Lilli Wolff papers

Lilli Wolff (1896-1983) was born Wilhelmine Wolff in Köln to Richard and Regine Wolff. She operated a costume design and dressmaking shop with her business partner, Meta Schmitt (1890-1951), and her assistant, Martha (Mati) Driessen (1910-1990), but lost her ownership of the business following Kristallnacht. She moved to Vienna and hid in the home of her friend, actress Dorothea Neff (1903-1986). Schmitt and Driessen helped sustain her with parcels of food and eventually joined her and Neff in Vienna when the shop in Köln was bombed. She immigrated to the United States in March 1947, joining her sister and brother-in-law, Alice and Walter Schiff, in New York before settling in Dallas. In 1958 she sponsored the immigration of Mati Driessen and her son Klaus, who joined Wolff in Dallas. Meta Schmitt, Mati Driessen, and Dorothea Neff were recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in 1979 for hiding Lilli Wolff during the Holocaust. The Lilli Wolff papers contain biographical materials, correspondence, photographs, playbills, and a clipping documenting Lilli Wolff’s career as a costume designer and dressmaker in Köln and Vienna, her experience hiding in Vienna with the help of her friends, and her immigration to the United States. The papers also include poems and stories dedicated to Lilli Wolff by Max Meinecke. Biographical materials include records documenting the lives of Lilli Wolff, her brother‐in‐law Walter Schiff, and her friend Mati Driessen. A birth certificate, business registration certificate, tenant registration certificate, application for Austrian citizenship, letters of recommendation, and a travel pass document Lilli Wolff’s life in Germany and Austria and her immigration to the United States. Three narratives by Lilli Wolff describe her experiences in Nazi Germany and Austria: two published by the Baptist Church in Texas, which also describe her subsequent conversion to Christianity, and one accompanying her support for the designation of Dorothea Neff, Meta Schmitt, and Mati Driessen as “Righteous Among the Nations.” A letter of recommendation and an appraisal of jewelry document Walter Schiff’s emigration from Germany, and report cards and certificates document Mati Driessen’s education and training in Germany. Correspondence includes letters among friends and family members during and after the war. They describe hardships in Vienna, Köln, and Berlin during the war, the death of Wolff’s father, Wolff’s immigration to the United States, and the efforts of Wolff’s friends to rebuild their lives after the war. Photographs depict Lilli Wolff, her family, her parents’ gravestones, and Mati Driessen. Printed materials include a newspaper review and playbills for Viennese theatrical productions for which Lilli Wolff designed the costumes, including “Der Mond ging unter,” “Überfahrt,” “Faust,” and “Lysistrata.” The poems and stories by Lilli Wolff’s friend, theater director and stage designer Max Meinecke (1912‐ 1972), were dedicated to Wolff and given to her in the spring of 1946.