XV of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS) within a year,
and his promotion to major general followed six months later. Under
the reorganization of Ernst Wollweber in 1956, Main Division XV
received its final designation—HVA—and Wolf was named a deputy
minister of state security.
The HVA’s intelligence operations were largely run by a staff of
Soviet instructors until 1960. Wolf maintained a low profile, despite
his close personal and poltical ties to Moscow. Western officials
referred to him as the “man without a face,” for not until a visit to
Stockholm in 1978 was he photographed and then later identified by
the HVA defector Werner Stiller. By that time, however, his reputa-
tion as a skilled espionage practitioner had been firmly established.
His most spectacular placement was Günter Guillaume, the so-
called, “chancellor spy,” who worked in the office of West German
leader Willy Brandt. (Wolf later termed the eventual outcome as
“the greatest defeat we suffered up to that time.”) Many of his most
notable successes involved the deployment of Romeo spies, and
sometimes he met personally with top female agents such as Gabri-
elle Gast. Another favored method was what he termed “seamless
penetration,” which relied on the reuse of passports confiscated from
West Germans emigrating to the GDR.
On 15 November 1986, Wolf retired from the MfS. Although he
said it was to pursue a literary career, the records of National Defense
Council stated that the move had occurred for reasons of health. Yet
another explanation was given in 1992 by his superior Erich Mielke,
who pointed to Wolf’s second divorce and new marriage, stating his
private life had unduly interfered with his official duties.
During the revolution of 1989, it appeared that Wolf might emerge
as a political reformer in an attempt to prevent the collapse of the
GDR. On 4 November, he took the unusual step of speaking before
a huge demonstration at the Alexanderplatz in East Berlin, openly
conceding his past MfS affiliation and trying to protect his former
colleagues as much as possible. Undeterred by the generally hostile
reception, he pursued his reform plan for the MfS with the new gov-
ernment of Hans Modrow in early December. His proposal took sharp
issue with Mielke’s autocratic style and concept of total surveillance
and called for the rehabilitation of certain party members and an in-
vestigation of internal abuses, even though—in Leninist fashion—no500 • WOLF, MARKUS