Kurt Heinrich Wolff (20 May 1912 - 14 September 2003)
Born and raised in Darmstadt, he mainly studied sociology, philosophy and history under Karl Mannheim at the University of Frankfurt am Main from 1930 to 1933. In October 1933 he initially immigrated to Italy where he continued his studies at the University of Florence from 1934 to 1935, and completed his doctorate with a thesis in Sociology of Knowledge in 1935 while working as a private teacher at the same time. After several years of private and institutional teaching work, Wolff immigrated a second time in 1939: via London and New York to Texas. After several academic postings at the Southern Methodist University (Dallas) as a research assistant in the Department of Sociology from 1939 to 1943, at the University of Chicago (within a Social Science Research Council Fellowship), at Earlham College (Richmond, IN) and at Ohio State University from 1945 to 1959, he became a member of the Department of Sociology of Brandeis University (Waltham, MA). He taught there until he retired and was conferred emeritus status in 1982. He lived in Newton, near Boston, until his death in 2003. He returned to Germany several times after the war, as a visiting scholar (at the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt am Main in 1952 and 1953 amongst others) and as a visiting professor (at the University of Freiburg in 1966 and the University of Frankfurt am Main in 1966/67). Wolff last visited the University of Konstanz during the course of a conference on immigration research, organised by the Social Science Archive in 1984. The focal points of Wolff’s work and research are in the field sociological theory, sociology of knowledge and social philosophy. Wolff’s complete academic materials as well as large parts of original correspondence are available in the Archive. An index is currently being prepared. The acquisition and organization of the materials was made possible with help of the DFG and the University of Konstanz.