Die Zeit ist aus den Fugen* - the time is out of joint - the strange life and times of Dr Karl Wollf

* ein sehr empfehlenswertes Buch von Hansjörg Schneider, mit dem Untertitel "Dresdens Schauspiel in den zwanziger Jahren"

Dr Karl Wollf (1876-1952), photograph taken from the beforementioned book

Some time ago I grew very interested in the actor Anton Walbrook or Adolf Wohlbrück, so I tried to find out as much as possible about him. During research I came across many intriguing people, but the one that made me feel almost jealous of Walbrook for having personally known such a man, was Dr Karl Wollf, dramaturge at the Schauspielhaus (theatre) in Dresden from 1916 until 1933 (sadly he belonged to the first people being expelled by the Nazis).

The first text by Wollf I read was his booklet accompanying the Shakespeare Festival 1930 in Dresden and the  open minded attitude he exhibits, his kind of humour, instantly made me fall in love with his daring intellect. Especially the preface caught my eye, where he compares Shakespeare's genius with nature itself and states that it is as boundless as the forces of nature. Here are scans of this preface (it's in German alas):

Some time later I discovered that Wollf had also written a book entitled "Journey Into Chaos", this time since it was published in English and mainly for an English speaking audience during WW2 he called himself Charles Wollf. There he gives a very detailed account of his personal life from the beginning of WW1, Germany and  the European continent inbetween the wars, focussing especially on his personal encounters and on the cultural life of those countries - for anybody interested in the 1920s in Germany and the impact that the upcoming National Socialism had on German culture, certainly a must-read -  until his hair-raising escape from Vichy France to England in the early 1940s. At the beginning of WW2 he was as "hostile" foreigner detained in Paris and subsequently sent to live in the south of France after France had been occupied. Having read some of his writings, I certainly was very interested in the way such a man would handle the atrocities threatening his very life. And what I found was an account of the most amazing dream, something that comes very close to Posthumus' vision in Cymbeline. Wollf is absolutely overwhelmed by the awful circumstances he has to live in - scarcely any food, no heating in the winter , the company of other refugees he had learned to hate etc - yet he interprets this in his vision as just punishment for his past sins, but just when he is about to be subdued by all this, there arises hope and he understands that beyond God's justice, there lies God's mercy. Consequently this gave him the hope and the power to design a daring plan to escape via Spain and Portugal to England, which thanks to his family and friends in England worked out just fine. In London he became a founder member of the "Club 43", an organisation of German-Jewish emigrants, which still resides in Belsize Square!