Markus Wolf, 83; East German spy boss called the ‘Man Without a Face’

Markus Wolf, the spymaster who epitomized Cold War espionage as head of the brutal and cleverly inventive East German foreign intelligence service, died Thursday at his home in Berlin. He was 83. The cause of death was not announced.

Suave and elusive, Wolf was such an enigma that Western intelligence agencies didn’t know exactly what he looked like during tense decades when a divided Germany was a haven for agents and double agents in a war for information between Moscow and Washington. Wolf was known as the “Man Without a Face,” which later became the title of his autobiography.

He oversaw 4,000 spies, many of whom infiltrated West Germany’s police, military and corporations such as Siemens and IBM. One of his biggest intelligence coups was planting Gunter Guillaume as an aide to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. Guillaume was found out, forcing an embarrassed Brandt to resign in 1974. Wolf also ran “Romeo” agents who seduced government secretaries for files and documents.

Wolf, whose spies uncovered plans for U.S. missile sites in the 1970s and ‘80s, wrote in his memoirs that Germany “was a huge web of declared and undeclared connections, secret shame and covert loyalties on both the right and the left. Nothing was certain, no one could be trusted completely, appearances deceived.”

The exploits of his agents slipping through the Berlin Wall and penetrating the West had a romantic cachet abroad, especially with the popularity of novels by John le Carre. But at home in communist East Germany, Wolf’s foreign intelligence service was connected to the Stasi -- the reviled secret police responsible for the imprisonment, deaths and disappearances of thousands. Wolf also later admitted that his office aided militant groups, including the Irish Republican Army and the West German Red Army faction.

Marianne Birthler, director of the Stasi record office, told the German media: “I’m sorry that he left this world without taking the chance to face his past and to declare himself responsible.”

A former journalist and diplomat who was born Jan. 19, 1923, in Hechingen, a small town in southwest Germany, Wolf was not yet 30 when he became East German intelligence chief in 1952. Dossiers kept by Western spies described him as highly intelligent, quick-witted and an elegant dresser. He startled the spy world on Feb. 6, 1987, when an eight-line notice appeared in the East German party newspaper, Neues Deutschland: “General Markus Wolf, who at his own request is leaving the active service of the Ministry for State Security, has received expressions of thanks and recognition ... “

After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Wolf escaped to Russia, where he had spent much of his childhood after his Jewish playwright father and communist mother fled Germany in 1933.

The CIA offered Wolf a new identity and a home in California in return for his help in rooting out Soviet moles. He declined, and in 1991 turned himself in to West German authorities. He was tried and found guilty of treason, but the sentence was overturned. He was later convicted on kidnapping-related charges in a second trial and received a two-year suspended sentence.

In his later years, Wolf published a cookbook on Russian cuisine and wrote his memoirs. He occasionally gave lectures and TV interviews in an effort to rehabilitate his reputation after German reunification. He once told Reuters: “I can’t say I’m proud of what I did. I’m not. But I don’t think I’ve lived for nothing.”

Wolf is survived by his wife, three sons and a stepdaughter.

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com

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Petra Falkenberg and Christian Retzlaff in The Times’ Berlin bureau contributed to this report.