Shortly after he received his doctorate, a promising academic career was interrupted in 1934 when he joined the (by this time illegal) Communist Party and briefly became a resistance activist.
[1][3] Markov was born into a Protestant family in Graz, an industrial and administrative city along the mainline between Vienna and Trieste, in the heart of what was still at that time the Austro-Hungarian empire.
He complains about the heavy traffic on the roads beside the river, which was unusually heavy due to the Olympic Games being held in Amsterdam: just outside Bonn he was involved in a collision with a motorcyclist: he did not like the very acidic wine people drank in that little city: in Cologne the cathedral was simply too large for a decent photograph: Düsseldorf was worth checking out: but Duisburg and the large heavily industrialised region behind the port was the "ugliest piece of all Germany".
He was also impressed by Johannes Ziekursch, a specialist on the history of Silesia, who delighted Markov with his trenchantly critical evaluation of the iconic Prussian king, Frederick the Great.
As a student of political history Markov nevertheless enjoyed a ringside seat for the accelerating collapse of what Adolf Hitler had scornfully derided at a party rally in 1929 as the "Republic of Weimar".
[2] For the summer term of 1933 he moved on yet again, this time to the University of Hamburg, intending to study for a doctorate with Richard G. Salomon, an expert on eastern European medieval history.
In the new Germany Schadow was doomed to be something of an outsider and therefore a government opponent: his family came from Niedamowo (near Danzig), and he had been unable to demonstrate to the authorities that all four of his grandparents came from good German stock.
[2][9] An idea attributed to Arthur Toynbee was that they could at least take steps to enlighten English-language tourists visiting the country about the true nature of the National Socialist regime.
One source for the texts was leaflets that the ever travel-hungry Markov had picked up in Luxembourg in March 1934, when he had taken a bus to the Grand Duchy in connection with a "World Cup Qualifying Match" involving the Germany national football team.
They gathered more material when Markov, Meschke, Toynbee and Schadow took a cycling trip to the Saarland which had been under French military occupation since 1919 and was therefore, for most purposes, beyond the reach of the German security services.
There was discussion of a possible assassination in front of the Alexander Koenig Museum in connection with an expected visit to the city by Hermann Göring, which might be used to attract further recruits to the cause.
Markov's doctorate in February 1934 had been followed by a graduation ceremony in July 1934 at which discussion had turned to Wilhelm Pieck, already a leading figure in the hierarchy of the German Communist Party.
Markov, whose middle names were "Karl" and "Hugo" took to using the initials "CH" to sign his articles in the resistance newspaper "Sozialistische Republik" for which he had himself chosen the title and which for the time being was filled almost exclusively with his own contributions.
This was done so openly that Markov later speculated that it was not the government directed Gestapo who were responsible, but good local Catholics from the Bonn city police department trying to warn him of the danger in which he was placing himself.
Sources indicate that in the end the Markov group were betrayed by people believed to be fellow communists who were involved in carrying illicit party mail.
Anthony's famous father, Arnold Toynbee, made the journey to Berlin in order to intercede personally with a government minister, Hanns Kerrl.
[3] He later described the work he was given as "tiresome, but not difficult" ("lästig [aber] nicht schwer"): plucking hemp, sorting tinfoil ([possibly for flak production, knitting army socks with a machine or embroidering raffia bags.
Interventions by his mother and from his old university supervisor and mentor, Fritz Kern brought some improvement in his conditions including, in 1944, a transfer from the "tailoring hall" – where the lice on soldiers' clothing sent in for repair constituted a constant health threat – to the prison library.
He was also given an off-site assignment to work at a section of Bonn University (approximately ten kilometers / six miles away) that had been destroyed by aerial bombing, to rescue (part of) Fritz Kern's library from the rubble.
He was taken into various hospitals and facilities outside Siegburg, but in June 1945 was able to return to Bonn, the city where he had been building his academic career more than ten years ago before he was arrested.He found a centrally located room which he was able to rent as a sub-tenant.
The university rector was now Heinrich Konen who was unwilling to back an application from an avowed antifascist who was even now devoting his energies to rebuilding the (no longer illegal) Communist Party.
[2] With the question of where to build his future still unresolved, Markov considered moving back to Slovenia – by now part of Yugoslavia – or Graz (still in Austria) in order to be near his parents and wider family.
At the conference he was able to make himself noticed by giving a reply to the speech of welcome given by Anton Ackermann, a leading member of the team engaged since 1945 in implementing a well planned nation-building exercise under the supervision of the military administration and the leadership of Walter Ulbricht.
[2] During 1947/48 he joined up with a teacher from Fulda called Martin Hellweg to represent the Communist Party and the SED in the deliberations of the Imshausen Society, a coming together of approximately forty intellectuals from the four occupation zones.
There was an underlying assumption that military occupation would not last forever, and that when it came to an end there should be a realistic set of plans in place for a strong Germany, united in a spirit of rejection against any possible revival of National Socialism.
In February 1959 a Stasi officer called Rauch, visiting him in his apartment, obtained a verbal commitment ("Verpflichtungsgespräch") from Markov that he should provide reports on people he came across in the course of his work.
[14] Rauch, who became Markov's Stasi handler, was chiefly interested in his "international" contacts, meaning members of the academic community in West Germany and the "capitalist abroad".
(In practice, outside West Germany espionage on behalf of Warsaw Pact governments was usually undertaken by the KGB, whose reports went directly to Moscow.)
[16] In 1963 he briefly held a guest professorship in Sri Lanka, but throughout and beyond the 1960s, even though he was the recipient of a number of academic awards and prizes from foreign universities, most of his research and teaching still took place in Leipzig.
[4] His later years were encumbered by poor health, but he continued to publish regular articles in the academic press and to observe the progress German Democratic Republic from his Marxist perspective.