...a manager who.. created a environment in which we... could work undisturbed from corporate politics and management games. He was the interface between us developers and the rest of the company.

Nailed it, but this is only half of what makes a great manager in my opinion, essentially "letting as little of the shit flow downhill as possible". The other half is always making sure your team is enabled as much as possible to do what they need; that they have necessary resources, equipment, etc., and don't waste their own time having to find ways to do so themselves or otherwise find workarounds.

I had one manager like this in my career, and God help me I miss him. I stay in touch and still tell him so from time to time.

Micromanagement is as worse as ignoring the problems of the developers. A manager who thinks is job description is "drill sergeant" won't be able to manage a team of developers.

Nailed half of it again. The other half here is when said manager refuses to accept responsibility for failure and instead blames his subordinates and/or predecessors. I've also had one manager who exhibited these behaviors.

"I'm a genius and always the smartest person in the room. I also am the greatest expert on every topic ever as soon as I've thought about it for at least five seconds, none of my subordinates could possible know more about anything than me so I should always be micromanaging them and telling them exactly what to do in every situation, and if you think what I said blatantly makes no sense that's just because you are so simple compared to my vast intellect. Well, if we failed in our goals it's obviously the fault of all my various subordinates and not me, because after all, I'm awesome; in fact it's ridiculous they haven't made me CEO of this company yet! Almost all of my subordinates hate me, give me horribly unflattering feedback, and want me fired? Well this is obviously just a culture problem I've inherited from the previous manager, so the problem now is obviously all of my subordinates, it couldn't possibly be me, I reiterate, I'm awesome! Now excuse me, I have to go give completely undeserved promotions to literally the only two people working under me who do nothing but kiss my ass and inflate my ego."