Dr. Paul Wolff

1887–1951

Paul Wolff (German, 1887–1951) started photographing in his youth but then studied medicine in Strasbourg, France and Munich. After serving in World War I as a medic, he worked from 1920 on in Frankfurt-am-Main as a laboratory assistant and camera operator for industrial films. In 1926 he won a Leica camera at a photo exhibition and devoted himself to 35mm photography. Together with Alfred Tritschler, Wolff founded an agency for industrial and press photography in 1927 that quickly expanded (Dr. Wolff & Tritschler). He published photography instruction books as well as over two hundred monographs of architecture, nature and press photography, including Was ich bei den Olympischen Spielen 1936 sah (What I Saw at the 1936 Olympics).