Meta Wolff

Grave of the Gottschalk family in the south-west cemetery Stahnsdorf

Meta Wolff (born August 13, 1902 , † November 6, 1941 in Berlin ) was a German stage actress.

Life

Meta Wolff worked at the theater in Halberstadt from the 1929/30 season . On May 3, 1930, she married her colleague Joachim Gottschalk , who became one of the most popular German film actors in the 1930s. Their son Michael was born in February 1933, immediately after the National Socialist accession to government. Because of her Jewish origins, Meta Wolff was banned from performing. Her husband was faced with demands to get a divorce or otherwise be drafted into the front line. Since he refused a divorce, he was banned from working by the Reich Film School . In autumn 1941 Meta Wolff and her son received notification of deportation . Gottschalk's application to be deported as well was rejected by Reich Culture Warden Hans Hinkel . With no way out, the family then committed suicide.

The fate of Meta Wolff and Joachim Gottschalk inspired Kurt Maetzig's film Ehe im Schatten (1947) and John O'Keefe's play Times Like These (2002). The last resting place of the family in the south-west cemetery Stahnsdorf near Berlin was declared the honor grave of the city of Berlin in 1999.

literature

• Hannes Heer , Sven Fritz, Heike Brummer, Jutta Zwilling: Silent voices. The expulsion of the "Jews" and "politically intolerable" from the Hessian theaters 1933 to 1945 . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86331-013-4 , p. 371 f.
• Klaus J. Hennig: "... or you perish" . In: Die Zeit , No. 15/2004.