Former East German spymaster dies at 83
Markus Wolf, the “man without a face” who outwitted the West as communist East Germany’s long-serving spymaster, has died. He was 83.
Wolf passed away early this morning in his apartment in Berlin, his stepdaughter Claudia Wall said in a statement. The cause of death was not released.
Wolf, who said he spurned a CIA offer for a safe new life in California after the Cold War, managed to steal Nato secrets for the Soviet bloc that could have been decisive if war had broken out in Europe.
He planted some 4,000 agents in the West, most famously placing Guenter Guillaume as a top aide to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. The agent’s unmasking forced Brandt to resign in 1974.
Born on January 19, 1923, in the south-western town of Hechingen, Wolf and his family followed his father, a Jewish communist, doctor and writer, into exile in France in 1933 after the Nazis came to power.
The Wolfs moved to the Soviet Union in 1934, where he studied, then worked at German People’s Radio in Moscow from 1943 to 1945.
He returned to Germany with a group that included Walter Ulbricht, who would become East Germany’s long-time leader.
