Friedrich Wolf

Independent activity Marxism–Leninism Germany German Jewish 1888–1953 ○ Died of a heart attack

Physician and communist playwright whose Cyankali fired the campaign against Paragraph 218

His arrest with Else Kienle in February 1931 for performing abortions set off nationwide protests; released, he campaigned against Paragraph 218 at rallies such as the one in the Berlin Sportpalast.

A physician, writer and playwright born into a Jewish merchant family in Neuwied. An army doctor in the First World War, he became an opponent of the war and joined the Dresden workers’ and soldiers’ council in 1918. He joined the Communist Party in 1928, and his play Cyankali (1929) set off the debate over the abortion paragraph. Arrested with Else Kienle in February 1931, he was released amid mass protests. He emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1933 and helped found the National Committee for a Free Germany in 1943. Returning in 1945, he joined the Socialist Unity Party and was East Germany’s first ambassador to Poland in 1949–1951. He died in 1953. He was the father of Markus Wolf and of the film director Konrad Wolf.

Activities and affiliations

Related historical events

“Art is a weapon”: from Cyankali to East Germany

The son of the Jewish merchant Max Wolf of Neuwied, he studied medicine, philosophy and art history at Heidelberg, Munich, Tübingen, Bonn and Berlin from 1907 to 1912. An army doctor on the western and then the eastern front from 1914, he was wounded several times and from 1916 became a determined opponent of the war; his first prose appeared in 1917. In November 1918 he joined the Dresden workers’ and soldiers’ council. He practised as a doctor in Hechingen and near Lake Constance in 1921–1928 and in Stuttgart in 1928–1933, and in 1928 published the naturopathic handbook Nature as Doctor and Helper. That year he joined the KPD and the League of Proletarian-Revolutionary Writers and wrote the polemic “Art Is a Weapon”. His play Cyankali (1929) opened a wide debate on the abortion paragraph, Paragraph 218, and Erich Kästner, Kurt Tucholsky and Bertolt Brecht followed in attacking it in literature. In February 1931 he and the Stuttgart physician Else Kienle were arrested on charges of performing abortions for profit; mass protests and bail won his release. The Nazi paper Völkischer Beobachter called him on 27 February one of the “most dangerous representatives of eastern Jewish Bolshevism”. On 15 April he and Kienle addressed a great rally organised by the KPD in the Berlin Sportpalast, and that year they travelled together to the Soviet Union at the invitation of the People’s Commissar of Health. Cyankali was also staged in New York, Tokyo, Moscow and Paris. In spring 1932 he founded the Spieltrupp Südwest, a communist agitprop troupe of amateur actors, in Stuttgart. In 1933 he emigrated by way of Austria, Switzerland and France to the Soviet Union, where he worked for Radio Moscow; Germany stripped him of citizenship in 1937. Under the impact of Stalin’s terror—“I am not waiting to be arrested here”—he set out in 1937 to serve as a doctor with the International Brigades in Spain, but stayed in France in 1938; arrested in Paris when the war began in 1939, he was interned at Le Vernet. Escaping with Soviet help in 1941, he received Soviet citizenship and in July 1943 co-founded the National Committee for a Free Germany. Part of his family left in Germany was murdered in 1942. Returning in 1945, he helped found the DEFA film studio, joined the Socialist Unity Party in 1946 and was East Germany’s first ambassador to Poland in 1949–1951. He won the National Prize in 1949 for Professor Mamlock and died of a heart attack at Lehnitz on 5 October 1953. His son Markus Wolf became head of East German foreign intelligence, and his son Konrad Wolf a film director.