Kurt Wolff (3 March 1887 – 21 October 1963) was a German publisher, editor, writer, and

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

. Wolff was born in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

Rhenish Prussia The Rhine Province (german: Rheinprovinz), also known as Rhenish Prussia () or synonymous with the Rhineland (), was the westernmost province of the Kingdom of Prussia and the Free State of Prussia, within the German Reich, from 1822 to 1946. It ...

; his mother came from a

Jewish-German The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

family. He married Elisabeth Karoline Clara Merck (1890–1970), of the Darmstadt pharmaceuticals firm, in 1909. Together with Ernst Rowohlt, Wolff began to work in publishing in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

in 1908. He was the first to promote and publish

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

and

Franz Werfel Franz Viktor Werfel (; 10 September 1890 – 26 August 1945) was an Austrian- Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. He is primarily known as the author of ''The For ...

but declined to publish the works of Axel Munthe. Wolff's close contact to other writers in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

and the support for unknown, but talented writers, helped him develop Kafka's friends,

Max Brod Max Brod ( he, מקס ברוד; 27 May 1884 – 20 December 1968) was a German-speaking Bohemian, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is best remembered as the friend and biog ...

and

Felix Weltsch Felix Weltsch (6 October 1884, Prague – 9 November 1964, Jerusalem), was a German-speaking Jewish librarian, philosopher, author, editor, publisher and journalist. A close friend of Max Brod, Ludwig Winder and Franz Kafka, he was one of th ...

, who were more well known in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. In 1929, Wolff published the photography book ''Face of Our Time'' by August Sander. In 1941 Wolff and his second wife, Helen Mosel, left Germany and emigrated to Paris, London, Montagnola, St. Tropez, Nice, and finally with the assistance of

Varian Fry Varian Mackey Fry (October 15, 1907 – September 13, 1967) was an American journalist. Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France that helped approximately 2,000 to 4,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany and the Holocaust ...

, to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. Later in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

, and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, Wolff developed several publishing houses. In the U.S., he and Helen founded Pantheon Books in 1942, which became well known. They later ran the Helen and Kurt Wolff Books imprint at

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Harcourt () was an American publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. The company was last based in San Diego, California, with editorial/sales/marketing/rights offices in New York City a ...

. Wolff settled in Switzerland in the 1950s. He died after a driving accident and is buried with Helen in Marbach, Germany. The

Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize The Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize is an annual literary prize named for the German–American publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff "honoring an outstanding literary translation from German into English" published in the USA the previous year ...

is named in honor of him and his wife. His son, Christian Wolff, is a renowned avant-garde musician. His grandson Alexander (son of Nicholas) wrote a family history, published in 2021 as ''Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape, and Home''.

Literary archives

The

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts. Es ...

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

holds the Kurt Wolff Archive, 1907–38. The collection contains about 4,100 letters and manuscripts from the files of the Kurt Wolff Verlag from the years 1910–30. A portion of the Kurt Wolff Archive is currently available online.Kurt Wolff Archive, 1907-1938.
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. Retrieved on 2009-07-08.

References

External links

* Kurt Wolff Archive. Yale Collection of German Literature. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. * Helen and Kurt Wolff Papers. Yale Collection of German Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. {{DEFAULTSORT:Wolff, Kurt 1887 births 1963 deaths German book publishers (people) German male journalists Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom Businesspeople from Bonn People from the Rhine Province German male writers American book publishers (people) 20th-century German journalists