Ulla Wolff

Ulla Wolff
Portrait of Wolff, c. 1890
Born	Ulla Hirschfeld (1850-04-02)2 April 1850 Gleiwitz, Silesia, Kingdom of Prussia
Died	1 January 1924(1924-01-01) (aged 73) Berlin, Prussia, Weimar Republic
Pen name	Ulrich Frank

Ulla Wolff-Frankfurter (née Hirschfeld; 2 April 1850, in Gleiwitz – 1 January 1924, in Berlin), also known by the pen names Ulla Frank and Ulrich Frank,^[1] was a German Jewish playwright, novelist, and journalist.

Ulla Hirschfeld was born in Gleiwitz, Silesia into a scholarly Jewish family. Her father, Hirsch (Max) Hirschfeld, was a rabbi and philosopher of religion,^[2] while her maternal grandfather, Solomon Eger, served as Chief Rabbi of Posen. She received her education at home, and later in Breslau and Vienna.

In 1869, she married Rabbi Dr. Lazar Frankfurter, a professor of Italian language and literature,^[3] with whom she bore three children, including Richard Frankfurter [de]. She took up residence in Berlin soon after her husband's death in 1878, and married Jewish industrialist Louis Wolff in 1880. She would have two more children from her second marriage.

She died on 1 January 1924 at the age of 74.^[4]

Wolff-Frankfurter's first production, Ein Vampyr, appeared in 1876 at the Lobetheater [de] in Breslau, and was well received.^[5] This was followed in 1878 by Der Herr College. She thereupon gave up writing for the stage, and devoted her literary activity to stories and novels.^[6] Her publications often explored the tension between tradition and modernity in the Jewish family,^[7] and the isolated experiences of ghetto and shtetl life.^[8]

As a journalist, she headed the Berlin feature section of the Hamburgischer Correpondent newspaper for over 15 years, and wrote for other newspapers and magazines, especially for the Berliner Tageblatt, the Jahrbuch für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur, the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums and the Breslauer Zeitung. She was also the Berlin correspondent of the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung.^[4]

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; Haneman, Frederick T. (1906). "Wolff, Ulla (pseudonym Ulrich Frank)". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 553–554.