19 Facts About Theodor Wolff

Theodor Wolff was a German writer who was influential as a journalist, critic and newspaper editor.

Theodor Wolff was born in Berlin, second of the four recorded children of a fabric wholesaler from Silesia called Adam Wolff by his marriage to Recha, nee Davidsohn.

Theodor Wolff married in 1902, in Paris, the actress Marie Louise Charlotte Anna Hickethier, coming from a Protestant Prussian family.

Emperor Frederick died in June 1888 and Theodor Wolff embarked on an itinerant career, writing pieces and sending them in to Berlin by telegraph from, successively, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Italy.

Between 1906 and 1933 Theodor Wolff served the Tageblatt as editor-in-chief, developing it into one of Germany's most influential newspapers.

On domestic issues the paper's attitude under Theodor Wolff favoured civil rights and a liberal-democratic approach, advocating a "parliamentarisation" of the constitution and vigorously opposing the "Dreiklassenwahlrecht" which had been introduced in 1849 and which was, by the beginning of the twentieth century, widely perceived as a badly flawed application of the democratic ideal.

Theodor Wolff refused to compromise his editorial line, and the Berliner Tageblatt continued to promote the politically toxic view that the only route to a lasting peace was for Germany to come to an understanding with France.

In November 1918 Theodor Wolff was one of the founders of the German Democratic Party, committed to individual freedom and social responsibility.

Theodor Wolff had himself played a central role in the party's defining manifesto, but he took no leadership position within the DDP preferring, not for the last time, the role of a powerful newspaper editor.

In 1920 Hermann Muller, who in the early summer was briefly the German Chancellor, invited Theodor Wolff to take on the position of German Ambassador to Paris but, again, Theodor Wolff opted to remain a Berlin-based journalist.

Theodor Wolff was continuing to attract important writers as contributors for the Tageblatt.

Theodor Wolff's name started to appear on the death lists of various radical-right and populist groups, causing Wolff to become anxious that he might share the fate of Walther Rathenau, the generally popular Jewish Foreign Minister and fellow DDP member who had been shot dead by a gang of three extremists in June 1922.

In May 1933 Theodor Wolff's books were among those listed by the government for the public book burnings.

In exile Theodor Wolff reverted to writing books, while still contributing occasional pieces of journalism to newspapers.

Theodor Wolff dedicated his last novel, Die Schwimmerin to his secretary from the Berlin days, Ilse Stobe.

Theodor Wolff continued to distance himself from Zionist separatism, believing throughout his life in a "German-Jewish symbiosis".

The coastal strip along the south-eastern part of France including, from late 1942, Nice was in the process of being annexed by Italy, and on 23 May 1943 Theodor Wolff was arrested by the Italian civil authorities.

Theodor Wolff was handed over to the Gestapo and interned in a Marseilles jail before being transferred to the Drancy detention centre near Paris.

Drancy was used as a collection point for Jewish internees scheduled for deportation to internment camps and death camps in Germany, and Theodor Wolff now found himself transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp to the east of Berlin.