Markus Johannes Wolf (19 January 1923 – 9 November 2006), also known as Mischa,[1] was an East German spy who served as the head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung), the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, abbr.

Wolf was born 19 January 1923, in Hechingen, Province of Hohenzollern (now Baden-Württemberg), to a German-Jewish father and a non-Jewish German mother.

[10] As intelligence chief, he achieved great success in penetrating the government, political and business circles of West Germany with spies.

[9] Although the GDR provided direct support to these main countries, the Soviet Union's KGB required Wolf's Stasi to coordinate its efforts with the KGB and beginning in the 1970s they worked together as equals using data from all the Eastern European intelligence services stored at a center in Moscow to unify all the information about international terrorism from all GDR and USSR friendly security services.

[9] Wolf's Stasi provided direct training to intelligence services from Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, South Yemen and Ethiopia.

[9] Other terrorism related individuals, groups and events that Wolf's Stasi directly supported include Yasser Arafat, who headed the PLO, George Habash, who headed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Venezuelan Illich Ramirez Sanchez, whose code name was "Separat" but was known as "Carlos the Jackal" and often visited East Berlin and the GDR, the terrorists involved with the April 1986 La Belle discothèque bombing in West Berlin, Abu Nidal and Abu Daoud, who organized the Munich massacre during September 1972 at the Munich Olympics.

[9] Wolf retired in 1986 with the rank of Generaloberst, being succeeded by Werner Grossmann as head of the East German foreign intelligence service.

"[17]In September 1990, shortly before German reunification, Wolf fled the country, and sought political asylum in Russia and Austria.

Wolf claimed to have refused an offer of a large amount of money, a new identity with plastic surgery to change his features, and a home in California from the Central Intelligence Agency to defect to the United States.

[20] He was additionally sentenced to three days' imprisonment for refusing to testify against Paul Gerhard Flämig [de] when the former West German (SPD) politician was accused in 1993 of atomic espionage.

In 2011, the State Social Court of Berlin-Brandenburg ruled that the widow Andrea Wolf was not entitled to a "compensation pension" that her husband had been stripped of as a "fighter against fascism".

[24] John le Carré's fictional spymaster Karla, a Russian, who appears in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People was believed by some readers to be modeled on Wolf.

[26] Le Carré has also stated that it is "sheer nonsense" to claim that Wolf was the inspiration for the character Fiedler in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.

Although Fiedler is a German Jew who spent World War II in exile and then gained a senior position in East Germany's Intelligence Service, Carré said he had no idea who Markus Wolf was at the time of the writing of the book.

[29] Conversely, Wolf stated that The Spy Who Came In From the Cold was the only book he read for a period in the early 1960s, and was surprised how accurately it presented the reality within the East German security services.

Forsyth also mentions Wolf in his earlier novel The Fourth Protocol, describing him, and the East German intelligence service as a whole, as masters of the false flag recruitment technique.