Wilhelm Wolff

Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff, nicknamed "Lupus" (21 June 1809 – 9 May 1864) was a German schoolmaster, political activist and publicist.

Life

Wolff was born in Tarnau, a village in the Schweidnitz district of Silesia, Prussia (now Tarnawa, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, Gmina Żarów, Poland). His family were mainly farmers, his father being a hereditary serf. His mother was well-educated despite her low social class. He went to grammar school in Świdnica and university in Wrocław, mainly studying classical philology.¹

In 1831 he became a member of a radical students' association, for which he was imprisoned between 1834 and 1838 (mainly in Fort Srebrna Góra), following the resumption of persecution of these types of organisations by the Bundestag, in line with the Carlsbad Decrees.² He was released on 30 July 1838,³ and moved back to Wrocław. There, he attempted to become a private tutor, having been legally excluded from public teaching due to the interruption of his studies by his arrest. However, his licence to teach privately was denied by the government there.⁴ Accordingly, he moved to Posen where he worked as a tutor until 1840, in the service of Tytus Działyński, a Polish landowner.