The composer and conductor was born on October 2, 1883, in Berlin to the concert agent Hermann Wolff and his wife Louise. Despite being interested in music from a young age, he followed his parents’ wishes and pursued a degree in law, which he completed with a doctorate. He subsequently studied conducting at the Leipzig Conservatory, debuting in 1909 as second music director at the opera in Danzig (present-day Gdańsk). In 1910, he joined the German Theater in Prague as first music director and choir director, and in 1912 he moved to the Münster Stadttheater as music director, where the future Hamburg general director Leopold Sachse was serving as opera director. Wolff then went to the Düsseldorf Stadttheater in 1913 and the Hamburg Volksoper in 1916. In 1917, he was named music director at the Hamburg Stadttheater, where he quickly became one of the mainstays of the ensemble.
Hamburg’s right-wing parties—especially the National Socialists—counted Werner Wolff among what they considered to be the “Judaized” elite of the theater. Along with General Director Leopold Sachse and Chief Music Director Egon Pollak, Wolff was already among the most fiercely attacked members of the opera before the Nazis came to power. In June of 1931, after a production of Richard Strauss’s Salome, the local Nazi newspaper Hamburger Tageblatt maliciously wrote: “The orchestra ... was led by Werner Wolff on Thursday. His performance was superb; as a Jew, he probably has a deeper understanding of this music and this material than a German.” When Egon Pollak left the Stadttheater shortly thereafter, the newspaper added in July: “Pollak’s departure is of course a beacon of hope; nothing would please us more than if Sachse, Wolff, and several others were to follow him as soon as possible.”
One year later, the Stadttheater’s Supervisory Board initiated the first wave of dismissals, resulting in the firing of Werner Wolff and other Jewish artists. Together with his wife, the soprano Emmy Land, who also came from a Jewish family, the 48-year-old was forced into retirement effective August 1, 1932. The couple then fled to the United States, where Emmy Land’s daughter lived. Wolff arrived in New York from Rotterdam on October 30, 1938, aboard the SS Statendam. His wife arrived soon thereafter.
Werner Wolff and Emmy Land later settled in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where they taught at the local university and at the renowned Cadek Conservatory. They opened Tennessee’s first opera school in 1943, laying the foundation for the city’s current opera house. Werner Wolff died of cancer on November 23, 1961, in Rüschlikon, Switzerland.
1883 Berlin
1961 Rüschlikon