“Expressionism Today.” Times Literary Supplement, November 6, 1970.

  “Ferriday Started as 3,600-Acre Wedding Present.” Natchez Democrat, November 22, 2006.

  Förster, Birte. “Seitenweise Aufschlussreiches.” Hoch3: Die Zeitung der Technischen Universität Darmstadt, December 2015.

  Grass, Günter. Laudation for Helen Wolff upon posthumous awarding of Friedrich Gundolf Prize. April 30, 1994. DeutscheAkademie.de/en/awards/friedrich-gundolf-preis/helen-wolff/laudatio.

  Greenberg, Stanley B. “Trump Is Beginning to Lose His Grip.” New York Times, November 17, 2018.

  Haas, Willy. “Kurt Wolff: 3 März 1887–22 Oktober 1963.” Die Welt, December 28, 1963.

  Hamilton, Nigel. “Heinrich Mann and the Underdog.” Times (London), June 24, 1972.

  Havill, Kristin Peterson. “Caroline Ferriday: A Godmother to Ravensbrück Survivors.” Connecticut History, Winter 2011–12.

  Hennig, Falko. “Investieren in verlegerischen Gewinn.” Die Tageszeitung, July 24, 2007.

  Herweg, Nikola. “Helen und Kurt Wolff in Marbach.” Deutsches Literaturarchiv-Marbach. Spuren 106, 2015.

  Huggler, Justin. “Five Names to Watch as the Anti-Immigrant AfD Looks to Stir up Trouble for Angela Merkel.” Telegraph (London), October 1, 2017.

  Kazin, Alfred. “A Legend among Publishers.” New York Newsday, October 20, 1991.

  Kuenstner, Molli E., and Thomas A. O’Callaghan. “The Führerprojekt Goes to Washington.” Burlington Magazine 159, May 2017.

  “Kurt Wolff.” Neues Deutschland, October 25, 1963.

  Leavenworth, Jesse. “Caroline and the Lapins.” Northeast: Sunday Magazine of the Hartford Courant, October 20, 2002.

  Meola, David. “Mirror of Competing Claims: Antisemitism and Citizenship in Vormärz Germany.” Antisemitism Studies 4, no. 1 (Spring 2020).

  “Merck KGaA Plans Nazi-Era Forced Labour Compensation.” ICIS.com, December 8, 1999.

  Mitgang, Herbert. “Imprint.” New Yorker, August 2, 1982.

  “Mr. Kurt Wolff.” Times (London), October 29, 1963.

  Nelson, Howard. “Speaking Volumes: The Wide World of a Publisher.” Washington Post Book World, April 4, 1971.

  Nicholas, Elizabeth. “Hitler’s Suicide and New Research on Nazi Drug Use.” Time online, April 28, 2017. https://time.com/4744584/hitler-drugs-blitzed/.

  Oltermann, Philip. “German Rightwing Party Apologises for Jérôme Boateng Comments.” Guardian (UK), May 29, 2016.

  Özdemir, Cem. “Cem Özdemir Compares Germany’s Far-Right AfD Party to the Nazis in Hard-Hitting Speech.” European Greens, February 22, 2018. European Greens.eu/news/cem-özdemir-compares-germanys-far-right-afd-party-nazis-hard-hitting-speech.

  Packer, George. “The Quiet German.” New Yorker, November 24, 2014.

  Pinthus, Kurt. “Wie Literatur gemacht wurde: Zur Erinnerung an meiner Freund Kurt Wolff.” Die Zeit, November 1, 1963.

  Redlich, Fritz. “German Literary Expressionism and Its Publishers.” Harvard Library Bulletin 17, no. 2 (April 1969).

  Reemtsma, Jan Philipp. “Wozu Gedenkstätten?” Politik und Zeitgeschichte, June 21, 2010.

  Reuters. “AfD Co-Founder Says Germans Should Be Proud of Its Second World War Soldiers.” Guardian (UK), September 14, 2017.

  Riding, Alan. “A Tale of Two Germanys.” New York Times, December 14, 2000.

  Scheffler, Heinrich. “Kurt-Wolff-Marginalien.” Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel 95, November 26, 1963.

  Schnee, Heinrich. “Hofbankier Salomon von Haber als badischer Finanzier.” Zeitung für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 109, no. 2 (1961).

  Schuetze, Christopher F., and Michael Wolgelenter, “Fact Check: Trump’s False and Misleading Claims about Germany’s Crime and Immigration.” New York Times, June 18, 2018.

  Schuhladen-Krämer, Jürgen. “Haber-Skandal.” Stadtlexikon Karlsruhe, 2012. https://stadtlexikon.karlsruhe.de/index.php/De:Lexikon:ereig-0279.

  ———. “Hepp!-Hepp!-Unruhen 1819.” Stadtlexikon Karlsruhe, 2012. https://stadtlexikon.karlsruhe.de/index.php/De:Lexikon:ereig-0216.

  ———. “Moritz von Haber.” Stadtlexikon Karlsruhe, 2013. https://stadtlexikon.karlsruhe.de/index.php/De:Lexikon:bio-0802.

  ———. “Salomon von Haber.” Stadtlexikon Karlsruhe, 2013. https://stadtlexikon.karlsruhe.de/index.php/De:Lexikon:bio-1013.

  Schuyler, Steven. “Kurt Wolff and Hermann Broch: Publisher and Author in Exile.” PhD thesis, Harvard University, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, 1984.

  ———. “Kurt Wolff’s Publishing Odyssey.” AB Bookman’s Weekly, September 6, 1999.

  Schwarz, Benjamin. “Hitler’s Co-Conspirators.” Atlantic, May 2009.

  “The Seismographer of Expressionism.” Times Literary Supplement, February 2, 1970.

  Simoncini, Giuseppe. “Kurt Wolff, Soggiorno a Lastra.” LastraOnline.it, 2008. Lastra Online.it/p/storia.php?idpag=374&idpag=374.

  Simpendorfer, Werner. “The Strange Must Cease to Be the Strange: In Memoriam Ernst Lange (1927–1974).” Ecumenical Review 49, no. 2 (April 1997).

  Steinmeier, Frank-Walter. “75th Anniversary of the End of the 2nd World War.” May 8, 2020. https://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Reden/EN/Frank-Walter-Steinmeier/Reden/2020/05/200508-75th-anniversary-World-War-II.html.

  Taub, Amanda, and Max Fisher. “Germany’s Extreme Right Challenges Guilt over Nazi Past.” New York Times, January 18, 2017.

  Tevetoglu, Cem, Matin Nawabi, and Tobi Moka. “Merck in der Zwickmühle.” Soziales Darmstadt, March 2017.

  Ueding, Gert. “Mit Hirn und Herz.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 3, 1987.

  “Vor der Spruchkammer/Dr. Karl Merck in Gruppe IV.” Darmstädter Echo, June 1, 1948.

  Weizsäcker, Richard von. “Speech by Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker during the Ceremony Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the End of War in Europe and of National-Socialist Tyranny on 8 May 1985 at the Bundestag, Bonn.” Bundespräsidialamt. Bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Reden/2015/02/150202-RvW-Rede-8-Mai-1985-englisch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile.

  Weyr, Thomas. “PW Interviews: Helen Wolff.” Publishers Weekly, February 3, 1973.

  Wolff, Alexander. “When the Terror Began.” Sports Illustrated, August 26, 2002.

  Wolff, Helen. “Elective Affinities.” Address to Deutsches Haus New York. May 15, 1990.

  [Wolff, Maria.] “Wiedersehen und Abschied: Selbstgespräche mit dem Vater.” Die Gegenwart, January 1948.

  Film, Radio, and Television

  Central Airport THF. Karim Aïnouz, dir. Lupa Film, Les Films d’Ici, Mar Films, 2018. Documentary film.

  The Exiles. Richard Kaplan, dir. PBS, September 24, 1989. Documentary film.

  Das schreckliche Mädchen (The Nasty Girl). Michael Verhoeven, dir. Filmverlag der Autoren, Sentana Filmproduktion, ZDF, 1990.

  Saving the Rabbits of Ravensbrück. Stacey Fitzgerald, dir. From the Heart Productions, forthcoming. Documentary film. RememberRavensbruck.com/caroline-ferriday.

  Voswinckel, Ulrike. “Den Starken Atem unserer Zeit spüren: Das erste Leben des Verlegers Kurt Wolff.” Land und Leute, Bayerischer Rundfunk, April 15, 2001. Radio documentary.

  Woj, Caterina, and Andrea Röpke. “Das braune Netzwerk: Wer steuert die Wütburger?” Die Story, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, January 11, 2017. Television report. Otto-Brenner-Preis.de/dokumentation/2017/preistraeger/3-preis.

  Wolff, Kurt. Twelve radio essays broadcast over Norddeutscher, Westdeutscher, and Bayrischer Rundfunk, 1962 and 1963. Transcripts in H&KW Papers.

  Your Job in Germany. Theodor Geisel and Frank Capra. U.S. Department of War, 1945. Training film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v5QCGqDYGo?

  Privately Published or Unpublished Essays, Genealogies, Monographs, Reminiscences, and Stories

  Baumhauer, Jon. “Our Marx Ancestors in the Rhineland.” Translated by Nikolaus Wolff. Munich, 1987.

  Frensdorff, Karl. “How the Frensdorffs Came to America.” Wilmington, DE, 2002.

  Landheim Schondorf, Class of 1940, fiftieth-reunion book. Schondorf-am-Ammersee, Germany, 1990.

  “Margot Hausenstein: The Life of 100 Years,” annotated timeline. H&KW Papers, box 14, folder 463.

  Wolff, Helen. “My Most Unforgettable Character.” New York, ca. 1942.

  Wolff, Hope Nash. “Who Was Maria Marx? Three Views.” Royalton, VT, 2007.

  Wolff, Leonhard. “Remembering My Musical Life.” Translated by Nikolaus Wolff. Bonn, 1932.

  Wolff, Maria. “Dämmerung.” Pfeddersheimerwegsproduction, Berlin, 2009.

  Wolff, Nikolaus. “How I Came to the United States.” Norwich, VT, ca. 2000.

  ———. “Wolff Clan: 1743–1963.” With Jon Baumhauer. Norwich, VT, 2006.

  Wolff, Kurt. “Reminiscing about Bonn and Music.” Translated by Nikolaus Wolff. Locarno, Switzerland, 1961.

  ———. “Tagebücher, October 23, 1914, to June 28, 1915.” Deutsches Literaturarchiv-Marbach, Germany.

  Image Credits

  All photographs and images come from family collections, with the following exceptions:

  Page x, illustration of family tree by Donovan Andrews

  Page 22, photograph of Moritz von Haber, Stadtarchiv-Karlsruhe, 8/PBS III:0530, used by permission of Stadtarchiv-Karlsruhe

  Page 24, engraving of Haber palace, Stadtarchiv-Karlsruhe, 8/PBS XIVe:0130, used by permission of Stadtarchiv-Karlsruhe

  Page 50, photograph of Berlin Stolperstein memorializing Erna Wolff, used by permission of FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum, photo FraCbB

  Page 56, portraits by Felice Casorati, 1925, © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE Rome. Mr. Kurt Wolff is in the family’s possession; Mrs. Elisabeth Albrecht is part of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, photo credit bpk Bildagentur/Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

  Page 98, portrait of Bertha Colloredo-Mansfeld, courtesy of Ernest Kolowrat; photograph of Roland Hayes, courtesy of E. Azalia Hackley Collection of African Americans in the Performing Arts, Detroit Public Library

  Page 100, photograph of Varian Fry in Cerbère, France, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Annette Fry

  Page 147, advertisement for Red Capsule cocaine (ca. 1900), used by permission of Merck KGaA, Merck-Archiv Y01-pr-1291-001

  Page 168, photograph of Berlin Tiergarten and Reichstag, 1945, Süddeutsche Zeitung/Alamy Stock Photo

  Page 176, photograph of Caroline Ferriday, used by permission of Bellamy-Ferriday House and Garden, Bethlehem, CT, owned and operated by Connecticut Landmarks

  Page 285, photograph of Wilhelm Merck and Bernhard Pfotenhauer with Merck executives, used by permission of Merck KGaA, Merck-Archiv Y01-al-4069

  Notes

  Introduction: In the Footsteps of Kurt and Niko

  Kurt Wolff had been born So as not to perpetuate Nazi rhetoric, I’ve avoided words or phrases like “Aryan” or “half Jewish” or “Mischling” without the punctuative distancing of quotation marks. It’s nonetheless worth stipulating that, during much of the period covered here, “Jewish” was deployed as a racial descriptive as much as a confessional one. My grandfather was baptized, just as his mother and her parents had been. But Nazi racial ideology followed bloodlines and discounted conversions to Christianity. As it happens, rabbinical law—Halakah—holds the same definition of who is a Jew: “According to Halakah, once a person is born Jewish or properly converts to Judaism, that status remains forever.” Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002), 7.

  “purification ritual” This phrase, from sociologist Norbert Elias, rose out of the student protests that swept Germany in 1968.

  Kurt Wolff left Germany Four weeks after Hitler was sworn in as chancellor, the Reichstag, the German parliament building, went up in flames. The Nazis blamed the fire on Communist agitators and used the arson as a pretext to curtail civil liberties. The Dutch Communist charged with starting the blaze insisted, and a court later found, that he had acted alone.

  Dear Dr. Kafka Kurt Wolff letter to Franz Kafka, March 20, 1913. KW Papers, box 5, folder 164.

  Kurt himself vowed Kurt Wolff letter to Hiram Haydn, June 14, 1959. H&KW Papers, box 16, folder 508. In 1959, Random House editor in chief Hiram Haydn sounded Kurt out about writing something autobiographical. But beyond a series of radio essays aired by German broadcasters during the early sixties, my grandfather never followed through. His papers nonetheless include notes in which he floats possible titles for a memoir. One is “The Obsession of an Addict: A Publisher’s Life from Kafka to Pasternak.” The other is a bit of German wordplay: “Vom Verlegen, von Verlegens, und was damit zusammenhängt” (Of Publishing, of Relocations, and Things Pertaining Thereto). H&KW Papers, box 80, folder 2390.

  “a difficult man” D. J. R. Bruckner, “The Prince of Publishers,” New York Times Book Review, January 5, 1992.

  I brought reams Between them, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale and the German Literary Archive in Marbach house some ten thousand of Kurt’s letters and many of Helen’s as well. In 1966, Frankfurt’s Heinrich Scheffler Verlag published a selection, Kurt Wolff: Briefwechsel eines Verlegers, 1911–1963, that runs more than six hundred pages. Scheffler himself, during a visit to my grandfather’s Berlin pension in the weeks before the Reichstag fire, told Kurt that he would like to follow his path as a publisher. Scheffler recalled his response: “He smiled gently, looked out the window, and said, ‘For that, you’ll need God’s protection.’” Heinrich Scheffler, “Kurt-Wolff-Marginalien,” in Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel 95, November 26, 1963.

  “In the case of other” Kurt Wolff: A Portrait in Essays and Letters, ed. Michael Ermarth, trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 149.

  “It’s like magic” Ibid., 155.

  Even his insults Ibid., 6.

  We publishers are alive Kurt Wolff letter to Rainer Maria Rilke, December 10, 1917, in Kurt Wolff: Briefwechsel eines Verlegers, 1911–1963, ed. Bernhard Zeller and Ellen Otten (Frankfurt: Heinrich Scheffler, 1966), 148.

  “Who is interested” Kurt Wolff: A Portrait, 137.

  “In good and in evil” Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 6.

  Chapter One: Bildung and Books

  Hermann was such Kurt Wolff, “Reminiscing about Bonn and Music,” trans. Nikolaus Wolff (Locarno, Switzerland, 1961).

  “I remember the consternation” Wolff, “Reminiscing.” “After a 40-hour-long odyssey from Ischl [in the Tyrol], Brahms appeared at the home of Professor Wolff at five a.m., only to run off again after breakfast in disbelief”; Theodor Henseler, Bonner Geschichtsblätter: Das musikalische Bonn im 19. Jahrhundert, vol. 13 (Bonn: Bonner Heimat- und Geschichtsverein und dem Stadtarchiv Bonn, 1959), 286.

  “Should, on occasion” Wolff, “Reminiscing.”

  Besieged by “snobs” Ibid.

  “whatever I wished” Ibid.

  “Refined, handsome, studious” Kurt Pinthus, “Wie Literatur gemacht wurde: Zur Erinnerung an meiner Freund Kurt Wolff,” Die Zeit, November 1, 1963.

  With the 100,000 Falko Hennig, “Investieren in verlegerischen Gewinn,” Die Tageszeitung, July 24, 2007.

  In 1908, According to the evaluation of Albert Köster, the venerated literature professor at the University of Leipzig, who served as Kurt’s thesis adviser, my grandfather didn’t entirely abandon work toward his PhD. He eventually finished his dissertation—on how contemporaneous critics reacted to the work of the young Goethe—only to have Köster reject it. As a regular in the Leipzig salon of the doctoral candidate and his wife, Professor Köster couldn’t have enjoyed concluding that Kurt “has diligently collected material for this dissertation, but that is all that can be said in his and its favor. He does nothing with it. A monotonous delivery and unpolished style put the reader off. . . . Rarely has so interesting a topic been treated in such boring fashion. What the candidate presents is little more than the fruits of his reading.”

  “I loved books” Kurt Wolff, 1962, conversation with Herbert G. Göpfert, cited in Thomas Rietzschel, “Der Literat als Verleger,” in Kurt Wolff zum Hundertsten (Hamburg: Michael Kellner, 1987).

  By June 1912, Reiner Stach, Kafka: The Decisive Years, trans. Shelley Frisch (Prince­ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 73.

  In that first moment Kurt Wolff: A Portrait, 54–55.

  “I will always be” Ibid., 55.

  The relationship with Ernst Rowohlt Peter Stephan Jungk, Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna, and Hollywood, trans. Anselm Hollo (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990), 30–31.

  “I for my part” Kurt Wolff letter to Karl Kraus, December 14, 1913, in Kurt Wolff: Briefwechsel, 128.

  “If he wants to walk you back” Kurt Wolff: A Portrait, 87.

  Spare thy wrath In German, Verschon uns, Gott, mit Strafen / Und laß uns ruhig schlafen, / Und unsern kranken Nachbar auch! Translation after Schneider, Kurt Wolff: A Portrait, 86. Most Germans know the poem by its opening line, Der Mond ist aufgegangen (The moon is risen).

  “He stared at me” Kurt Wolff: A Portrait, 86–87.

  Love of literature Kurt left extensive reminiscences about the musical forebears of his father but relatively little about the wealthy and cultured ancestors of Jewish extraction on his mother’s side. It took my aunt Hope (Holly) Nash Wolff, the Vermont-born daughter-in-law Kurt never met, to flesh out Maria Marx’s life and family in a privately circulated genealogical essay. Inspired by historian Fritz Stern’s memoir Five Germanys I Have Known (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), she advances a theory to explain why Kurt was so reticent about his Jewish roots. She notes that Stern, another exiled son of the Bildungsbürgertum, refers to “the long-term silence of these people in reference to their Jewishness, coupled with their tenacity in maintaining consciousness of it,” as they determinedly acculturated themselves to German life. And she remarks on “the unthinkable end, their destruction by their countrymen . . . [and] the extent to which the unthinkable is presaged by the unsayable.” Citing the Jewish authors Kurt published (Brod, Hasenclever, Kafka, Werfel) and the iconoclasm embraced by most of them (avant-garde, Expressionist, or otherwise out of the mainstream), she notes that to be a German Jew is perforce to find oneself isolated—to be marked, as Stern puts it, by “both stigma and distinction.” Holly and her husband, Christian, have hung in the living room of their Vermont farmhouse a portrait of Jacob Marx, Kurt’s mother’s grandfather and our most modern Jewish ancestor never to convert. I like to think of this as a kind of gesture of protest against how our Jewish origins have been overlooked in the family story.