Dr. Emmy Wolff

Emmy Wolff was born on 25 December 1890 in Bernburg an der Saale as the eldest of three children in a Jewish middle-class family. She attended a secondary school and a girls' boarding school before completing her education at the Hochschule für Frauen in Leipzig from 1915 to 1918. She continued her academic career in Munich and Frankfurt am Main. Wolff obtained a diploma for social and administrative officers in 1922 and completed her doctorate at the University of Frankfurt in 1924 with the topic: "A Girls' Club and the Circle of Origin of its Members".

After receiving her doctorate, Wolff went to Berlin in 1925 and became personal assistant to the Reichstag parliamentarian Gertrud Bäumer. Emmy Wolff was active in various fields for the Bund Deutscher Frauenvereine (Federation of German Women's Associations) (BDF). Between 1927 and 1931, she was its executive director and published the Yearbook of the Women's Movement 1927/28-31 on behalf of the BDF. Emmy Wolff also taught at the SozialSocial Women's School founded by Alice Salomon and the German Academy for Social and Educational Work with Women. Emmy Wolff's partner Hilde Lion, with whom she lived in their shared flat in Berlin-Westend, was the director of the Academy in 1929.

After the National Socialists came to power and the resulting exclusion and persecution of the Jewish population, Hilde Lion and Emmy Wolff were no longer able to pursue their professions. The academy had been dissolved to protect the Jewish female staff. Hilde Lion emigrated to England in 1933 and founded the Stoatley Rough School in Surrey. Emmy Wolff left Germany and became a teacher at the school, which was designed as a boarding school for German refugee children. Emmy Wolff travelled to Germany several times to organise the emigration of children, despite the risks involved. She worked at the school together with Hilde Lion until her retirement in 1957. Emmy Wolff died in Surrey on 9 November 1969.

Author: Pascal Paterna