Marguerite Wolff

Marguerite Wolff (born Jolowicz ; * December 10, 1883 in London ; † May 21, 1964 there ) was a German-British lawyer and later head of department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Berlin .

Life

After studying English at Newnham College in Cambridge , she married Martin Wolff (1872–1953) in 1906 , with whom she had two sons, and moved to Berlin. During the First World War she worked as a nurse . From 1925 to 1933 she was employed as an assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and built the institute together with Director Victor Bruns , she worked as an unofficial head of department. After being expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, she returned to exile in London in 1935, where she renewed her British citizenship. Both sons emigrated immediately in 1933. Her husband followed in 1938 after his expulsion as a professor from Berlin University (1935) and from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (1937). Wolff helped her husband with his work and shaped his translations significantly. She also translated legal works by other German emigrants into English. She worked for the BBC news broadcasts during World War II . After the war she worked as a translator again, including at the war crimes trials in Nuremberg .

Marguerite Wolff helped her husband significantly in his work on “ Private Law in Great Britain” (1945, 1950) and defined the term “the incidental question” in the translation of his work “Private International Law”. In the tradition , however, she never appears as an independent lawyer, sometimes as “her husband's assistant” or translator of his works, mostly only as Martin Wolff's “(English) wife”.

literature

• Gerhard Dannemann : Comparative Law in Exile. Martin Wolff and English Law. Inaugural lecture, July 1, 2003, Humboldt University Berlin, Great Britain Center. Humboldt University, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-86004-181-9 ( PDF; 304 kB ), esp. Pp. 4–5 and pp. 11–12.
• Anna-Maria Countess von Lösch: The naked ghost. The Law Faculty of the Berlin University in the upheaval of 1933 (= contributions to the legal history of the 20th century. 26) Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-16-147245-4 , esp. Pp. 360–366.
• Marion Röwekamp: lawyers. Lexicon on life and work. Nomos-Verlags-Gesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2005, ISBN 3-8329-1597-4 , pp. 436-438.
• Reinhard Rürup & Michael Schüring: Fates and Careers. Memorial book for the researchers expelled from the Kaiser Wilhelm Society by the National Socialists (= history of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism. 14). Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89244-797-9 , p. 456 with photo.
• Annette Vogt: From the back entrance to the main portal? Lise Meitner and her colleagues at the Berlin University and in the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (= Pallas Athene. 17). Steiner, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-515-08881-7 , especially pp. 233-239.
• Annette Vogt: Scientists in Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. A – Z (= publications from the archive on the history of the Max Planck Society. 12). 2nd expanded edition. Archive for the history of the Max Planck Society, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-927579-12-5 , pp. 214–217.