The estate of top GDR spy Markus Wolf goes to the USA

Was he now the “gentleman” spy that he portrayed himself as in (un)retirement? Or the “head of a criminal organization that destroyed families, blackmailed people and wanted to undermine freedom in the West,” as the head of “ZDF Magazine,” Gerhard Löwenthal, put it, for decades both the target of the GDR state security and the bitterest opponent of the SED dictatorship. Judgments about Markus Wolf (1923–2006) vary widely.

Exactly on the 20th anniversary of his death, the Hoover Institution in Stanford (US state of California), one of the most important contemporary historical research institutions in the world, has now announced a scoop: the estate of the long-time head of GDR foreign espionage will in future be in the archives of the privately financed institution. Essential parts should gradually be made freely accessible to the public in digitalized form.

“The Markus Wolf Collection offers a unique insight into the world of international communism, Cold War espionage and post-Cold War politics from the perspective of the former spy chief of the GDR,” comments historian Christian F. Ostermann. The Cold War expert is currently a visiting scholar at Hoover and previously headed the history and public policy program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington D.C. Ostermann is currently writing the first scholarly biography of Wolf and is pleased about the acquisition of his estate: “This is an extremely important contribution to the knowledge of key turning points and conflicts of the 20th century.”

Wolf was born in Hechingen in 1923 as the son of the Jewish doctor, writer and communist Friedrich Wolf. When he was ten years old, the entire family had to leave Germany after Hitler came to power. In 1934 the Wolfs arrived in Moscow in exile; Markus Wolf spent his youth here.

The young emigrant received the best education imaginable: at the German-speaking Karl Liebknecht School and, above all, at an elite Comintern school. At the age of 19 he became a member of the exiled KPD; This meant that his life's path was almost predetermined: Wolf would become a top official in a communist-dominated post-war Germany.

He arrived in the Soviet-occupied part of Germany in May 1945 and became a young functionary in the re-established KPD, which absorbed the SPD in April 1946 and was renamed the SED. In addition to this “development work,” Wolf initially worked as a journalist; His reports from the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial became very well known in unified Germany after 1990. However, this is due less to their special quality and more to the prominent name of their author.

But Wolf was soon drawn to another central area of ​​the communist regime: espionage. He moved to the “Institute for Economic Research”, the front organization of what later became the Enlightenment Headquarters, the foreign intelligence service of the newly founded GDR. Within a few months, Wolf schemed his way to the top, disregarding older colleagues who stood in his way.

From 1952 to 1986, Wolf was also formally in charge of GDR foreign espionage. In 1954, at the age of 31, he was promoted to major general: exceptionally early. In 1965 he was promoted to lieutenant general - it was the reward for more than a decade of successful development of the apparatus. Since 1980, with the rank of colonel general, he controlled the ultimately hopeless fight of the Stasi against the West German system, which was superior in every respect.

Markus Wolf used all means without hesitation, including massive violations of human rights: blackmail and kidnapping as well as the death penalty for renegade agents.

It is unclear how “successful” Wolf’s espionage ultimately was: Whether industrial espionage and the influence of the West German left significantly extended the survival of the gerontocratic regime can neither be confirmed nor refuted.

In 1990 Markus Wolf fled Germany again and back to Moscow; this time, however, before the rule of law. In 1991, after the failed coup by the Soviet army and the KGB against Gorbachev, he returned to Germany. A series of trials followed in which Wolf testified amidst great media interest and defended the GDR, but especially the Stasi.

He was convicted twice himself, first for treason, then for depriving a kidnapped Stasi refugee of his liberty. Apart from a brief pre-trial detention in 1991 and a few days in prison in 1998, the SED's chief spy, whose main task was the disintegration of West German democracy, was never in prison.

Despite the unbearable leniency of the constitutional state for victims of the SED dictatorship, Wolf never tired of accusing the Federal Republic of “victor’s justice” until the very end. In numerous interviews, lectures and several books, he developed into a prominent defender of the SED's unjust state.

His followers thanked the eloquent top spy. “He was an enlightener,” is how the publishing house “Neues Berlin” captioned the obituary for its best-selling author. The PDS (as the left-wing extremist party was called in the course of one of its numerous sheddings just when Wolf died on November 9, 2006) was in mourning in the “New Germany”. The then chairman Lothar Bisky, himself an informant for the “Enlightenment Headquarters” from 1966 to 1979 and again from 1986/87, signed on behalf of the document, as well as the highest-ranking PDS representative at the time, Petra Pau, who was Vice President of the Bundestag in 2006. They praised “a fierce fighter who went through his life upright.”

The Hoover Institution sought to preserve his legacy for many years. The holdings, which will be accessible to the interested public after the archival indexing, at least largely in barrier-free digital versions, contain materials on Wolf's life and professional career; The “Markus J. Wolf Papers” therefore represent an important source for research into the East German foreign secret service.

Significant parts of the foreign secret service files were systematically destroyed in 1989/90. Wolf's personal papers are therefore likely to provide valuable insight into the history, operations and international networks of East German foreign intelligence during the Cold War.

According to the Hoover Institution, the holdings include extensive correspondence, minutes of party and secret service meetings, documents from court proceedings and photo albums with handwritten dedications from prominent people. Also included are dozens of draft manuscripts and materials related to Wolf's published works.

“As a young scholar working on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and even as a member of the National Security Council under President George H. W. Bush at the end of the Cold War, I would have given anything to have access to this material,” said Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State and now Director of the Hoover Institution, commenting on the acquisition: “I am grateful that the collection will be available to future researchers to understand this crucial period in human history.” According to Rice, the acquisition of the extensive holdings should “enable historical analyzes that can illuminate current political issues and will provide an indispensable source for scholars of future generations.”

Sven Felix Kellerhoff is senior editor at WELTgeschichte. The GDR and the Federal Republic are among his main topics. He has dealt with secret service history in many facets, including as co-author of the book “Capital of Spies”.