Germany's Nazi-era film star Marika Rökk suspected of spying for Soviets

Declassified intelligence documents have revealed that Marika Rökk, Germany's famed film star of the Nazi and postwar periods, was a spy for the Soviet Union.

According to a report in The Telegraph, Hungarian-born Rökk, who rose to fame in 1930s, was suspected of being a spy for Soviets' intelligence agency KGB for about 50 years.

Gehlen Organisation, predecessor of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, was the first to identify her as a possible KGB agent. The Gehlen Organisation was worried about Rökk’s “connections with Soviet authorities” which it believed “suggested intelligence work”.

Rökk’s husband Georg Jacoby, a film director at the time, was also suspected to be working for the KGB.

The declassified report said that Rökk’s announcement regarding her exit from the industry in 1951 was “clever camouflage manoeuvre” so that she could continue spying.

After World War II, Rökk was banned from acting for two years for her association with the Nazi regime. She returned to become one of the most famous film stars of the post-war era.