Marguerite Wolff (lawyer)

Marguerite Wolff (10 December 1883 – 21 May 1964) was a German-British legal scholar and translator of Jewish descent.

She was born Marguerite Jolowicz in London. Her brother was the Roman law scholar Herbert Felix Jolowicz. She studied English at Cambridge, presumably at Newnham College. In 1906 she married Martin Wolff, a law professor at the University of Berlin.

From January 1925 to the end of April 1933, she was employed at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign Public Law and International Law, initially as academic assistant with a managerial role in setting up the Institute, then as senior research scholar (Referentin) with a brief for US and UK law. She also translated publications and contributed to the editing of the Institute's journal. When the Nazi Party came to power in April 1933, she was removed from her position at the Institute. She returned to Great Britain in 1935. Her husband followed in the autumn of 1938. Wolff continued to edit and translate legal works, attracting high praise from reviewers. She had also served as translator at The Hague after World War I and oversaw the translation of the court proceedings at the Nuremberg trials.

Wolff died in a London nursing home at the age of 80.

Her son Konrad became a famous pianist.

Literature

 * Gerhard Dannemann, Marguerite Wolff at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign Public Law and International Law, 15 December 2023.
 * Marguerite Wolff, Das Preßrecht Großbritanniens, Verlag Georg Stilke, Berlin 1928.