great success in penetrating the government, political and business circles of West Germany with spies. The most notable individual in this regard was Günter Guillaume, who was secretary to and close friend of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, and whose exposure as an East German agent led to Brandt's resignation in 1974. For most of his career, Wolf was known as "the man without a face" due to his elusiveness. It was reported that Western agencies did not know what the East German spy chief looked like until 1978, when he was photographed by , Sweden's National Security Service, during a visit to Stockholm, Sweden. An East German defector, Werner Stiller, then identified Wolf to West German counter-intelligence as the man in the picture. It has also been suggested that elements within the CIA had identified him by 1959 from photographs of attendees at the Nuremberg trials. Retirement He retired in 1986 with the rank of Generaloberst, being succeeded by Werner Grossmann as head of the East German foreign intelligence service. He continued the work of his late brother Konrad in writing the story of their upbringing in Moscow in the 1930s. The book Troika came out on the same day in East and West Germany. During the Peaceful Revolution, Wolf distanced himself from the hardline position taken by Erich Honecker, favouring reform. He spoke at the November 1989 Alexanderplatz demonstration, where he was both booed and applauded by a highly divided crowd during his speech. Calls to "stop" the speech, even to "hang" Wolf could be heard. The dissident Bärbel Bohley would later say: In September 1990, shortly before German reunification, Wolf fled the country, and sought political asylum in Russia and Austria. When denied, he returned to Germany, where he was brutally beaten and arrested by German police. 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. In 1993, he was convicted of treason by the Düsseldorf and sentenced to six years' imprisonment. This was later quashed by the German supreme court, because West Germany was a separate country at the time. In 1997, he was convicted of unlawful detention, coercion, and bodily harm, and was given a suspended sentence of two years' imprisonment. He was additionally sentenced