Markus Wolf | |
|---|---|
 Wolf in 1989 | |
| Born | Markus Johannes Wolf (1923-01-19)19 January 1923 |
| Died | 9 November 2006(2006-11-09) (aged 83) |
| Burial place | Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery |
| Other names | Mischa |
| Alma mater | Moscow Aviation Institute |
| Father | Friedrich Wolf |
| Relatives | Konrad Wolf (brother) |
| Awards | |
| Espionage activity | |
| Allegiance | East Germany |
| Service branch | General Intelligence Administration (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung) |
| Service years | 1951–1986 |
| Rank | Colonel general |
| Signature | |
 | |
Markus Johannes Wolf (19 January 1923 – 9 November 2006), also known asMischa,[1] was an East German spy who served as the head of theMain Directorate for Reconnaissance (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung), the foreignintelligence division ofEast Germany's Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,abbr. MfS, commonly known as theStasi). He was the Stasi's number two for 34 years, which spanned most of theCold War. He is often regarded as one of the best-knownspymasters during the Cold War. In the West he was known as "the man without a face" due to his elusiveness.
Wolf was born 19 January 1923, inHechingen,Province of Hohenzollern (nowBaden-Württemberg), to a German-Jewish father and a non-Jewish German mother.[2][3] His father was the writer, communist activist and physicianFriedrich Wolf (1888–1953) and his mother was the nursery teacher Else Wolf (née Dreibholz; 1898–1973).[4] He had one brother, the film directorKonrad Wolf (1925–1982). His father was a member of theCommunist Party of Germany, and after theanti-communist andanti-SemiticNazi Party gained power in 1933, Wolf emigrated toMoscow with his father, viaSwitzerland andFrance, because of theircommunist convictions and because Wolf's father was Jewish.[5][6][7]
During his exile, Wolf first attended the GermanKarl Liebknecht School and later a Russian school. In 1936, at the age of 13, he obtained Soviet identity documents.[8] He was a citizen of Germany, the Soviet Union (USSR) and, later, East Germany (GDR).[9]
After finishing school, Wolf entered the Moscow Institute of Airplane Engineering (nowMoscow Aviation Institute) in 1940, which was evacuated toAlma Ata afterNazi Germany's attack on theSoviet Union. There he was told to join theComintern in 1942, where he among others was prepared for undercover work behind enemy lines. He also worked as a newsreader forGerman People's Radio after the dissolution of the Comintern, from 1943 until 1945.[10]
After the war he was sent to Berlin with theUlbricht Group, led byWalter Ulbricht, to work as a journalist for a radio station in theSoviet Zone of occupation. He was among those journalists who observed the entireNuremberg trials against the principalNazi leaders. Between 1949 and 1951 Wolf worked at the East German embassy in the Soviet Union. That same year he joined theMinistry for State Security (Stasi).[10]
In December 1952, at the age of 29, Wolf was among the founding members of theforeign intelligence service within the Ministry for State Security.[10] As intelligence chief, he achieved great success in penetrating the government, political and business circles ofWest Germany with spies.[9] The most notable individual in this regard wasGünter Guillaume, who was secretary to and close friend of West German ChancellorWilly Brandt, and whose exposure as an East German agentled to Brandt's resignation in 1974.[11]
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 bySäpo, Sweden's National Security Service, during a visit toStockholm,Sweden. An East German defector,Werner Stiller, then identified Wolf to West German counter-intelligence as the man in the picture.[12][13][14] It has also been suggested that elements within theCIA had identified him by 1959 from photographs of attendees at the Nuremberg trials.[15]
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Until 1986, Wolf was responsible for Department III which allegedly supported terrorism in what theGDR considered thenon-socialist economic area (NSW) (German:Nicht-Sozialistische Wirtschaftsgebiet (NSW)), which were countries that were not a member ofComecon, especially in the Arab world and had all information about terrorism sent directly to him.[9] Terrorists who received training from Stasi at training camps in the GDR were from countries which were supportive of the GDR includingNicaragua,Angola,Mozambique,Iraq,Syria,Libya,Ethiopia,South Yemen andPalestinians and all of whom stored very large caches of arms and explosives at their embassies in the GDR.[9]
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.[9] Wolf's Stasi trained the security brigade of thePalestinian 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.[9]
While theRed Army Faction (RAF) conducted terrorism in West Germany, Wolf's Stasi provided safe havens in GDR for the RAF.[9] Wolf's Stasi provided direct training to intelligence services from Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, South Yemen and Ethiopia.[9] Although Wolf's Stasi supported the pro Soviet UnionNajibullah from Afghanistan during his stay in the GDR, allAfghan mujahideen organizations in West Germany that operated in Afghanistan during theSoviet 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 theGRU and the KGB, allegedly considered operations in Afghanistan too sensitive to trust to Wolf's Stasi.[9]
Other terrorism related individuals, groups and events that Wolf's Stasi directly supported includeYasser Arafat, who headed the PLO,George Habash, who headed thePopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the VenezuelanIllich 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 1986La Belle discothèque bombing in West Berlin,Abu Nidal andAbu Daoud, who organized theMunich massacre during September 1972 at theMunich Olympics.[9]
Wolf retired in 1986 with the rank ofGeneraloberst, being succeeded byWerner 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 bookTroika came out on the same day in East and West Germany.
During thePeaceful Revolution, Wolf distanced himself from the hardline position taken byErich Honecker, favouring reform.[16] He spoke at the November 1989Alexanderplatz 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 dissidentBärbel Bohley would later say:
When I saw that his hands were trembling because the people were booing I said toJens Reich: We can go now, now it is all over. The revolution is irreversible."[17]
In September 1990, shortly beforeGerman reunification, Wolf fled the country, and soughtpolitical asylum inRussia andAustria. 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 theCentral Intelligence Agency to defect to the United States.[3]
In 1993, he was convicted oftreason by theOberlandesgerichtDüsseldorf and sentenced to six years' imprisonment.[18] This was later quashed by theGerman supreme court, because West Germany was a separate country at the time.[19] In 1997, he was convicted of unlawful detention, coercion, and bodily harm, and was given asuspended sentence of two years' imprisonment.[20] He was additionally sentenced to three days' imprisonment for refusing to testify againstPaul Gerhard Flämig [de] when the former West German (SPD) politician was accused in 1993 of atomic espionage.[21] Wolf said that Flämig was not the agent that he had mentioned in his memoirs.[22]
Markus Wolf died in his sleep at his Berlin home on 9 November 2006.[23] He was cremated and buried in his brother's grave in thePergolenwegEhrengrab section of Berlin'sFriedrichsfelde 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".[24]
John le Carré's fictional spymasterKarla, a Russian, who appears inTinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,The Honourable Schoolboy, andSmiley's People was believed by some readers to be modeled on Wolf.[25] However, the writer has repeatedly denied it, and did so once again when interviewed on the occasion of Wolf's death.[26] Le Carré has also stated that it is "sheer nonsense" to claim that Wolf was the inspiration for the character Fiedler inThe Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Although Fiedler is aGerman Jew who spentWorld War II 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 ofAlbert Speer.[27] He maintained that a character's code nameWolf in an early draft of the book was a coincidence and that the name came from the brand of hislawn mower.[28] He renamed the character after being told that there was an actualWolf in East German intelligence.[29]
Conversely, Wolf stated thatThe 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.[28]
Wolf appears as a character inFrederick Forsyth's novelThe Deceiver. In the section titled "Pride and Extreme Prejudice", aKGB officer liaises with East German intelligence while tracking down a British agent in East Germany. Forsyth also mentions Wolf in his earlier novelThe Fourth Protocol, describing him, and the East German intelligence service as a whole, as masters of thefalse flag recruitment technique.
Wolf was married three times.[30]
In 1944, he married his first wife Emmy Stenzer, the daughter of the German CommunistFranz 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 sonFranz Wolf (Manager) [de].[30][31][32]
Tanja Trögel continued her family passion supporting leftist activities.[30] She is the director of the Friedrich Wolf Memorial inLehnitz.[33]
Claudia Wall (b. 1969 or 1970), a step daughter of Markus Wolf, was married from autumn 1997 until late 2008 toHans Wall, the founder of an outdoor and street furniture firmWall AG.[30][34] 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.[34][35]
Franz Wolf (b. May 1953, Berlin) is aGibraltar-basedmanager of a network ofcompanies owned byMikhail Fridman.[1]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)German:Als ich sah, daß seine Hände zitterten, weil die Leute gepfiffen haben, da sagte ich zu Jens Reich: So, jetzt können wir gehen, jetzt ist alles gelaufen. Die Revolution ist unumkehrbar.
