Markus Wolf (born January 19, 1923, in Hechingen) is a former head of East German intelligence.
He is the son of the writer and physicist Friedrich Wolf and brother of film director Konrad Wolf. His family were members of the Communist Party of Germany, and after Adolf Hitler gained power, they emigrated to Moscow.
During his exile, he learned Russian, and then eventually started on propaganda work - as editor and presenter on a German-language radio channel broadcast from Russia.
After the end of the war, he was sent to Berlin to help run a radio station in the Soviet Zone of occupation. He joined the Stasi in 1953 and became the director of its foreign operations. As intelligence chief, Wolf achieved great success in penetrating the government, political and business circles of West Germany with spies. He retired in 1986.
In 1997 he was convicted of unlawful detention, coercion, and bodily harm, and was given a suspended sentence of two years imprisonment.
Wolf, Markus; Memoirs of a Spymaster; Pimilco; ISBN 0-7126-6655-9; (paperback 1997)References