Markus Wolf
Posted on 11/09/2006 4:26:54 PM PST by MadIvan
Markus Wolf, the sinister East German spymaster who spun his web across Western Europe, has died peacefully in his sleep — taking with him some of the darkest secrets of the Cold War.
A solitary red rose was deposited by a sympathiser yesterday on the doorstep of his Berlin apartment block. But few tears were being shed for the 83-year-old Stasi general who dispatched some 30,000 agents to seduce Nato secretaries, buy up politicians, vacuum up secrets and train terrorists.
Normally voluble politicians contacted for comment yesterday refused to utter a word, as if Mr Wolf were a demonic presence. “Let him rot in hell,” spluttered one conservative deputy.
Germany, 17 years after the crumbling of the Berlin Wall, has still not quite got over the damage wrought to the national psyche by the spy chief. Even now the coalition government led by Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, is divided over the question of whether to continue vetting civil servants for their Stasi links. A draft law due to be introduced today has been withdrawn — because Germans still cannot agree on how far former Stasi collaborators and agents should be pursued, making victims out of spies.
Despite being dubbed the Man without a Face — for decades no photograph of him reached the West — Mr Wolf became the public standard bearer for veteran communist agents after the end of the Soviet empire. Urbane, well read and expensively dressed, he eloquently defended his activities in a Düsseldorf courtroom in 1993. “Why should I be in the dock and not Klaus Kinkel?” he asked, referring to the former head of the West German security service.
East German spies worked, he said, in the service of an internationally recognised state to protect its national interests — just as West German agents worked for Bonn and British spies for London.
To his great satisfaction, Mr Wolf (known as Mischa to secret service colleagues) ended up with a mild two-year suspended jail sentence. Helped by his young wife Andrea, he promptly reinvented himself: as an author of a cook book and a lion of the literary salons. With a rich cultural background — his father Friedrich was a German Jewish playwright and his brother Konrad was a film maker — Mr Wolf constantly hinted that he was a notch above the peasant politicians who ran communism. Even so, he remained a man of the Left, taking part in demonstrations and the annual procession to the Berlin grave of the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Many elderly Germans could not forgive him for placing a spy, Günther Guillaume, at the side of the West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. It led to Brandt’s downfall and removed a key player in attempts to reconcile East and West Germany. Nothing better illustrated the destructiveness of Mr Wolf’s activities: his greatest spying triumph directly harmed the interests of the communist state he was supposedly trying to defend.
“There is suddenly a large public interest in the theme of secret police penetration of society,” said Joachim Gauck, who first opened Stasi police files after communism.
This could lead to a revival of interest in Mr Wolf. But for many minor officials who were blackmailed, bullied or seduced into betrayal by Mr Wolf’s case officers, his death on Wednesday night will come as a relief.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Cold war ping.
Question Ivan do you think he had ANY US politicans in his payroll like maybe Bill Clinton or future Hillary Clinton too LOL or maybe that way before their time
Interesting, I had an uncle who was an educator and headed a University School of Commerce in Chicago. He spent two years in Germany after the reunification advising on economic issues.
I doubt Wolf would have bothered with such unreliable small fry.
Regards, Ivan
Vladimir Putin knows...
Load up a dog with water and bring a dog near the headstone ... it'll know how to pay proper respects to him.
The only man who knew what resides between Helen Thomas's panties and her skin . . . gone.
Cellulite?
Regards, Ivan
I saw the face of Markus Wolf in USN&WR after he was convicted and still in prison. Glowering at the camera, he growled that every person ever arrested by the Stasi deserved their fate. A completely wicked man.
Christians are not supposed to wish someone into Hell. So I won't. Markus Wolf has already done that for himself.
):^(
Okay let cut to the chase
What about any politican not Hillary or BILL maybe Ted Kennedy LOL!
Probably cellulard. Frankly I'd just as soon the secret die with him.
"Shortly before German reunification he fled the country, and sought "political asylum" in Russia and Austria. When denied, he returned to Germany where he was arrested by German police.
Wolf claimed to have refused an offer from the Central Intelligence Agency to defect to the United States.
[1] In 1993 he was convicted of treason by Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf and sentenced to six years imprisonment. This was later repealed by the Federal Criminal Court because he was acting from the territory of the then independent GDR. In 1997 he was convicted of unlawful detention, coercion, and bodily harm, and was given a suspended sentence of two years imprisonment.
Ivan, don't waste good beer on that guy. See if they sell Corona Extra over there, buy a bottle, and pour it on the grave. It'll amount to the same thing anyway.
Seriously, though, even though he was an evil piece of work, there's something to be said for any intel guy who actually takes his secrets to the grave. What a concept.
Markus Wolf
"Ya."
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE HORROR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hey. They guy knew what torture was about.
Ask Vladimr Putin. He would know everything about this guy, as Markus Wolf worked closley with him when Putin ran the KGB outpost in Eastern Germany.
I doubt that Pootie poot will say anything, however.
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