Theodor Wolff

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Theodor Wolff (1913)
Stolperstein , Hiroshimastraße 19 in Berlin-Tiergarten

Theodor Wolff (born August 2, 1868 in Berlin ; † September 23, 1943 there ) was a German writer , influential publicist and critic .

Career

Theodor Wolff was born in Berlin as the second of four children of Adolf Wolff, a textile wholesaler from Silesia , and his wife Recha, née Davidsohn, a doctor's daughter from Danzig. He grew up in an upper-class Jewish family. He left the Royal Wilhelms-Gymnasium shortly before graduating from high school. Wolff married the actress Marie Louise Charlotte Anna Hickethier, known as Änne, from a Protestant Prussian family in Paris in 1902 . The couple had three children: Richard Wolff (born June 14, 1906 in Paris), Rudolf Wolff (born July 9, 1907 in Berlin) and Lilly Wolff (born August 7, 1909 in Berlin), who were baptized Protestants.

Imperial times

Theodor Wolff (1901)

In 1887 Wolff's cousin Rudolf Mosse, who was twenty-five years older than him, accepted nineteen-year-old Theodor Wolff into the editorial team of his publishing house and gave Wolff thorough journalistic training in all departments of the Mosse group. During these years Wolff wrote several contemporary plays, which he himself later described in his memoirs as insignificant. In 1889 he was a co-founder of the Free Stage in Berlin. As the Paris correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt , Wolff wrote numerous articles dealing with public life in France, quoting “from our Paris correspondent”. In 1896 he became known for his reporting on the Dreyfus Affair .

In the autumn of 1906 Rudolf Mosse offered him the management of the Berliner Tageblatt . Wolff remained its editor-in-chief until 1933 and developed the paper into a daily newspaper known throughout the Reich . In the media he directed himself against great power politics and repeatedly pointed out the resulting foreign policy isolation. During this time, Wolff promoted many editors whose individuality was an important basis for the liberal profile of the newspaper. The leading article published on Mondays became his trademark . He stood up for general civil rights , criticized the military self-image of the empire, called for the abolition of the three-class electoral system and a liberalization of the Bismarckian constitution .

After the outbreak of World War I , Wolff initially accepted the postponement of domestic political conflicts. In the summer of 1916 that broke Berliner Tageblatt the burgfriedenspolitik and themed as a first newspaper, the war aims question publicly. As a result, the edition of June 28, 1916 was confiscated and the delivery of the newspaper was prohibited from August 1 to 7, 1916. Reich Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow refused to hold any talks with the Berliner Tageblatt , and his successor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg ordered all departments not to send the editors either "news or orientation tips". Wolff protested by not publishing anything for several months that was used abroad for war propaganda against Germany. Despite all adversities, he stuck to it and expressed it in the Berliner Tageblatt that only an understanding with France would bring lasting peace.

Weimar Republic

Wolff formulated the call to found the German Democratic Party (DDP) in November 1918 and published it on November 16, 1918, a week after the revolution in Berlin, in the Berliner Tageblatt . Contributors were Alfred Weber and Otto Fischbeck . Wolff asked not to sign the Versailles Treaty . He published two books during the debate on the war guilt issue . After a year of party experience, with factional pressure, organizational clumsiness and a fading concept, Wolff gradually withdrew from party work.

On December 4, 1926, he resigned from the DDP. The reason for this was the approval of his party to the passing of the Dirt and Trash Act . Despite his resignation, Wolff remained true to his political line: In the years that followed, the Berliner Tageblatt became the spearhead of liberal democracy . The political department alone consisted of a 90-strong staff with editors, editorialists and foreign correspondents who described themselves as the “core force of the republic”.

Wolff was a welcome guest with various politicians, entrepreneurs and Reich ministers and was considered a determined democrat. Later his agitation was judged more differently. He fought left, right, conservatives, but also members of democratic parties. His methods sometimes went far beyond verbal attacks. The founding of the Republican Party of Germany (RPD) met with such determined resistance from Wolff that, among other things, he arranged for the dismissal of Carl von Ossietzky , a founding member of the RPD and an editor at the Berliner Volks-Zeitung , which belongs to the Mosse group . The same happened to the social democrat Kurt Tucholsky , who in a disparaging retrospective described Theodor Wolff as a condescending, “somewhat stupid man” with “supposedly so liberal” but one-sided principles.

Nazi era

Theodor Wolff's escape from Berlin is described very differently in contemporary literature. Especially later GDR - historians have the " myth developed Wolff" for their purposes by using it after Hitler's seizure of power to the anti-fascist resistance fighters in exile stylized. For example, it can be read in various reference works that Wolff was on Nazi murder lists and had to flee Berlin because of a critical article about the Reichstag fire and because of his Jewish origins. There is no evidence of this. Both Margret Boveri , Theodor Heuss , and Paul Scheffer and Theodor Wolff himself described the events differentiated.

Memorial plaque for the German and Austrian refugees in Sanary-sur-Mer , among them Theodor Wolff

At the instigation of Hans Lachmann-Mosse , after the Reichstag election in June 1932, more neutral tones were struck in all Mosse newspapers. Victor Klemperer noted in his diary on January 30, 1933 that “the Berliner Tageblatt has now also become quite tame”. Wolff wrote only a few articles after the change of government. His one-column leading article on January 31, 1933 was entitled “It has been achieved” and contained the names of the new cabinet members as well as cautious comments about the prospects for success of the Hitler government. The events surrounding the Reichstag fire were factually presented in the Berliner Tageblatt , without the involvement of Theodor Wolff.

Theodor Wolff's grave of honor, donated by the State of Berlin

In fact, he had left Berlin for Munich on the night of February 27-28. He returned on March 3, 1933 and was released immediately upon arrival at the Mossehaus . The termination did not take place at the instigation of the new rulers, but Lachmann-Mosse drew the line under a dispute he had had with Wolff since 1928. The background was that from 1926 the Berliner Tageblatt was only making losses. Due to the falling circulation , the company owner repeatedly asked for more objectivity in terms of content, which Wolff ignored. On September 13, 1932, the group had to open bankruptcy proceedings , more than 3,000 jobs were at stake, and around 8,000 creditors filed their claims. Wolff was jointly responsible for this because he was 100 percent responsible for the personnel and content and 50 percent for the commercial management of the Berliner Tageblatt . When he was released, Lachmann-Mosse informed him:

“For the foreseeable future, the Berliner Tageblatt will concentrate largely on the domestic political issue of major economic and foreign policy issues. But true democracy and justice require that positive achievements by the state, even if this state has assumed a significantly different shape, receive objective recognition. "

Theodor Wolff's last leading article , which he had already drafted in Munich about the upcoming Reichstag elections , appeared two days after his dismissal. On March 5, 1933, he cast his vote for the Reichstag election at a polling station in the immediate vicinity of his house on Hohenzollerndamm and left Berlin on the evening train for Munich. He and his family traveled to Seefeld in Tirol on March 9th . There he lived in the Hotel Berghof and wrote several letters to Lachmann-Mosse in which he insisted on continuing to be named editor-in-chief of the Berliner Tageblatt . In fact, his name wasn't listed in the legal notice until March 21st .

In the late summer of 1933 he stayed for around two months at the Splendide Royale in Lugano and at the Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich . A longer stay was refused by the Swiss authorities. The family was well-off and had invested their private assets in Swiss francs at a Basel SBV bank before the inflation of 1922/23 .

For reasons of prestige, Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring tried to keep the Berliner Tageblatt . In Switzerland, Wolff received an offer from Goering to continue running the newspaper as editor-in-chief. For this he was even offered an "honorary arena" . Although Wolff refused the offer, the Propaganda Ministry supported him in selling his house at a regular price and in handling his bank balances in Germany. It can be assumed that Goebbels in return expected him to be reluctant to report in foreign newspapers.

In the spring of 1934 Wolff moved to France with his family. In Nice , he bought a large apartment with a view of the sea on the Promenade des Anglais and a small beach house in Sanary-sur-Mer . The furnishings of his Berlin house, along with his private archive and his extensive library, were sent to Nice in a sealed car belonging to the German Foreign Office . There is evidence that Wolff no longer wrote any articles in southern France, only historical novels. He also did not take part in the political struggle of the exiles.

With the four-year plan , Goebbels and Göring's goals changed from 1936. The focus was now on the optimization of resources and the associated reduction in daily newspapers. So the end of the Berliner Tageblatt was a done deal. Overall, the number of daily newspapers fell to 2,500 by 1937 and to 977 by 1944.

On October 26, 1937, Wolff's German citizenship was revoked . After the defeat of France in June 1940 , he emigrated to America without success. After Palestine , he did not Wolff was the Zionism distant and believed his life to a "German-Jewish symbiosis". On May 23, 1943 he was arrested in Nice by civil servants of the Italian occupation forces, who handed Wolff over to the Gestapo. With intermediate stops in a Marseille prison and the transit camp Drancy deportation took place in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . At cellulitis ill, he was in Berlin on September 20, 1943 Jewish Hospital relocated. Theodor Wolff died three days later.

His grave of honor is in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee . The Theodor Wolff Prize , founded in 1961, has been awarded by the Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers since 1973 .

Works

  • The heather. Roman, Berlin 1891.
  • The downfall. Roman, Berlin 1892.
  • The silent island. Play in 4 acts, Berlin 1894.
  • The sinners. A Lovestory. Berlin 1894.
  • Nobody knows. Piece in 3 lifts, Munich 1895.
  • Intellectual and artistic relations between Germany and France. In: Twenty-five Years of Contemporary German History - 1872–1897. Anniversary font. Edited by the editorial staff of the Berliner Tageblatt, Rudolf Mosse, Berlin 1897, pp. 139–148.
  • The Queen. Play in 3 acts, Cologne 1898; (Second, heavily revised edition as a play in four acts, Cologne 1904).
  • Paris diary. Munich 1908; New edition Berlin 1927 (selection from the correspondent's reports published between 1894 and 1906).
  • Walks. Cologne 1909.
  • A fait accompli, 1914–1917. Berlin 1918.
  • Foreplay. Munich 1924; Paris 1926.
  • Anatole France. Berlin 1924 (private print).
  • The war of Pontius Pilate. Zurich 1934; London 1935, Paris and New York 1936, Prague 1937.
  • The march through two decades. Amsterdam 1936; London 1936, Paris 1937; as a greatly expanded new edition under the title Die Wilhelminische Epoche , 1989.
  • The swimmer. A novel from the present. Oprecht , Zurich 1937, DNB 992955742 .
published posthumously
  • July 1914: my testimony on the outbreak of the First World War. Edited, introduced and with a biographical sketch about Theodor Wolff by Robert Vehrkamp, Aisthesis , Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8498-1066-5 .

literature

  • Margit Bröhan: Theodor Wolff. Experiences, memories, thoughts in exile in the south of France. (= Publications of the Federal Archives. Volume 41). Boldt, Boppard a. Rh. 1982, ISBN 3-7646-1922-8 .
  • Christel Goldbach: Distant observation. Theodor Wolff and Judaism. "... they are not my candles, but their light is warm". (= Oldenburg contributions to Jewish studies. Volume 11). bis - Library and Information System of the University, Oldenburg 2002, ISBN 3-8142-0795-5 . (At the same time: Oldenburg, Univ., Master's thesis, 2000).
  • Wolfram Köhler: The editor-in-chief Theodor Wolff. A Life in Europe, 1868–1943. Droste, Düsseldorf 1978, ISBN 3-7700-0493-0 .
  • Peter de Mendelssohn : Berlin newspaper city. People and Powers in the History of the German Press Berlin. 2nd revised and expanded edition. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-550-07496-4 .
  • Bernd Sösemann : The end of the Weimar Republic in the criticism of democratic publicists. Theodor Wolff, Ernst Feder, Julius Elbau, Leopold Schwarzschild. Colloquium, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-7678-0410-7 .
  • Bernd Sösemann (Ed.): Diaries 1914–1919 - Diaries 1914–1919. The First World War and the emergence of the Weimar Republic in diaries, editorials and letters from the editor-in-chief at the “Berliner Tageblatt” and co-founder of the “German Democratic Party”. Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-41835-1 .
  • Bernd Sösemann (Ed.): Theodor Wolff, the chronicler. War, Revolution in the Diary 1914 to 1919. Econ, Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-430-18562-9 .
  • Bernd Sösemann (ed.): Theodor Wolff, the journalist. Reports and editorials. Econ, Düsseldorf 1993, ISBN 3-430-18567-X .
  • Bernd Sösemann (Ed.): Theodor Wolff, the publicist. Features, poems and notes. Econ, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-430-18565-3 .
  • Bernd Sösemann: Theodor Wolff. A life for the newspaper. Econ, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-430-18569-6 . In a completely revised and expanded version, reissued as:
  • Bernd Sösemann: Theodor Wolff. A life with the newspaper. Steiner, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-515-10174-5 .
  • Bernd Sösemann , Jürgen Frölich , Centrum Judaicum (eds.): Theodor Wolff. Journalist, citizen of the world, democrat. In cooperation with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation . Hentrich & Hentrich , Teetz 2004, ISBN 3-933471-62-1 (= Jewish miniatures. Volume 10).

Web links

Wikisource: Theodor Wolff  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Theodor Wolff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christel Goldmann: Distant observation: Theodor Wolff and Judaism. "... they are not my candles, but their light is warm" . Oldenburg 2002, p. 60 ff.
  2. ↑ Theodor's father was the brother of Mosses mother Ulrike Wolff (1813-88) (see Neue Deutsche Biographie, sv Rudolf Mosse ).
  3. ^ Peter de Mendelssohn: Berlin newspaper city. People and Powers in the History of the German Press . Frankfurt a. M. 1982, p. 180.
  4. ↑ Christel Goldmann: Distant observation: Theodor Wolff and Judaism. "... they are not my candles, but their light is warm" . Oldenburg 2002, p. 67 f.
  5. ^ Hans-Henning Zabel: Rudolf Mosse . In: New German Biography . Vol. 18, Berlin 1997, pp. 213-217.
  6. ^ Hilmar Klute : The cultural conservative . SZ series about great journalists (IX). The Franco-German story of Victor Auburtin. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 3, 2003.
  7. ↑ Bernd Sösemann (Ed.): Theodor Wolff. Diaries 1914–1919. The First World War and the emergence of the Weimar Republic in diaries, editorials and letters from the editor-in-chief at the “Berliner Tageblatt” and co-founder of the “German Democratic Party” . Munich 1984.
  8. ↑ fu-berlin.de .
  9. ↑ a b c d Bernd Sösemann: Theodor Wolff. A life with the newspaper . Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf 2000.
  10. ↑ fu-berlin.de .
  11. ^ Horst Wagner: The founding of the DDP in 1918 . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 11, 1998, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 89-91 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  12. ^ Elisabeth Kraus: The Mosse family: German-Jewish bourgeoisie in the 19th and 20th centuries. CH Beck, Munich 1999, p. 495.
  13. ↑ Margret Boveri : We all lie. Walter Olten, Freiburg im Breisgau 1965, p. 38.
  14. ^ Friedhelm Greis, Ian King: Tucholsky and the media: Documentation of the 2005 conference: "We live in a strange newspaper". Röhrig Universitätsverlag, Saarbrücken 2006, pp. 21–27.
  15. ↑ Michael Hepp: Kurt Tucholsky. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 2015, p. 134.
  16. ^ Fritz J. Raddatz (ed.): Marxism and literature. Volume 2. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1969, p. 222.
  17. ^ Norbert Frei , Johannes Schmitz: Journalism in the Third Reich. CH Beck, Munich 2011, p. 41 f.
  18. ↑ Victor Klemperer: I want to give testimony to the last. Diaries 1933–1945. Structure, Berlin 2012. Diary entry from January 30, 1933, p. 10.
  19. ^ Georg Lachmann Mosse : Confronting History - A Memoir. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 2000, p. 44.
  20. ^ Elisabeth Kraus: The Mosse family: German-Jewish bourgeoisie in the 19th and 20th centuries. CH Beck, Munich 1999, p. 470 f.
  21. ↑ Bernd Sösemann: Theodor Wolff. A life with the newspaper. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2001, p. 293.
  22. ↑ Bernd Sösemann: Theodor Wolff. A life with the newspaper. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2001, p. 293.
  23. ^ Elisabeth Kraus: The Mosse family: German-Jewish bourgeoisie in the 19th and 20th centuries. CH Beck, Munich 1999, p. 511 f.
  24. ↑ Jost Hermand : Culture in dark times: Nazi fascism, internal emigration, exile. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Vienna 2010, p. 152.
  25. ↑ Bernd Sösemann: Theodor Wolff. A life with the newspaper. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2001, p. 311 f.
  26. ↑ Hans Wagener: Gabriele Tergit : Stolen Years. V&R, Göttingen 2013, p. 84.
  27. ^ Margit Bröhan: Theodor Wolff - experiences, memories, thoughts in exile in southern France . Boldt, Boppard 1992, p. 754.
  28. ↑ Christel Goldmann: Distant observation: Theodor Wolff and Judaism. "... they are not my candles, but their light is warm". Oldenburg 2002, p. 81.
  29. ^ Kurt Koszyk : German Press 1914–1945. History of the German Press Part III. Colloquium, Berlin 1972, p. 997.
  30. ↑ For the legal consequences of expatriation see introduction on pp. XII-XIII to Michael Hepp (ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . Vol. 1, Munich 1985.
  31. ↑ Christel Goldmann: Distant observation: Theodor Wolff and Judaism. "... they are not my candles, but their light is warm" . Oldenburg 2002, p. 94 ff.
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, publicist and critic
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin , Germany
DATE OF DEATH September 23, 1943
Place of death Berlin , Germany