Julius Ferdinand Wollf

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Julius Ferdinand Wollf (born May 22, 1871 in Koblenz , † February 27, 1942 in Dresden ) was a German journalist , publicist and newspaper publisher . From 1903 to 1933 he was editor-in-chief and co-publisher of the daily newspaper Dresdner Latest Nachrichten .

Life

Stumbling block for Julius Wollf and his wife Johanna in Dresden
Stumbling blocks for Julius Wollf and his siblings in Koblenz
Grave of Julius Wollf, his wife Johanna and his brother Max in the New Jewish Cemetery in Dresden

Julius Wollf was born in Koblenz as the first of five siblings. His parents were the Jewish merchant and wine merchant Ferdinand Wollf and Marianne Wollf, b. Small fruit. After graduating from high school in his hometown, he studied philosophy, history, economics as well as art and literary history in Koblenz. He then worked as a dramaturge at the theater in Karlsruhe. In 1899 he went to Munich and worked for the " Münchner Zeitung ".

As early as 1903, the editor Dr. August Huck as managing director of the Dresden branch that published the "Dresdner Latest News" (DNN). The theater critic Wollf soon took over the editor-in-chief. Julius Ferdinand Wollf headed the DNN as editor-in-chief and co-editor for almost 30 years.

Karl August Lingner and Gustav Stresemann were among his circle of friends and acquaintances. He represented national and liberal positions. With his newspaper, he particularly promoted art and theater criticism as well as popular hygiene. He was also significantly involved in the establishment of the German Hygiene Museum in 1912 and the implementation of the first World Hygiene Exhibition in 1911.

The Saxon King Friedrich August III. awarded him the title of professor in 1916, and in 1918 he received the Saxon War Merit Cross . Wollf was a member of the Association of Saxon Industrialists and the Association of German Newspaper Publishers (VDZV), of which he was first deputy chairman in 1928.

In 1930 Wollf was deputy chairman of the Dresden Rotary Club, which had 51 members, including the Saxon Prime Minister, ministers, presidents, general directors and professors.

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Wolff, who was a Christian of Jewish descent, was increasingly subjected to reprisals and humiliation and finally, on March 31, 1933, he was forced out of his position as editor-in-chief of the DNN and from the board of the Hygiene Museum. For a long time Wollf had underestimated the dangers and even called on his employees to become members of the NSDAP so that more decent people could undermine it, as Karl Laux reports in his autobiography. He soon had to experience this error in his own life.

On March 30, 1933, Victor Klemperer wrote in his diary: “Yesterday a pathetic declaration by the 'Dresdner NN' 'on their own behalf' '92.5 percent of you are based on Aryan capital, Mr. Wollf, owner of the remaining 7.5 percent, resign editor-in-chief ... '"

In his increasing need as a result of the professional ban, he sold a painting by the Bulgarian painter Jules Pascin to the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt in 1935 . He also suffered from an eye condition and largely went blind.

Julius Wollf and his wife Johanna Sophie, b. Gutmann, who was born in Mannheim on October 18, 1877 , decided to flee to death by means of poison. He died on February 27, 1942 in Dresden.

A few weeks earlier, on January 20, 1942, his brother Max Wollf, who was the commercial director of the DNN publishing house, had committed suicide by hanging himself in the Wollfs' house.

Karl Wollf , cousin of Julius Wollf, was dismissed as a dramaturge at the Staatstheater Dresden in 1935 and fled to London via France in June 1942. The grave for Julius Wollf and his wife and brother Max is located in the New Jewish Cemetery in Dresden.

In 2007 the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig laid stumbling blocks for Julius Wollf and his 4 siblings Frieda, Klara, Rosalie and Max in front of the house where they were born in Koblenz . In 2016, stumbling blocks for Julius Wollf and his wife Johanna were laid in front of his former home in Dresden , sponsored by today's DNN .

Works

  • Julius Ferdinand Wollf, Badisch Blut: historical verse play in 1 act , 1902.
  • Julius Ferdinand Wollf, Theater - From ten years of acting in Dresden , Erich Reiss Verlag, Berlin, 1913.
  • Julius Ferdinand Wollf: Lingner and his legacy . Hegner, Hellerau 1930.

literature

  • Hans-Joachim Hofmann: The development of the 'Dresdner Latest News' from the Generalanzeiger to the local newspaper . Dissertation University of Leipzig 1940.
  • Jens Fritzsche: The 'Dresden Latest News' and Julius Ferdinand Wollf. Diploma thesis University of Leipzig 1996, university thesis.
  • Jens Fritzsche: Julius Ferdinand Wollf: Searching for someone who has been erased . Ed .: Alexander Atanassow. KUNSTBLATT Verlag, Dresden 2019, ISBN 978-3-9820163-0-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b The Jewish houses in Wiesbaden: Ghettoization and exclusion of the Jewish population 1939 to 1942
  2. ↑ A jubilee of Professor Julius Ferdinand Wollfs - 25 years of publisher of the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten, in: Zeitungs-Verlag - Fachblatt für das Gesamtzeitungwesen, Berlin, July 28, 1928, No. 30
  3. ^ Friedrich Salzburg: My life in Dresden before and after January 30, 1933, life report of a Jewish lawyer from American exile in 1940., Dresden 2001 , ISBN 3-934382-04-5 , p. 48
  4. ^ Karl Laux: Obituary for the "Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten", in: Nachklang - Autobiographie, Verlag der Nation, Berlin, 1977, p. 232ff.
  5. ^ Victor Klemperer: I want to give testimony to the last - Diaries 1933–1941, Aufbau Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-351-02340-5
  6. ↑ Maurice Philip Remy: The Gurlitt case: The true story of Germany's greatest art scandal . Europa Verlag GmbH & Company KG, 2017, ISBN 978-3-95890-190-2 , p. 212 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  7. ↑ Federal Archives: Memorial Book - Victims of Persecution of the Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933–1945
  8. ↑ A stumbling block for former DNN editor-in-chief Julius Wollf, Dresden Latest News, September 23, 2016
personal data
SURNAME Wollf, Julius Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Koblenz
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1942
Place of death Dresden