Markus Johannes "Mischa" Wolf, mostly known as Markus Wolf, was a famously elusive spymaster of Communist East Germany and writer. He was the head of the East German intelligence agency Die Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung.
Background
Ethnicity:
He was the son of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother.
Markus Johannes "Mischa" Wolf was born on January 19, 1923, in Hechingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany. He was the son of a Jewish writer and physician Friedrich Wolf. In 1934 Wolf's family moved to Moscow to avoid Nazi persecution.
Education
Wolf was educated in German Karl Liebknecht School, and later in Soviet Comintern School where his training included such activities as the use of weapons, explosives, and political propaganda. He then studied at Moscow Institute of Airplane Engineering (now Moscow Aviation Institute).
Career
After his studies in Russia, Wolf returned to East Germany at the conclusion of World War II. He was among a dozen men who organized the Die Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung (H.V.A.; translated as Main Intelligence Directorate) in 1951, and in 1952 he was selected by East German leader Walter Ulbricht to serve as its commander. Wolf was the chief of the H.V.A. until his retirement in 1986. During the uneasy decades of the Cold War, the elusive and influential Wolf was dubbed the “Man without a Face” in the Western press for his ability to escape publicity and was believed to be the model for the Karla figure in the espionage novels of John Le Carre. In his autobiography, Man without a Face, Wolf recalls his years as a spymaster.
Detailed in his memoir, The Man without a Face, published in 1997, Wolfs long tenure as the chief of East German intelligence saw his force of spies grow from a few agents to several thousand. Many of these people were undercover agents working in West Berlin and West Germany, providing information about government activities and advances in technology.
Known as an expert puppet-master, Wolf utilized numerous methods to establish reliable contacts in the West. His memoir relates details of meetings in safe houses, false identities, blackmail, dead-letter drops, and the use of so-called “Romeo spies,” East German men who seduced female secretaries and government workers who had access to restricted material. Among the most notorious of his operatives was Gunter Guillaume who served as personal assistant to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and passed secrets to the East using his wife as a courier. When Guillaume’s activities were discovered, Brandt’s government was toppled. Another operative, Dagmar Kahlig-Scheffler, a secretary who worked in the office of West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt during the 1970s, provided information about the communications of Schmidt with then - United States President Jimmy Carter. In addition to his autobiography, Wolf’s works include the 1989 work Die Troika.
Wolf fled East Germany for Moscow on the eve of German reunification in 1990 but returned several months later to face trial. Initially he was convicted of treason against West Germany and sentenced to six years in prison. However, the sentence was later overturned as unlawful. Wolf was later convicted for participation in several kidnappings that occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and received a two-year suspended sentence.
In interviews published in the mid-1990s, Wolf expressed regret that many of his former agents were serving prison sentences as a result of their activities during the Cold War.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"[Wolf's] greatest success was also his greatest failure, he never accepted moral responsibility for his actions. On the contrary, he felt wrongly persecuted. He complained of victor’s justice." - Karl-Wilhelm Fricke
"For many men, the cold war was a game, and he was very good at the game." - Peter Osnos
"He will go down in history for being one of the most successful espionage chiefs of the cold war. But the negative side of his work won't be forgotten either - for instance, his department for disinformation about west Germany, which manufactured gossip and lies to defame western politicians." - Jochen Staadt