germany. During the Peaceful Revolution, Wolf distanced himself from the hardline position taken by
Erich Honecker Erich Ernst Paul Honecker (; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994) was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He held the post ...
, favouring reform. He spoke at the November 1989 Alexanderplatz demonstration, where he was both booed and applauded by a highly divided crowd during his speech. Calls to "stop" the speech, even to "hang" Wolf could be heard. The dissident Bärbel Bohley would later say: In September 1990, shortly before
German reunification German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the int ...
, Wolf fled the country, and sought political asylum in
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
and
Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...
. When denied, he returned to Germany, where he was arrested by German police. Wolf claimed to have refused an offer of a large amount of money, a new identity with plastic surgery to change his features, and a home in California from the
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
to defect to the United States. In 1993, he was convicted of
treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state (polity), state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to Coup d'état, overthrow its government, spy ...
by the
Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...
and sentenced to six years' imprisonment. This was later quashed by the German supreme court, because West Germany was a separate country at the time. In 1997, he was convicted of unlawful detention, coercion, and bodily harm, and was given a
suspended sentence A suspended sentence is a sentence on conviction for a criminal offence, the serving of which the court orders to be deferred in order to allow the defendant to perform a period of probation. If the defendant does not break the law during that ...
of two years' imprisonment. He was additionally sentenced to three days' imprisonment for refusing to testify against when the former West German (SPD) politician was accused in 1993 of atomic espionage. Wolf said that Flämig was not the agent that he had mentioned in his memoirs. Markus Wolf died in his sleep at his Berlin home on 9 November 2006. He was cremated and buried in his brother's grave in the ''Pergolenweg'' Ehrengrab section of Berlin's Friedrichsfelde Cemetery. In 2011, the State Social Court of Berlin-Brandenburg ruled that the widow Andrea Wolf was not entitled to a "compensation pension" that her husband had been stripped of as a "fighter against fascism".


Cultural impact

John le Carré's fictional spymaster Karla, a Russian, who appears in '' Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'', '' The Honourable Schoolboy'', and '' Smiley's People'' was believed by some readers to be modeled on Wolf. However, the writer has repeatedly denied it, and did so once again when interviewed on the occasion of Wolf's death. Le Carré has also stated that it is "sheer nonsense" to claim that Wolf was the inspiration for the character Fiedler in '' The Spy Who Came in from the Cold''. Although Fiedler is a German Jew who spent
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
in exile and then gained a senior position in East Germany's Intelligence Service, Carré said he had no idea who Markus Wolf was at the time of the writing of the book. He added that he considered Wolf to be the moral equivalent of
Albert Speer Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as Reich Ministry of Armaments and War Production, Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of W ...
. He maintained that a character's code name ''Wolf'' in an early draft of the book was a coincidence and that the name came from the brand of his
lawn mower A lawn mower (also known as a grass cutter or simply mower, also often spelled lawnmower) is a device utilizing one or more revolving blades (or a reel) to cut a lawn, grass surface to an even height. The height of the cut grass may be fixed by ...
. He renamed the character after being told that there was an actual ''Wolf'' in East German intelligence. Conversely, Wolf stated that ''The Spy Who Came In From the Cold'' was the only book he read for a period in the early 1960s, and was surprised how accurately it presented the reality within the East German security services. He wondered if le Carré had had special information about the situation within the Ministry of State Security. Wolf appears as a character in
Frederick Forsyth Frederick McCarthy Forsyth ( ; 25 August 1938 – 9 June 2025) was an English novelist and journalist. He was best known for thrillers such as ''The Day of the Jackal'', ''The Odessa File'', ''The Fourth Protocol'', ''The Dogs of War (novel), ...
's novel '' The Deceiver''. In the section titled "Pride and Extreme Prejudice", a
KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
officer liaises with East German intelligence while tracking down a British agent in East Germany. Forsyth also mentions Wolf in his earlier novel '' The Fourth Protocol'', describing him, and the East German intelligence service as a whole, as masters of the
false flag A false flag operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party. The term "false flag" originated in the 16th century as an expression meaning an intentional misrep ...
recruitment technique.


Personal life

Wolf was married three times. In 1944, he married his first wife Emmy Stenzer, the daughter of the German Communist Franz Stenzer, and who was the curator of the archives of Friedrich Wolf, Markus Wolf's father. His second wife was Christa Heinrich and they were married from 1976 to 1986. His third wife was Andrea Stingl and they married in 1986. He had two daughters Tanja Trögel and Claudia Wall and a son . Tanja Trögel continued her family passion supporting leftist activities. She is the director of the Friedrich Wolf Memorial in Lehnitz. Claudia Wall (b. 1969 or 1970), a step daughter of Markus Wolf, was married from autumn 1997 until late 2008 to Hans Wall, the founder of an outdoor and street furniture firm Wall AG. She had two daughters Elisabeth (b. 1996 or 1997) from her first marriage and Johanna (b. 1997 or 1998) from her second marriage which was to Hans Wall. Franz Wolf (b. May 1953, Berlin) is a
Gibraltar Gibraltar ( , ) is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory and British overseas cities, city located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, on the Bay of Gibraltar, near the exit of the Mediterranean Sea into the A ...
-based manager of a network of
companies A company, abbreviated as co., is a legal entity representing an association of legal people, whether natural, juridical or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common purpose and unite to achieve specifi ...
owned by Mikhail Fridman.


References


Bibliography

* Wolf, Markus (with Anne McElvoy); ''Memoirs of a Spymaster''; Pimlico; ; (paperback 1997). Also published under the title ''Man Without a Face: The Memoirs of a Spymaster'' (Jonathan Cape, 1997). Wolf wrote six books between 1989 and 2002 but this is the only one translated into English. * Dany Kuchel wrote in 2011, ''The Sword and the Shield'', a story of the Stasi in France. {{DEFAULTSORT:Wolf, Markus 1923 births 2006 deaths East German spies Cold War spies Collaborators with the Soviet Union Spymasters German communists Stasi officers convicted of crimes Criminals from Baden-Württemberg Refugees from Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union German people of Jewish descent People from Hechingen People from the Province of Hohenzollern International Lenin School alumni People from East Berlin People of the Cold War Prisoners and detainees of Germany