Max Wolf (journalist, 1899)

Max Wolf (* 1899 ; † probably 1962 ) was a Swiss journalist .

Life and activity

Wolf, who came from the canton of Solothurn , became the unofficial correspondent of the Manchester Guardian newspaper in Berlin in the spring of 1933, at that time still a student , to replace Charles Lambert , the former editor of this newspaper in the German capital, who had been designated by the Reich Ministry of Propaganda from Germany . He was soon placed as a partner for Frederick August Voigt, who had been sent to the country as the Guardian's new official correspondent .

In the following three years Wolf was the main agent of the British newspaper in the German capital with the secret procurement of information and material about events, conditions and developments in the German Reich during the early Nazi dictatorship, on which Voigt as a basis for writing critical articles about the Hitler regime. The French embassy also benefited from its information gathering services.

In order to avoid surveillance by the National Socialist police and informers, the materials that Wolf procured were mostly delivered to the Berlin Guardian office by intermediaries. In 1935 he fled to Switzerland for a few weeks, fearing that the Gestapo had tracked him down, but finally returned to Berlin.

In the spring of 1936, Wolf left Germany for good when he was put out to be wanted by the German authorities because of subversive activities. However, after hearing his profile on the radio, he managed to escape in time with a night train to Prague. He then went to England, where he worked in the main editorial office of the Manchester Guardian .

After his escape, the National Socialist police officers classified Wolf as an enemy of the state: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin placed him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who would be succeeded by the occupation forces in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Special SS commandos were to be identified and arrested with special priority.

Since 1948 Wolf belonged to the International Committee of the Red Cross as a special advisor to the President of the same.

family

Since 1940 Wolf was married to Anita Warburg (1908–2008), a daughter of the banker Max Warburg .

literature

• Markus Huttner: British press and National Socialist church struggle: an investigation of the "Times" and the "Manchester Guardian" from 1930 to 1939 , Schöningh, Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich 1995, ISBN 978-3-50679-970-8 .
• David Ayerst: Guardian; Biography of a Newspaper , HarperCollins, London 1971, ISBN 978-0-00221-731-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Grete Fischer: Servants, Brecht and others. Contemporaries in Prague, Berlin, London , 1966, p. 273.
2. ^ Hitler's Black Book - information for Doctor M Wolf .