Charlotte Wolff

"The three pillars of human relationships are trust, dignity, and independence." (Charlotte Wolff, Inside World and Outside World, p. 252)

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Charlotte Wolff was born on September 30, 1897, in the West Prussian provincial town of Riesenburg (now Prabuty in Powiat Kwidzyński, Poland)

. The second child of a Jewish merchant family, she grew up in a middle-class milieu and attended secondary school there. The city of her birth was to play a significant role in her life. In her autobiographies, she describes many childhood memories of Riesenburg in great detail. These included nature experiences in the nearby forests or her memories of the parental home, which were characterized by security and caring.

Nevertheless, Charlotte also stated that she was mostly overprotected and spoiled by her parents, and that there was little discipline in the family. This would have made it very difficult for her to deal with disappointments in the course of her life. On the other hand, this loving attention from her parents would have brought about a fundamental trust in herself and in other people. This helped her enormously in coping with many challenges that came her way later in life.

"I felt at odds with my surroundings and sought a world of my own, away from my family, my school, and my classmates." (Charlotte Wolff, Inside World and Outside World, p. 39)

At the age of nine, Charlotte and her sister Thea were sent to Danzig to live with their aunt Auguste in order to receive a good education as well as better medical care. Due to damage to her spine, Charlotte had to undergo orthopedic treatment. In 1913, her parents also moved to Gdansk and rented a 6-room apartment at Fleischergasse 60. Despite her severe homesickness caused by the temporary separation from her parents' home and Riesenburg, she was an excellent student. She attended the Realgymnasium of the Viktoria School and graduated from there in 1920. Already during her school years she fell in love with fellow students and also had a crush on some teachers. Although Charlotte's parents noticed her same-sex love feelings, they seemed to accept them and supported her development.

By age 12, she was writing poetry and spent most of her time daydreaming about loved ones. At 16, she had an intense experience of happiness of a spiritual nature, which had subsequently influenced her perceptive faculty. From this came the title of her autobiography Augenblicke verändern uns mehr als die Zeit. Now she turned to the world of art, literature and philosophy and withdrew more and more from her family and school friends: "I began to live in a world that belonged exclusively to me, in an atmosphere of tense but happy isolation". (Charlotte Wolff, Inner World and Outer World, p. 39)

"Things seen and found congeal and become past; every finding means both gain and loss" (Charlotte Wolff, Inside and Outside, p. 255)

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After graduating from high school, Charlotte began her studies in Freiburg (Breisgau) at the Alber Ludwigs University. Originally, she wanted to study philosophy and literature. However, her parents persuaded her to enroll in medical school. Therefore, in addition to her medical studies, she attended courses taught by the philosopher Edmund Husserl and his assistant Martin Heidegger. During her studies in Freiburg, she lived in a mixed-gender shared apartment in the village of Günterstal with three other students and became friends with them 

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After two semesters, Wolff transferred to Albertus University in Königsberg to reunite with her Russian childhood friend Ida, who had previously been in Sweden. Through Ida she came into contact with Zionism and was particularly impressed by the idealism of the Zionists*. However, for her Zionism remained rather a romantic idea. In Königsberg she successfully completed her physics examination and studied, among others, the philosophers Kant, Schopenhauer and Spinoza. In 1922, after two semesters, Wolff changed universities once again and went to Tübingen. At Eberhard Karls University she attended lectures by Ernst Kretschmer. Her studies there were characterized by freedom and serenity until she had to make her first experiences with anti-Semitism. This solidified her plans to continue her medical studies in Berlin.

"The most exciting time of my student life began." (Charlotte Wolff, Moments Change Us More Than Time, p. 81)

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In Berlin, Wolff began the last and also most grueling phase of her studies. She enthusiastically describes how the erotic climate of Berlin excited her and how she also felt accepted in her sexual identity: "In the atmosphere of the 1920s, one breathed the air of freedom and tolerance. Whatever sensual and emotional needs one had, they were satisfied here." (Charlotte Wolff, Augenblicke verändern uns mehr als die Zeit, p. 81) The city made Wolff write a large number of poems in order to be able to process the events she experienced. Together with friends or alone, she visited many lesbian bars, for the capital was a cultural center for artistic, political, and sexual diversity during the Weimar Republic.

In Berlin, she met the Jewish couple Dora and Walter Benjamin and built up a close friendship with them during the course of her studies. Especially with Walter Benjamin she had many conversations about art and literature; but they also talked about their respective emotional worlds. When inflation limited the financial means of Wolff's parents and thus threatened the completion of her studies, Dora and Walter Benjamin were able to help her obtain a scholarship. This enabled her to continue her studies at Berlin University and to attend courses at the Charité in pathology, internal medicine, and psychiatry. In 1923, she met again in Berlin the love of her life, Lisa (last name unknown), whom she had known since childhood. Despite marriage and a two-year-old child, the two women spent almost every evening together until Lisa's husband called her back to Russia earlier than expected. As a result, Wolff fell into a depression and only found her way out of this emotional low with the acquaintance of her later long-term partner Katharine (surname unknown).

"This contact with a world I had hardly known before awakened in me a new and invigorating interest. I was eager to learn about the needs and aspirations, the sufferings and joys of lower middle class and working class people." (Charlotte Wolff, Moments Change Us More Than Time, p. 113)

In January 1925, she completed her medical studies with the state examination and received her license to practice medicine on February 15, 1926. After receiving her doctorate, she worked in obstetrics at the Rudolf Virchow Municipal Hospital. There she became acquainted with the social problems of women - mainly from the poorer classes. The large hospitals of the time offered women counseling regarding family problems or gave them  assistance with child-rearing and nutritional issues. However, Wolff did not feel up to the demands of the medical profession and suffered from depression and exhaustion as a result. It was not until Katharine was able to find her a job with the General Health Insurance Fund that Wolff's mental state improved. At her new job, she was given a focus on maternity care for the working class as well as for the lower middle class.

As a medical consultant, Charlotte was given the task of setting up a clinic for pregnancy prevention in 1929. The facility was to become the first of its kind in Germany. It was here that her first scientific insights into sexology and psychotherapy began. After a short time, she was appointed deputy director at the clinic for family planning and pregnancy care and contraception of the Berlin General Health Insurance Fund, and joined the Association of Socialist Physicians. Looking back, Charlotte Wolff describes this period as a very enjoyable phase of her life: "Never have I felt more content and secure than during the five years as a doctor with the Berlin Health Insurance Funds." (Charlotte Wolff, Augenblicke verändern uns mehr als die Zeit, p. 113)

"Until then, the situation of ethnic minorities and anti-Semitism had left me cold. ... But despite my expanded political awareness, I still felt safe." (Charlotte Wolff, Augenblicke verändern uns mehr als die Zeit, p. 118)

For political reasons, Wolff was advised in the spring of 1931 to end her work at the Clinic for Family Planning and Pregnancy Care. Instead, through a recommendation, she became the director of the Electro-Physical Institute in Neukölln in April 1932. During this time, she began her studies of chirology and took courses relevant to the subject. Thus, she also completed a palm reading course with the psychochirologist Julius Spier.

As anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany grew and the political situation for Jewish women*Jews came to a head, Katharine separated from Wolff on the advice of her father. In February 1933, Charlotte Wolff was also forced to resign from her job as director with immediate effect. Shortly thereafter, she was arrested on the subway for wearing men's clothing as a woman, and as a result was suspected of being a spy. When she was involuntarily taken to the station guard by the Gestapo, a guard there recognized her as his wife's doctor.  As a result, she was released. Because Wolff continued to be suspected of being a Communist, they searched her house three days later. This led to her decision to flee Germany. She acquired a valid passport in a very short time and fled to Paris via Aachen on May 23, 1933.

"During the childlike period of development, progress comes by peaceful means and is left in peace. Thereafter progress presents itself far more by suffering and obstacles than by fulfillment. Only a state of permanent inner revolution can produce evolution."(Charlotte Wolff, Inner World and Outer World, p. 255)

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In Paris, she moved into an apartment on the Boulevard de Brune with the journalist Helen Hessel and her son. Because Wolff was not allowed to practice medicine in France, she made her living by determining character through hand analyses among her acquaintances. Helen Hessel was an important intermediary for new customers. In Sanary, Wolff met Marie and Aldous Huxley through Hessel in the cultural colony there. With the help of Maria Huxley, she got in touch with various doctors and clinics within France, and was thus able to further develop her hand-diagnosis procedure through access to a wide variety of patients. As a refugee, she was unable to obtain a work permit for her profession as a doctor, so a year later she started her own business as a chirologist. Her expertise in palmistry was particularly sought after by artists, writers and aristocrats. Her professional success fascinated and shocked Wolff at the same time. In addition, she was plagued by anxiety, self-doubt, and feelings of uprootedness.

After Helen Hessel made anti-Semitic remarks, the friendship between the two women ended. Following this, Wolff reflected on the relationship between Jewish women*Jews and Germans. Her own mental investigation regarding the common language and culture of National Socialist Germany eventually led her to reject everything German. With this inner reflection, she continued to live in Paris until Maria Huxley invited her to London and motivated her to write a book on hand interpretations.

"My move to England had probably saved my life, but left my soul in the wilderness" (Charlotte Wolff, Augenblicke verändern uns mehr als die Zeit, p. 173)

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At the instigation of Aldous and Maria Huxley, Wolff left Paris in 1936 and fled to London. Before leaving France, her work Studies in Hand Reading appeared in England and in the United States. Her good relations with the Huxleys and with Lady Ottoline Morell helped in the early days to make private as well as professional contacts very satisfying. Nevertheless, she missed Paris and her close friends living there. This was also due to the fact that she identified herself as Jewish, but did not encounter a Jewish collective in England, and as a result always felt like an outsider. At least in November 1937 she received an unlimited residence permit and a license as a psychotherapist, which put an end to the uncertainty of what the external circumstances required.

In 1939, Charlotte renounced her German citizenship and took British citizenship in 1947. Since then, she referred to herself as an international Jew with a British passport. In the early 1960s, she also became more intensively involved in the field of psychology and sexuality, conducting research on human bisexuality and female homosexuality. The work Love between Women (1971) became internationally known and was the first investigation to attempt to look at the subject scientifically rather than pejoratively. In the book Charlotte Wolff describes the merits and character strengths of lesbians and thereby offers possibilities of identification for the then still young lesbian movements. Her last work was a biography of the Berlin sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, published in London in 1986 under the title A portrait of a pioneer in sexology. That same year, she died in London on September 12 at the age of 88.