Kurt H. Wolff

Kurt Heinrich Wolff (May 20, 1912 in Darmstadt – September 14, 2003 in Newton, Massachusetts), was an American sociologist. As a sociologist of knowledge he was also translator and divulger from German into English of many works by Georg Simmel and by Karl Mannheim.

After graduating in Darmstadt in 1932, Wolff began the philosophical and sociological studies in Frankfurt, where he attended lectures by Karl Mannheim, and later in Munich, Bavaria.

In 1933, because of the Anti-Jewish laws introduced in Germany, with the help of his future wife, Carla Bruck, he moved to Florence, Italy where he enrolled at the Faculty of Philosophy.

Meaningful of those years, the friendship with his classmate, Aurelio Pace, the future Historian of Africa and the Joseph Pace artist's father, who in those years helped him translate from German into Italian the doctoral thesis "Sociology of Knowledge" which Wolff discusses in 1935 with Ludovico Limentani. Until 1939 Wolff remained in Italy and with the support of his wife and his friend Pace, got a job as a teacher before in Florence and after in Camogli. Because of the fascist racial laws, Wolff and his wife left Italy in 1939. After a short stay in England, he went to the U.S. where, in 1945, took U.S. citizenship.

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