Gerhard Wolf

in 1920, Wolf studied from 1919 to 1924 in Heidelberg, Munich, and Berlin Art history, philosophy, and literature (among others with the professors Friedrich Gundolf, Heinrich Rickert, Ludwig Curtius, Fritz Strich, Ernst Troeltsch, and Eduard Spranger) and political science and national economics (among others with the professors Emil Lederer, Eberhard Gothein, Edgar Salin, Thoma, and Alfred Weber). In August 1924, he was awarded a doctorate in political science in Heidelberg (examiners: Salin, Thoma, and Weber). Diplomatic Passport Gerhard Wolf he studied languages in Geneva, Paris, and Cambridge. During his studies in Heidelberg, Wolf made friendships, among others, with the Swiss philosopher Paul Lips and Rudolf Rahn (German Ambassador to Italy since the foundation of the Republic of Salò) and linked Contacts with followers of Stefan Georges (under professors Gundolf and Salin), which he also cultivated during the war (Percy Gothein) and after 1945 (Salin, Rudolf Boehringer). Wolf joined the Foreign Service and worked from 1927 until 1928 as secretary to Foreign Minister Stresemann. He was a co-founder and member of the democratic club “Quiriten.” In 1930, Wolf laid the diplomatic-consular examination and was sent to the Embassy in Warsaw, transferred to the Embassy to the Holy See in 1933. Also, in 1933. He married Hildegard Wolf, née Wolff; in 1935, their daughter Veronica was born. From 1938 until 1942, he had contacts with the German resistance (General Hans Oster, Hans von Dohnanyi). Diplomatic Passport Gerhard Wolf On April 26, 1945, Italian partisans took him into the service building of the German Consulate General in Milan, where he was held from May 1 to 30 and remained interned under Allied command in 1945. Despite the efforts of the Swiss consul in Florence, Carlo Steinhäuslin, and numerous prominent Florentine personalities around Wolf’s release, he was released for over a year in Allied internment camps (Montecatini until June 30, 1945, Salsomaggiore until March 1, 1946, and Hohen Asperg until July 1946). From Hohen, Asperg was finally released unconditionally on July 27, 1946. After his dismissal, Wolf first found employment in Baden-Baden, where from September 1946 to September 1947, he ran the branch of the Evangelische Hilfswerk for the French zone. Growing difficulties prompted Wolf to travel via Switzerland as early as October 1947 to Florence. At first, without paid employment, Wolf tried to find an occupation in the field of German-Italian trade relations to find. Even in November 1949 by the Spruchkammer Nord-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg as “exonerated,” Wolf reacted with rejection to the Trial against Ernst von Weizsäcker and the negative assessment of the “old” of the Foreign Office by the Allies and parts of the German Public. Diplomatic Passport Gerhard Wolf At the end of July 1950, Wolf was transferred to the Federal Chancellery, Department for Foreign Affairs, which convened and prepared in the coming months for the establishment of the German diplomatic representation in Rome. His service as a representative of the Consul General at the Consulate General in Rome …he started in December 1950. Soon after, his superior, Ambassador Clemens von Brentano , got into conflict with Wolf in March 1952 after Bonn recalled. There he headed the UNESCO unit in Division IV (Culture) of the Foreign Office until he was transferred in February 1954 to a temporary retirement. Diplomatic Passport Gerhard Wolf In the autumn of 1954, the Florence City Council elected Wolf in thanks for his commitment to the preservation of the city and its monuments of art, and the protection of numerous political and racial victims of persecution during the war years became honorary citizens. In March 1955 Lord Mayor Giorgio La Pira presented him with the certificate of honorary citizenship. Since 2006, a marble plaque on the Ponte Vecchio commemorates him. It was unveiled by the acting mayor of Wolf’s birthplace, Dresden. Fl