Called "The Man Without a Face" because Western intelligence services long lacked even a picture of him, Wolf directed one of the world's most formidable espionage networks for nearly three decades.

Wolf died on the 17th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nov. 9.

Wolf successfully ran more than 4,000 spies across the Iron Curtain during his tenure at the foreign intelligence division of the Stasi secret police from 1958 to 1987, embedding countless "moles" deep into the West German government.

Most famously, he placed Günter Guillaume as a top aide to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. When the agent was unmasked in 1974, Brandt was forced to resign. Wolf was also responsible for recruiting the head of West German counter-espionage, Hans-Joachim Tiedge, as a double agent. His spies were said to be so effective that East German head of state Erich Honecker regularly got to read the weekly intelligence digest of West German espionage before the West German chancellor.

Man without a face

The West did not even have an authenticated picture of Wolf until the late 1970s, and the first public photograph of him was published only in 1982.

Known by the Russian nickname of "Misha," Wolf charmed many of those who had sworn bitter hatred of him. Tall, dressed in elegant western-style suits and wire-framed glasses, and good-looking, he was dubbed "the Paul Newman of spying" by the West German tabloid press.

Wolf was born in 1923 in Hechingen, western Germany. His father Friedrich was a well-known Jewish communist writer, and his brother Konrad became a famous film director.

Fearing Nazi persecution, the family fled to the Soviet Union in 1934, where they stayed for the next 11 years. He had hoped to study aircraft engineering, but in 1945 was sent by the Communist Party to work in radio in Berlin.

He worked in East Germany's Moscow embassy for two years as first counsellor before returning to build up the espionage service. He left his post for "personal reasons" in 1987.

Exiled in Russia

On Sept. 30, 1990, three days before reunification went into effect he fled to Moscow. A West German arrest warrant had already been out for him for 15 months.

In Moscow, he wrote books about his family and life as an exile, one of which, "The Troika," was published in the West to critical acclaim.

Return to Germany

Wolf eventually returned of his own free will and was arrested and put on trial in Düsseldorf. He was sentenced in 1993 to six years in prison for high treason, but in a landmark decision, the country's top court ruled that East German spies could not be prosecuted.

Wolf was briefly jailed for contempt of court because he resisted a judge's demand to unmask former spies saying he was a victim of "victors' justice."

In later years, Wolf became a top-selling author, releasing his memoirs called "The Man Without a Face" and a blend of recipes and anecdotes called "Secrets of the Russian Kitchen."