Star of postwar German cinema was Soviet spy, declassified files... about:reader?url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/...

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Star of postwar German cinema

was Soviet spy, declassified files
show
Kate Connolly
6-7 minutes

Marika Rökk revealed as Soviet agent working from 1940s

onwards for network passing Third Reich secrets to Moscow

Marika Rökk, whose career began during the Nazi era, went on to
star in almost 40 films until her death at the age of 90 in 2004.
Photograph: Ronald Grant

One of Germany’s best-loved postwar actors has been

exposed as a Soviet agent following the declassification of
top secret intelligence documents.

Marika Rökk, who was banned from acting for two years for
her apparent closeness to the Nazi regime, had in fact been
working from the 1940s onwards for a reconnaissance
network passing Third Reich secrets to Moscow.

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Rökk was born in Cairo in 1913 to Hungarian parents and

spent her childhood in Budapest. Her career began during
the Nazi era as an operetta star, and she went on to perform
in almost 40 films before her death aged 90 in 2004.

It is believed she was recruited as a KGB agent by her

manager, Heinz Hoffmeister, who was already working for
Soviet intelligence. What Rökk’s role was, and specifically
what information she might have passed on to Moscow,
remains unclear.

Her husband, the film director Georg Jacoby, is thought to

have spied alongside her.

Krona, the network of agents she was a member of, was

responsible for passing on high-class military intelligence,
including plans for Operation Barbarossa and the Battle of
Kursk.

The network was led by the legendary Soviet agent Yan

Chernyak, nicknamed the “man without a shadow” for his
ability to move around undetected. Chernyak himself was
recruited by Soviet military intelligence while studying in
Berlin in the 1940s.

His network of about 35 agents included bankers, military

officials and secretaries, as well as the actor Olga Chekhova.

Rökk’s role as a Soviet spy was uncovered by the Gehlen

Organisation, the West German agency which preceded
Germany’s current foreign intelligence agency, the BND, and
first made a formal note of its suspicions in its records in
November 1951. In a file published by the tabloid Bild that
had been classified top secret for 50 years, but which has just
been released, Rökk’s “connections to Russian intelligence

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posts” – as Bild put it – are laid bare.

In 1951 Rökk announced she was giving up her acting career

after 16 years. Newspapers at the time said that she wanted
to devote herself to running a boutique selling authentic
Swiss woollenware in Düsseldorf.

But west German intelligence concluded the plan was a

“clever chess-move cover” allowing her to continue to spy for
the Soviets.

Rökk was groomed by the Nazi regime to offer the Third

Reich public homegrown acting talent to compete with the
likes of Hollywood stars Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayworth.
She was considered to be one of Hitler’s favourite actors and
is reported to have had an affair with his propaganda
minister, Joseph Goebbels.

She shot to fame in 1935 after starring in Leichte Kavallerie

(Light Cavalry), becoming one of the most prolific stars of her
time. She often starred alongside Johannes Heesters in
propaganda films, and was said to bring a degree of
exoticism to her roles with a light Hungarian accent.

It is not known if Rökk ever knew she was under suspicion for
espionage. Neither is it known whether any attempts were
made to prevent her from continuing. She was for years
considered to have been anti-communist. The two-year work
ban imposed on her at the end of the second world war as
punishment for the close relationship she had with the inner
circle of the Nazi leadership may have helped her keep up
the pretence. Or she managed to keep a close relationship
with both regimes.

A postcard dated November 1940 that she wrote to Hitler in

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which she thanks him profusely for a bouquet of flowers he

sent her is on display in Berlin’s film museum.

• This article was amended on 22 March 2017 to clarify

references to the BND and the Gehlen Organisation.

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