 He was commissioned by "The New York Times" to write an independent assessment of "Times" correspondent Walter Duranty and his reporting on the Soviet Union after the newspaper received a letter from the Pulitzer Prize Board regarding allegations of Duranty's role in the cover-up of the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine.Born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Daniel von Hagen (February 29, 1924 – August 7, 2019), a high school history teacher, and Martha (Kastner) von Hagen (d. 2013), Mark von Hagen and his brother, Luke, were raised in Colorado.Von Hagen was educated at Georgetown University, Indiana University-Bloomington, and Stanford University, where he received his Ph.D.