Victoria Wolff
Victoria Wolff | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 10 December 1903 Heilbronn |
| Died | 16 September 1992 Los Angeles |
| Nationality | American, German |
| Other names | Ellinor Colling Claudia Martell Hans Baysen Trude Wolf [1] |
Victoria Wolff (10 December 1903 –16 September 1992), a German born American writer and screenwriter.
Biography
Born Gertrude Victor in Heilbronn 10 December 1903, to the Jewish leather manufacturer Jacob Victor, Wolff often gave her birth year as 1908. She was educated in the local grammar school from 1917 where she was the first girl to do so and the only one trying for her exams in 1922. She went on to study chemistry with the intention of taking over her father's business as she was his only heir. However she finally gave that up to focus on writing. Her bachelor's degree was from the University of Munich in 1929. Wolff completed her master's degree at the University of Lausanne in 1931. She started writing reports for local newspapers and worked her way through a number of bigger publications including the Frankfurter Zeitung, the Kölnische Zeitung, the Stuttgarter Neue Tagblatt and Die Dame before getting short stories published in Süddeutscher Rundfunk.[2][3][4][5][6]
Wolff married textile manufacturer Dr. Alfred Max Wolf with whom she had two children. Her first novel was published in 1932 and her second came out the following year but once the Nazi party came to power she failed to get membership of the Reich Association of German Writers. She needed that to be published. Officially it was in 1939 that she was banned from publication. As a result she travelled around Europe from 1933 when she moved to Ascona until 1941 when she left Nice and Lisbon to enter the US. During her time in Switzerland Wolff worked without problem until 1938. That year she was no longer permitted to write for the Swiss media. When she circumvented this rule using a pen name, she was deported from the country. She moved to France but there experienced several difficulties and was jailed for six weeks. As a result she managed to leave Europe and head for the United States. She divorced her first husband, finalized in the late 1940s and in 1949 she married the Berliner Dr. Erich Wolff. She continued writing essays, stories, novels and screenplays.[2][4][5][6][7]
After the end of the Second World War, Wolff was able to return to Heibronn which she did regularly from 1949 to 1985. She died in Los Angeles on September 16, 1992. She is remembered in her school, now the Robert Mayer Gymnasium with a Prize for performance in art, music, literature and theater. In 2002 Julie Amador, her daughter, attended the first award ceremony.[2][4][5][6]
Limited bibliography
Novels
- Eine Frau wie du und ich (1932)
- Mutter und Tochter (1964)
- Der Feuersturm (1977)
- Im Tal de Könige (1945)
Sources
- ^ "Victoria Wolff (1903-1992)". data.bnf.fr (in French).
- ^ a b c Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women Through the Ages. Yorkin Publications. 2007.
- ^ "Victoria Wolff Papers, 1973". Albany archives. German and Jewish Intellectual Émigré Collections.
- ^ a b c Schlör, Joachim (26 November 2020). Escaping Nazi Germany: One Woman's Emigration from Heilbronn to England. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-350-15413-1.
- ^ a b c "Victoria Wolff (1903–1992)". stadtarchiv.heilbronn.de.
- ^ a b c "Victoria Wolff". www.fembio.org (in German).
- ^ Quack, Sibylle (7 November 2002). Between Sorrow and Strength: Women Refugees of the Nazi Period. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-52285-4.
